Association Of Catholic Bloggers

On the Feast of the Holy Family, December 29, 2013, Pope Francis invited all Catholics to pray for families as the Church prepares for an Extraordinary Synod to examine the troubling disconnect between Church teaching and the reality of modern family life. In his  Angelus address  given to the crowds in St. Peter's Square, Pope Francis recited for the first time his new Prayer to the Holy Family. (Full text available  here .) The prayer seeks the help of the Holy Family while at the same time revealing Pope Francis' vision of the family as it is and as it could be. It paints an ideal portrait of family life and yet acknowledges the severe difficulties faced by many. It concludes with a heart-felt petition for the renewal of the sacredness and inviolability of the family. Pope Francis' prayer is a short primer on the theology of the family and deserves careful contemplation. Let's see what he says. The Splendor of True Love Jesus, Mary and Joseph, in you we cont...

I won’t lie; getting permission from Libreria Editrice Vaticana to gather a dozen papal encyclicals together for a unique Marian study was, well, awesome! Holding the contract in hand, gave me goose bumps. To share my excitement, the contract in part reads: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, located in the Vatican City State, in the person of the its Director and pro tempore legal representative, Prof. Don Giuseppe COSTA, sdb and Bezalel Books, A Catholic Publishing Company and Bookstore, Box 300427 Waterford, MI 48330 , in the person of its President and pro tempore legal representative, Cheryl DICKOW. Libreria Editrice Vaticana grants to Bezalel Books, a non exclusive permission to reproduce , in the work entitled:  MARY EVER VIRGIN FULL OF GRACE. A STUDY OF PAPAL ENCYCLICALS ON MARY, by Cheryl Dickow, the following excerpts: The contract then goes on to list the dozen encyclicals that are in the book which begin with Octobri Menseo the September 22, 1891 encyclical of...

“From the beginning therefore he [man] is called to work. Work is one of the characteristics that distinguish man from the rest of creatures, whose activity for sustaining their lives cannot be called work. Only man is capable of work, and only man works, at the same time by work occupying his existence on earth. Thus work bears a particular mark of man and of humanity, the mark of a person operating within a community of persons. And this mark decides its interior characteristics; in a sense it constitutes its very nature.” Blessed John Paul wrote these words in his encyclical Laborem Exercens in 1981. I’ve referred to this encyclical many times in my own writings and in attempting to get at the very nature of who I am as a Catholic woman, wife, mother, author, and teacher. I have found in his words a timeless truth—no surprise there!—and a certain sense of peace as well. Whether I have worked outside of the home out of necessity or out of a desire, balancing work with family al...