LAHORE, Pakistan — Human-rights activists in Pakistan and outside are aghast over the plight of a 12-year-old Christian girl who escaped the clutches of her Muslim abductor nine months later.

Arif Masih, the father of the kidnapped girl (whose name was withheld), is a government street sweeper in Lahore. He filed a complaint with the police soon after his daughter was abducted on Christmas Eve 2010. But the police never bothered to investigate the crime while the abductor repeatedly raped the girl and even forcibly converted her to Islam until she managed to escape and call her parents from a public telephone booth.

The police refused to order a medical exam of girl. The magistrate who...READ MORE

The Mighty Macs is a sweetly old-fashioned sports movie with a Hollywood Catholic milieu in which Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman would be right at home. To cite a more recent touchstone, it’s almost exactly the same movie as Secretariat, only Catholic instead of Protestant, and with girls playing basketball instead of horses racing.

Consider: Like Secretariat, The Mighty Macs is based on a true underdog sports story from the early 1970s. Both movies feature a spunky blonde heroine played by an appealing actress in her 40s—a well-dressed housewife with an old-fashioned feminist streak, married to an initially unsupportive sexist husband who just doesn’t understand why his wife needs to see...READ MORE

What is Contemplation? - Dr. Anthony Lilles, Beginning to Pray

Greed is a Real Sin - Mary Kochan, Catholic Lane

Relationships = Gift - Rachel Howell, VirtuousPla.net

Lady Gaga and the Weight of Glory - Sam Mullins, beingCatholic

St. Basil the Great on Avarice - Mark Shea, Patheos/Catholic and Enjoying It!

“Divorce” between Regnum Christi & Legionaries - Andrés Beltramo Álvarez, La Stampa/Vatican Insider

Vatican: Major Document on Reform of Global Financial System Coming - John Thavis, CNS

Some Catholic Parents Say ‘Nay’ to Halloween & ‘Yea’ to All Saints - Carol Paur, Our Sunday Visitor

On the Intellectual Roots of “Occupy Wall Street” - Carl Olson, Ignatius Insight Scoop

A...READ MORE

VATICAN CITY—“The news of the death of Col. Moammar Gadhafi ends the too-long and tragic phase of the bloody struggle to overthrow a harsh and oppressive regime,” the Vatican said in a statement released this afternoon.

“This dramatic event,” the communiqué continued, “forces us to reflect once again on the price of immense human suffering that accompanies the assertion and collapse of any system that is not based on respect and dignity of the person, but on the principal assertion of power.”

There were conflicting accounts regarding the circumstances of the dictator’s death.

According to Reuters, one source said Gadhafi was captured alive and, in resisting his captors, was beaten to...READ MORE

VATICAN CITY (EWTN News/CNA)—Pope Benedict XVI is urging the Church in Australia to evangelize all Australians, not simply those who are Catholic.

“It is urgent to ensure that all those entrusted to your care understand, embrace and propose their Catholic faith intelligently and willingly to others,” the Pope told the Australian bishops in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace, Oct. 20.

In this way, said the Pope, Australian Catholics will “give such an account of your faith by word and example that it will be convincing and attractive,” particularly to people of good will who, “seeing your witness, will respond naturally to the truth, the goodness and the hope that you embody.”

The bishops...READ MORE

The Ecumenical Future - George Weigel, Archdiocese of Denver/The Catholic Difference

Sin of Presumption & You: How to go to Hell in an Uneasy Lesson - Fr. John Zuhlsdorf, WDTPRS?

The Hurons, the Iroquois, and the Blackrobes - Pat McNamara, Patheos/In Ages Past

A Pastor’s Letter for Our Times - Msgr. William Biebel, Catholic Lane

What are the “Fonts of Revelation”? - Stacy Trasancos, Accepting Abundance

Canada: Abp. Miller Honored to Participate in 40 Days for Life Event - Peter Baklinski, LifeSiteNews.com

Tears from Heaven: Jon Scharfenberger 1989-2011 - Royce, VirtuousPla.net

Marxism, Abortion among CCHD’s Poverty Strategies - Kenneth Spence, Acton Institute

The Pillars of...READ MORE

WASHINGTON — Thousands of Coptic Christians converged at the White House yesterday, protesting the Egyptian army’s failure to defend religious minorities.

In the wake of anti-Christian violence in post-revolutionary Egypt, Coptic priests and Egyptian immigrants from as far away as Chicago held up simple wooden crosses and pictures of bloodied bodies crushed during the deadly Oct. 9 clash in Cairo between the military, Muslims and Christian protesters.

The U.S. government has funneled $35 billion in military aid to Egypt since the 1978 Camp David accords that provided a framework for peace between Egypt and Israel. Yet the Obama White House has issued a restrained public response to the...READ MORE

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — When Sister Meaghan Boland was discerning which women’s religious community to join after graduation from college, she began the process on the Internet.

After finding four orders she liked, the Northborough, Mass., woman visited two and served on a mission trip with another before making a retreat with the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist. That sealed her decision to join the Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Dominicans, where she began a six-month period as an aspirant Aug. 28.

Similarly, when Sister Taryn Stark began thinking seriously about religious life in her mid-30s, she immediately went online to find out more about the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas,...READ MORE