GREEN BAY, Wis. (EWTN News) — Attendance is booming at a Wisconsin shrine at the site of the only approved Marian apparition in the United States.

On Dec. 8, 2010, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, Bishop David Ricken of Green Bay decreed that the Virgin Mary had appeared to a young Belgian immigrant woman, Adele Brise, three times in October of 1859.

After that, shrine caretaker Karen Tipps said, “the phone was ringing off the hook.”

“Right from Dec. 8 on, we never had a slow time this winter,” she told the Green Bay Press Gazette.

People have come from as far away as Texas, New Orleans and the south Pacific island of Tahiti to pray at the chapel, located 17 miles northeast...READ MORE

MANILA — When Philippine lawmakers return on July 25 for the second session of the 15th Congress, they will continue debates on two reproductive-health bills that would undermine the Catholic culture of the populous Asian nation.

Similar in content, both the House and Senate bills seek to mandate government counseling on artificial contraceptives and promote sexual education for children as early as fifth grade.

Backed by powerful international population-control groups, the bills also recommend two children per family as a way to reduce poverty and foster economic development. The Philippines has a population of more than 90 million, about 82% of whom are Catholic.

The bills are...READ MORE

Hoyas Whip the Irish - Scott Walter, The Catholic Thing

Reason is the Enemy of the Euthanasia Movement - Michael Cook, Crisis Magazine

Catholic Illustrator’s Guild - Richard Aleman, The Distributist Guild

Can a Sinner Become a Saint? Yes. Why Do You Ask? - Phil Lawler, CatholicCulture.org/On the News

Decaying West: England to Permit Abortionists to Run T.V. Commercials - Monsignor Charles Pope, Archdiocese of Washington

Liberation Theology is Dead But Not Departed; It Still Occasionally Twitches - William Oddie, Catholic Herald

N.Y. Bishop’s Office: No Plans to Deny Gov. Cuomo Communion - Christine Dhanagom, LifeSiteNews.com

U.S.: Three Parishes in San Francisco ‘Gay Pride’ Parade -...READ MORE

Robert Redford’s latest film, The Conspirator — released just days after the Sesquicentennial of the attack on Fort Sumter, the Civil War’s start — stirred many childhood memories.

My great-grandmother, Lillian Webster Keane, who was a longtime Washingtonian, frequently spoke about the injustice the film portrays.

Fittingly, The Conspirator opened April 15 — the same day, 146 years earlier, President Abraham Lincoln was celebrating the end of the Civil War.

The bloody conflict that ripped our nation apart for four years, North against South, was now over — ending officially on April 9, 1865, when Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse to Union Gen. Ulysses S....READ MORE

VATICAN CITY (CNA/EWTN News)— Pope Benedict XVI will spend his summer vacation praying, reading and writing, according to his official spokesman.

“I was also struck in the past, talking to the Pope’s personal secretary, who said to me very naturally: ‘The best way for the Pope to rest is for him to study and write about theology, sacred Scripture, because they are topics that fascinate him,’” said Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi in a July 7 interview with Vatican Radio.

The Pope left July 7 for his summer residence of Castel Gandolfo, a tiny hilltop village overlooking Lake Albano, just 15 miles southeast of Rome. The town has been the traditional holiday spot for popes since the 15th...READ MORE

Facebooking the Truth - Joel Davidson, Catholic Anchor

Three Characteristics of the Diabolical, & How they Manifest in the World - Monsignor Charles Pope, Archdiocese of Washington

Controversy Over “Heaven” Street Sign - Doctor Gary Scott Smith, Catholic Lane

If Only Mozart Had Lived in Greece - Carolyn Moynihan, MercatorNet

If Contraception, Why Not Gay Marriage? - Howard Kainz, Crisis Magazine

Apostle to the Sioux - Donald R. McClarey

That’s Entertainment: Free Speech and the Moral Regulation of the Arts - Hadley Arkes, Public Discourse

Homosexual Scientists Isolate Christian Gene - Lisa Graas

Meet the Press, B16 Edition - Rocco Palmo, Whispers in the Loggia

Catholic Church...READ MORE

DUBLIN, Ireland (CNA) — Thousands of people attended a large pro-life rally in Dublin to oppose attempts to force abortion on Ireland by changing its laws.

Organizers said the July 2 “All Ireland Rally for Life” was “hugely successful” and serves as a warning to the political party Fine Gael that the Labour Party’s plans to legalize abortion in Ireland are “unacceptable to the majority of Irish people.”

Speakers called on Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny to keep his promise that his party would be opposed to the legalization of abortion, according to rally co-sponsor Youth Defence.

The European Court of Human Rights in December ruled that Ireland’s abortion ban breached the rights of a...READ MORE

LOS ANGELES (EWTN News) — Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez says the state and federal governments are strengthening their own authority at the expense of American families with new or proposed rules regarding video games, sexually transmitted-disease vaccines, and lessons on homosexuality in the history curriculum.

“There was a time not too long ago when American society encouraged family values and tried to strengthen the bonds of parents and children,” the archbishop wrote in a July 5 column for his archdiocese’s weekly newspaper. “Recent events in our state and nation remind us that’s not always the case anymore.”

In his column, Archbishop Gomez spoke with concern about a June 27...READ MORE