"Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions." - G.K. Chesterton

CERC Weekly Update

New Resources

• An Advent Meditation - Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman - from Parochial and Plain Sermons - Men sometimes ask, Why need they profess religion? Why need they go to church?

• The Catholic Contribution to Western Law - Michael P. Foley - St. Thomas More Society  - The Catholic impact on Western law can hardly be overestimated.

• The grittiness of Christian faith - George Weigel - The Catholic Difference - Christianity began, not with a pious story or "narrative," but with the reality of transformed lives.

• Why don't Catholics read the Bible? - Father Dwight Longenecker - Crux - The independent fundamentalist church I went to as a boy gave me a fantastic amount of Bible knowledge.

• The Most Important Question About Abortion - Dennis Prager - Prager University - Let's talk about one of the most emotionally charged subjects there is — abortion — but in an unemotional way.

• Christ in the Clutter: Notre Dame Then and Now - Brad Miner - The Catholic Thing - Watching the spillover crowd in Notre Dame de Paris at the Sunday evening vigil for the victims of the terrorist attack was a moving experience.

• The birthday of a spiritual master - Bishop Robert Barron - Word on Fire - This year marks the 750th anniversary of the birth of the great Catholic poet Dante Alighieri.

• Making Dogma Out of Unsettled Science - Father George W. Rutler - Crisis - f the Church's "voice crying in the desert" is to be prophetic, it should not cry wolf.

Editorials of Interest

• A new door opens - Catholic Herald - Mercy is absolutely at the heart of the Catholic faith, both doctrine and practice.

• Full text: Pope's homily inaugurating Year of Mercy - Catholic Herald - Were sin the only thing that mattered, we would be the most desperate of creatures. But the promised triumph of Christ's love enfolds everything in the Father's mercy.

• How to Make the Most of a Year Rich in Mercy - NC Register - God's own mercy offers the template for true compassion. Jesus didn't eradicate the problem of suffering. Rather, he accompanies the Father's sons and daughters in this vale of tears.

• 56 Ways to Be Merciful During the Jubilee Year of Mercy - Aleteia - Practicing mercy in our lives actually does take practice.

• Why a Jubilee Year of Mercy? - Catholic Preaching - Pope Francis says we are living in a "kairos of mercy," a special time in which mercy is needed. He has given Pope St. John Paul II credit for this intuition: he believed it was a special time of mercy because he thought that one of the greatest crises the human race faces is unexpiated guilt.

• Church Leaders Push for US to Name Christians as Victims of Genocide - National Catholic Register - Carl Anderson, the supreme knight of the Knights of Columbus, implored the U.S. State Department to "publicly acknowledge that genocide is taking place against the Christian communities of Iraq and Syria."

• Cdl. Sarah: Without God, there is nothing but wars, division, and bewilderment - Catholic World Report - "The real crisis that our world is going through now is not essentially economic or political, but a crisis of God," says prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.

• Liberal media outlet gives Ryan Anderson a fair hearing - Mercatornet - The Atlantic magazine staged an LGBT Summit the other day with the redoubtable Ryan T Anderson as a contributor.

• In New York City, More Than 5,000 Black Babies are Aborted Than Born Every Year - LifeNews - Black women undergo nearly 42% of the NYC's roughly 70,000 total annual abortions. In 2013, nearly 5,000 more abortions than live births occurred among black women in the city.

• Marriage is disappearing in Italy - CNA - Italy is facing a swift and dramatic collapse of the institution of marriage, according to a prominent Italian demographer and statistician.

• On human sexuality, conservative victory is inevitable - Public Discourse - Human history is a story of sexual restrictions.

• Stunning 2200-Year-Old Mosaics Discovered in Ancient Greek City - Twisted Sifter - Three new mosaics were recently discovered in the ancient Greek city of Zeugma, which is located in the present-day province of Gaziantep in southern Turkey. The incredibly well-preserved mosaics date back to 2nd century B.C.

• Don't Fall Into the Scapegoat Trap - patheos - If you are inclined to scapegoat all Muslims. Stop. Stop and think. Inform yourself.

• Is Barack Obama Qualified To Identify True Islam? - The Federalist - Liberals have long argued that religion can be irrational and downright dangerous. They are right. But when it comes to a modern case in point, radical Islam, they don't seem able to admit that the violence could have anything to do with religion.

• What We Fear When We Fear Terrorism - NY Times - Terrorist conspiracies might really deserve greater scrutiny, greater anxiety, greater fear: whatever the body count involved, by its very nature a terrorist group doesn't only threaten individual lives. It also challenges the government's monopoly on organized force, which is the state's most basic (at least in social-contract theory) claim and guarantee.

• An Open Letter to Millenials About the Insanity of Marriage - UnTangled - Dear Millenials, many people are pessimistic about your generation. I'm not. In fact, I'm quite optimistic, because I believe you care more about the human race and the survival of our planet than any other generation before.

• Breathing Again, Thanks To Walker Percy - The Catholic Thing - Why do I say Percy helps you to breathe again? Because he gets us out of the intellectual smog that tries to deny that things are really bad in America. This also helps you to again see the world as it really is.

• How Can I Change the Conversation at My College Around Gay People in the Church? - Patheos - Marriage is a part of Christian sexual discipline, not the only approved form of Christian sexual license. What you want is for people to see what it's like to live out other forms of love.

• On Solitude and Loneliness - The Suburban Hermit - The hermit is a living witness that the follower of Jesus Christ need never be lonely. We may be solitary, but we do not need to be lonely. We can move out of loneliness by developing a life of prayer through which we learn that "He who has God is lacking in nothing.

• "I Had Forgotten There Is a God Who Loves Me" - Aleteia - A new, free video series will help you deepen your relationship with the Holy Spirit.

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Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman and St. Justin Martyr, pray for us