Gazette

Be an informed Christian! Catch up on the latest news and commentary from around the Catholic Web. Learn more about our Church and issues facing us today from some of the most influential national and international sites. We hope the Good Shepherd Gazette is helpful to you in finding reliable sources of information. Come back often, as the Gazette is updated several times each day!

Saint of the Day

St. Anthony Messenger presents an illuminating profile of a saint commemorated today.

  • Chair of St. Peter
    This feast commemorates Christ’s choosing Peter to sit in his place as the servant-authority of the whole Church (see June 29). After the “lost weekend” of pain, doubt and self-torment, Peter hears th …

America

“In All Things” offers daily commentary from the nation’s most influential weekly Catholic journal, America, published by the Jesuits since 1909.

  • A Blessed Mother Meets the Pope
    Now we know where he gets it from. Cardinal Timothy Dolan, well-known for his good sense of humor (among other qualities), introduced his mother to Pope Benedict this weekend, and her exchange with th …
  • Lenten Resources Online: 2012
    There is an absolute plethora of spiritual resources on the web to help you in your journey during Lent.  In fact, there are so many (and I've gotten so many emails promoting them) that it's …
  • Saturday Morning with Catherine of Siena
    Mary Valle, a smart, savvy writer and an editor at Killing the Buddha, recently attended a one-woman show on the life of St. Catherine of Siena, performed by an (Adrian) Dominican Sister named Nancy M …
  • Politics, presidents, and spiritual warfare
    What’s up with Rick Santorum? The uber-Catholic former Pennsylvania senator is not one to shy away from injecting his faith into the public realm, but some comments over the past few days reveal an od …
  • Interreligious Dialogues in Academe: Elite, Real, Open-ended
    Cambridge, MA. Several blogs ago, I promised that I would say something about recent events at CSWR (the Center for the Study of World Religions, which I direct) and Harvard during Interfaith Week and …
  • Catholic Presidential Candidates Bringing up the Rear in Charitable Contributions
      American Catholics, most studies suggest, give significantly less to charity than our Protestant (and for that matter, Mormon) counterparts. If their 2010 tax returns are any guide, it seems this ho …

Commonweal

Updates from “DotCommonweal,” the blog of the prominent U.S. lay-edited weekly Commonweal, published since 1924.

  • March of the Gazillionaires
    In a season of alms giving, some news about the rich and U.S. politics. In my CWL column, I tried to get at the absurdity of our laws, Super Pacs, and the 2012 presidential candidates: Here: February …
  • Measuring empathy and cruelty
    This week’s TLS has a review by Andrew Scull of Simon Baron Cohen’s book Zero Degrees of Empathy: A new theory of human cruelty, which argues that cruelty results from a lack of empathy (one is tempte …
  • “Now is the day of salvation”
    The second reading for Ash Wednesday invites us to apply to the season of Lent the words, first, of the prophet and, second, of the apostle: “‘In an acceptable time I heard you, and on the day of salv …
  • This Joyful, Silent Season
    Larry Cunningham (whose stipends from “Commonweal” I believe are funding the new Notre Dame Journal on evangelization) has a fine Lenten reflection [subscribers only] in the current issue. He writes: …
  • Fifty years ago…
    Fifty years ago tomorrow, February 22, 1962, there gathered in St. Peter’s Basilica several thousand priests, seminarians (among them your humble servant), and religious, forty-one Cardinals, around a …
  • Qur’an desecration, again?! Really?!
    Really?  It’s simply stunning.  How did this happen?  Qur’ans and a large number of Islamic religious materials were burned (incompletely) and taken out with the trash at Bagram. They were discovered …

Whispers in the Loggia

Rocco Palmo reports on international Church developments from Philadelphia on his widely-read blog Whispers in the Loggia.

  • Miserere….
    Yet again, church, our Lenten journey begins….And for a more upbeat take on this Opening Day of "spring training," an earlier clip from the neo-cardinale of New York:To one and all, here …
  • Meet the Bishop
    Via San Jacinto — that is, Houston Chancery — a video introducing the freshly-named auxiliary of the 1.5 million-member church in the nation's fourth-largest city, Bishop-elect George Sheltz:Ca …
  • "Remember That You Are Dust…."
    And now, the focus shifts….Everybody ready?-30-
  • In H-Town, Finally, Merry Auxmas
    And at long last, Houston, we have liftoff….At Roman Noon today, the Pope named Msgr George Sheltz, 65 — a veteran, highly-regarded pastor who's served as vicar-general of Texas' 1.5 mill …

  • So it sounds, gang, Rome's not sending the Stateside church into Lent empty-handed….In other words, see you at "Noon."-30-
  • On President's Day, "The Atmosphere of Liberty"
    Yet again, this third Monday of February is officially observed here in the States as Washington's Birthday, but known far better as President's Day.Of course, the observance commemorates th …

Vox Nova

Church Social Teaching is the focus on this blog by various Catholic writers seeking to discover the connection between faith and public life.

  • Hematite Crucifix: A Lenten Meditation
    Two years ago on Good Friday, I became a little more Catholic by acquiring the first and only crucifix I have ever worn.  I bought it from a teenage girl in a coffee shop who was selling jewelry as a …
  • Fasting for Vitality
    For most of my life, I’ve misunderstood ascetic practices as shallow, utilitarian forms of self denial. For instance: fasting is many times associated with denying the body to strengthen the soul. Thi …
  • Santorum is the one with the “phony theology”
    A lot of people are piling on Rick Santorum for his inopportune comments about Obama’s supposed “phony theology”. But most of these critics are missing something fundamental. They assume, albeit impli …
  • Not-So-Strange Bedfellows
    George Weigel has a column today at National Review titled “The Catholic Betrayal of Religious Liberty.” It begins as an indictment of Democratic Catholic officeholders Nancy Pelosi, Patty Murray, Ros …
  • Nova’s Ordo: To the Desert!
    This Lent we are reviving the “Nova’s Ordo” feature. Each week one of our contributors will offer a reflection on the Sunday readings. As (almost) always, commentary is welcome, but we will not be ind …
  • Obama and Women Priests
    It has been clear since he was elected that there was an irrational element to the conservative opposition to President Obama.  Let me be clear:  I am not saying that all such opposition is either irr …

The Deacon’s Bench

Deacon Greg Kandra of the Diocese of Brooklyn offers interesting news related to Church life and society on his blog.

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