The ongoing 40 Days for Life campaign in Alaska and around the world runs through Nov. 2. The international 40-day prayer vigils take place each fall and spring with pro-life advocates gathered outside abortion facilities to peacefully stand vigil, pray for unborn babies and help mothers choose life for their children.
One of the leading voices in the modern version of the pro-life movement will be in Alaska next month to speak at two banquets held by Alaska Right to Life. Co-founder of the international 40 Days for Life prayer vigils, Shawn Carney, will deliver the keynote address at two gatherings, one on Thursday, Oct. 2, and another on Saturday, Oct. 4.
For 500 years, since the rupture of Christian history by the Protestant Reformation, Catholics and Protestants have been on opposite sides of a theological battlefield. Now they are joining arms on some of society’s greatest moral debates — abortion, euthanasia, same-sex marriage, to name a few. “While they were carrying on these [theological] battles, just a few decades ago, they found out that…the whole social and moral scene had collapsed,” Catholic attorney Bob Flint of Anchorage told the Catholic Anchor in an interview. “The world changed,” he said.
Pope Francis understands the crisis of marriage culture in its multiple dimensions, just as he understands that the family, which begins in marriage, is a troubled institution in the post-modern world; that’s why he’s summoned two Synods on the topic of the family. And that’s why the Synod, fully aware of the gravity of the situation, should begin, continue and end on a positive note, offering the world a pearl of great price: the Christian understanding and experience of marriage.
Joyce and Karl Lund have spent their lives living out a passion for education and a commitment to doing things together. So it’s probably no surprise that after “retiring” from over 80 years, collectively, in the world of public education, they opted out of an opportunity for adventure in Panama, and accepted instead the invitation to help launch Our Lady of the Valley Catholic School in Wasilla.
Father Tom Lilly recently completed an ancient pilgrimage path, hiking the narrow footpaths, farm trails, cobbled streets and byways of Spain. The pastor of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in Anchorage completed his journey to the historic cathedral that houses the relics of Saint James the Apostle. Known as Santiago de Compostela, the church has been a prominent place of Catholic pilgrimage since the Middle Ages.
Making Sense of Bioethics A June 2014 article in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), written by researchers from the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institutes of Health, points out that marijuana is not the harmless drug that many imagine. Rather, it is associated with “substantial adverse effects, some of which…
We would, after school, throw rocks on his tin roof until he would come out and yell at us. He was the boogie man of the neighborhood and we were all scared of this strange man. One day on the way to church my dad saw him alongside of the road. To my horror he stopped the car and offered him a ride.
More than 400 Catholic school students have filled the hallways, classrooms and chapels of the five schools located in the Anchorage Archdiocese. With the start of the new academic year, educators are offering a variety of options to Alaskan parents seeking to provide their children a faith-based educational alternative to public schools.
In his recent homily the pope posed a stark question: “When I give alms, do I drop the coin without touching the hand (of the poor person, beggar)? And if by chance I do touch it, do I immediately withdraw it?”
Catholic charity is not a matter of mere correct belief — it’s touching the flesh of the poor and thereby loving the Body of Christ.