Posts

Showing posts with the label pope john xxiii

Canonizing Two Thoroughly Modern Men: The Gifts of Popes John Paul II and John XXIII to the Church

Image
On this past Divine Mercy Sunday, two beloved Popes were canonized in St. Peter's Square -- Pope John Paul II and Pope John XXIII. Both popes believed firmly in ushering the Church into the modern world, Pope John XXIII by calling the Second Vatican Council and Pope John Paul II by working tirelessly to implement those conciliar reforms in a way that did justice to the Church's past and her present. But Pope St. John Paul II will always be closer to my heart. When I began contemplating conversion to Catholicism in the late 1990s, Pope John Paul II had already reigned for more than 20 years. The JPII generation was on fire with love for Christ and his Church. They were passionately devout, fiercely intelligent, and quoted passages from the original documents of Vatican II with the same fluency an evangelical might cite Scripture. John Paul II's  Theology of the Body  (or TOB), with its message that our bodies and sex itself were glorious gifts from God, was just bec

Study Mary with the Popes

Image
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 Pop