Jimmy Akin 1. Why does the Church teach that Mary was immaculately conceived? Her conception is never even mentioned in Scripture. Before presenting the scriptural foundations for the Church’s belief in Mary’s Immaculate Conception, know that the person who is posing this question to you is
It’s usually offered in indirect but aggressive ways. Behind a lot of American political arguments is the belief that Catholics don’t belong in the political world — unless we’re willing to set our faith aside. It comes out in claims like calling the commitment to
When a priest is ordained, his hands are anointed with oil. They are then wiped clean with a white linen cloth — it’s called a maniturgium. There is a custom, hundreds of years old, in which each new priest presents that cloth to his mother. She’s
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” These words from W. B. Yeats’s poem “The Second Coming” were first published one hundred years ago, in a time not wholly dissimilar to ours. The 1918-1919 flu epidemic had ravaged much of Europe, tearing through communities and
Archbishop Karol Wojtyla’s newly discovered 1965 reflections on St. Paul’s discourse at the Areopagus (Acts 17: 16-32), Mars Hill, is the starting point for Wojtyla’s cycle of catecheses in this book, Teachings for an Unbelieving World (Ave Maria Press, 2020). In my judgment, this catechesis adumbrates Sign of
When I was still a university professor, I often asked my students to play an intellectual “what if” game. I asked them to imagine what our world would be like if Jesus Christ had never existed and, therefore, Christianity had never come into being. I
A top Polish historian has questioned claims by German researchers that newly opened Vatican archives contain information damning the role played by Pope Pius XII during World War II. “This team has the advantage of having been to these archives, and we must face the
Last week, Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, made a rather interesting theological observation. Commenting on the progress that his state has made in fighting the coronavirus, and praising the concrete efforts of medical personnel and ordinary citizens, he said, “The number is down
Every time Christians recite the Apostles’ Creed, they affirm their belief in what will happen to them after death: “’I believe in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.” The belief in the resurrection of one’s physical body at the end of time is
There is no document issued by a pope in the last 50 years that has been met with as much conflict as Humanae Vitae. Countless couples have bought into the lie told by the culture—along with the erroneous teaching handed onto them by some members of
Praying the Rosary
Familiarize yourself with the prayers of the rosary.
