Focus

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  The charity and love at Lent’s heart

  Mar 08, 2018

  The sound of cymbals can add amazingly to the music of an orchestra or band. But a concert only of cymbals is hard for me to imagine.

  
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  La Civiltà Cattolica and the ‘sinicisation’ of Catholicism

  Mar 08, 2018

  At the Chinese Communist Party’s 19th National Party Congress in October 2017, the country’s president, Xi Jinping, promised to “sinicise religions” in the country.

  
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  Food For Thought

  Feb 28, 2018

  Fasting as a form of sacrifice has existed since the earliest days of the church.

  
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  This Lent: A different kind of sacrifice

  Feb 28, 2018

  If doing the same thing this Lent as in Lents past seems a bit hollow to you, two Catholics' experiences with doing something different might help bring a fresh perspective to your own Lenten practice.

  
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  Embrace sacrifice - but do not forget service and surrender

  Feb 28, 2018

  Lent and Easter had come and gone, but the Christian call to sacrifice was very much on Pope Francis' mind when he addressed 12,000 pilgrims in St. Peter's Square last June 28 during his weekly general audience.

  
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  Why the Vatican’s potential deal with China is a good thing

  Feb 28, 2018

  News of the Holy See’s possible rapprochement with China’s Communist government on the appointment of bishops has aroused charges of a betrayal of the “underground church” and fears of the abandonment of Catholics who for decades have suffered for the sake of their fidelity to Rome.

  
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  Chinese Christian churches face new threats as state religious code is revised

  Feb 28, 2018

  Shocking images of a church dynamited by government officials in China, the second to be demolished in recent weeks, may foretell a deeper crisis for Christianity in China today.

  
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  Food For Thought

  Feb 15, 2018

  “I like to think (God) has one weakness: a bad memory,” Pope Francis told a group of seminarians, new priests and priests taking a course sponsored by the Apostolic Penitentiary in Rome, March 4, 2016.

  
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  Repentance: A response to the Father’s love and forgiveness

  Feb 15, 2018

  As we enter into Lent, we are welcomed by the phrases “repent and believe in the Gospel” or “you are dust and to dust you shall return”.

  
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  Repentance in the early Church

  Feb 15, 2018

  The call to a change of heart and a change of life was a hallmark of the ministry of Jesus, of his forerunner, John the Baptist, and of his apostles.