mediamissionaries

 We’re the only Catholic church that has valet parking’: The Nevada congregation inside a casino ‘We sometimes joke that we’re the only Catholic church that has valet parking,’ Father Charlie Urnick, longtime pastor of St. John the Baptist Parish, told The Independent’s Erin Keller The steady hum of slot machines is joined by a chorus of hymns every weekend at Riverside Resort and Casino in Laughlin, Nevada. Inside the 800-seat Don’s Celebrity Theatre, just past the poker tables, rows of chairs fill up not for a lounge singer, but for Catholic Mass. We sometimes joke that we’re the only Catholic church that has valet parking,” Father Charlie Urnick, the longtime pastor of St. John the Baptist Parish, told The Independent. What began more than three decades ago as a temporary response to the lack of a dedicated parish church has become one of the country’s most unusual parish arrangements. In 1992, about 500 residents petitioned the Diocese of Reno to send a priest to the small rive...

  The Canterbury Trails https://www.indcatholicnews.com/news/55026

  Love the Sinner https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/love-the-sinner?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=novashare On the forest floor, half covered in withered leaves, lay the naked body of a child, a young girl. Her short dark hair reached just to her shoulders; her face was obscured with leaves. In her childish breast there was a small, curiously shaped triangular wound, livid against the white, translucent skin. It was a deep, almost bloodless wound—the kind that bleeds on the inside. Olav Audunsson stood looking down at her in grief and heartbreak and horror. There was about her something familiar, though he could swear he had never seen her before. And the wound in her breast had been made by his own dagger. He awoke from his dream greatly troubled. The vision seemed to accuse him of the murder of a child, yet never had he knowingly done violence against such a one. Men he had killed in battle, or for vengeance, but never had he harmed woman or child! ...

  Present Day Adolescent Sexuality and Its Implications for the Camp Community-Losing #Viginity https://www.acacamps.org/article/camping-magazine/healthy-camp-symposium-preview-present-day-adolescent-sexuality-its-implications-camp-community Sex is a topic that elicits such strong emotions in people that it often becomes difficult to have a clear, calm, rational conversation about it. When that conversation concerns the sexual behavior of children and teens, things get even more emotional. Lynn Ponton, a well-known adolescent psychiatrist in San Francisco who wrote the popular book The Romance of Risk (Basic Books, 1997) on adolescent risk-taking behavior, once told me how she unwittingly stepped into a maelstrom of controversy and criticism when she followed her best seller with another book titled The Sex Lives of Teenagers. "Suddenly, I found myself fending off the accusation that I was advocating that teenagers have sex rather than merely reporting on that aspect of their liv...

Vienna’s Silent Transformation: Nearly 50% of students in schools are already Muslim. Only 17% are Catholic - ZENIT - English : Perhaps no recent controversy symbolizes Vienna’s cultural unease more clearly than the city government’s decision earlier this year not to erect a statue honoring Polish King John III Sobieski. Sobieski led the Christian coalition that defeated Ottoman forces outside Vienna on September 12, 1683, in one of the decisive battles of European history

This is what the religious landscape will look like in 2075: the Muslim population is growing, while Catholics remain the largest Christian group - ZENIT - English : Christianity Remains the World’s Largest Faith, but Islam’s Rapid Growth Is Redrawing the Religious Map

 https://archive.org/stream/SelectedWritingsOfGirolamoSavonarola--ReligionAndPolitics149014982006/Selected%20Writings%20of%20Girolamo%20Savonarola%E2%80%94Religion%20and%20Politics%2C%201490-1498%20%282006%29_djvu.txt

  Savonarola remains an enigma, as controversial in our day as he was in his own. He was born in Ferrara in 1452, the grandson of a learned physician who helped him on his way to acquiring a master of arts degree at the University of Ferrara. At the age of twenty-three, however, he rejected the secular world to become a Dominican friar in the Observant monastery in Bologna, where St. Dominic himself had died and was buried. It was there that he acquired the deep learning reflected in his later sermons, as we can now see from the “Borromeo notebook,”... https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1npnwt

  Savonarola and Florence in the Renaissance https://youtu.be/YiCoMLjQ0bo?si=QUfTW56VO0atM-XA

  20. Girolamo Savonarola, firebrand of Florence https://youtu.be/i9R5pb1hu58?si=QGnOTfoGzlIivhwf

  Pope Leo: The death penalty is inadmissible https://www.indcatholicnews.com/news/54864 Apr 24th, 2026 Screenshot Source:  Vatican Media/USCCB Pope Leo XIV has offered his support for those advocating for the abolition of the death penalty in the United States and around the world and insisted on the importance of safeguarding human dignity. The Church affirms "that the dignity of the person is not lost even after very serious crimes are committed," Pope Leo XIV said in a video message released today, to those gathered at DePaul University in the United States marking the 15th anniversary of the abolition of the death penalty in the State of Illinois. Pope Leo said he was joining those present in celebrating this landmark decision made in 2011 and offered his "support to those who advocate for the abolition of the death penalty in the United States of America and around the world." "I pray that your efforts will lead to a greater acknowledgement of the dignit...

 Roman Catholic can we save all people Question: I can not believe God would condemn souls to damnation who never heard the Christian message. What does my Church say? Answer: The  Catechism of the Catholic Church : “Outside the Church there is no salvation” This affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church: Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience—those too may achieve eternal salvation. “Although in ways known to himself God can lead those who, through no fault of their own, are ignorant of the Gospel, to that faith without which it is impossible to please him, the Church still has the obligation and also the sacred right to evangelize all men” (CCC 847-848). Vatican II, Lumen Gentium : Those also can atta...

  What do Americans consider moral and what don’t they? A study examines the morality of 15 behaviors zenit.org /2026/03/27/what-do-americans-consider-moral-and-what-dont-they-a-study-examines-the-morality-of-15-behaviors 27 de marzo de 2026 (ZENIT News / Rome, 03.27.2026).- A sweeping new set of surveys suggests that the moral landscape of the United States is neither collapsing nor cohering—but fragmenting in complex and revealing ways. Far from embracing moral relativism across the board, Americans are drawing selective lines: permissive on many personal behaviors, sharply condemnatory on others, and deeply divided along political, religious, and generational fault lines. The data, drawn from two large-scale 2025 surveys conducted by the  Pew Research Center , paint a portrait of a society that has largely normalized practices once considered contentious, while still maintaining strong moral boundaries in specific areas—especially those touching on trust and fidelity. Permi...