Fr. Robert Barron on Why Catholics Leave the Church

Fr. Robert Barron discusses a report on why Catholics leave the church:

Saint Joan of Arc

Today is the feast day of St. Joan of Arc:

An interview with Peter Kreeft on atheism and other topics

Subjects covered include atheism, transhumanism, and Dr. Kreeft's novel An Ocean Full of Angels.

"The Journey Home" Roundtable Discussion on Sacred Tradition

Marcus Grodi, Roy Schoeman, Mark Shea, Scott Hahn, and Fr. Ray Ryland discuss the role of Sacred Tradition in the Catholic faith:



I found this video some time ago on Mark Shea's blog, and I will quote his minor correction to the video's captioning: "I'm not a former Baptist. I'm a former garage band pagan from Wayne's World who became a former non-denominational Evangelical by finally becoming a Catholic."

Delay in comment moderation

This is just a quick note to let everyone know that I will be delayed in moderating comments over the next week. So if you submit a comment on any post here next week, please be patient and don't be surprised if it takes several days to appear.

Fr. Robert Barron on Misreading Genesis

This seems like a good video to post today, because I just finished reading the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible edition of the book of Genesis. It had been many years since I last read the book of Genesis. I found the Biblical text along with the excellent study notes to be very enlightening, and I highly recommend the Ignatius study Bible series.

Video from the Archdiocese of Washington on the Religious Freedom Lawsuit

This video from the Archdiocese of Washington explains the archdiocese's participation in the recent wave of lawsuits filed by Catholic organizations against the U.S. government over the HHS contraception mandate:



I thought that the video was great, except that she focused on the rights of religious organizations only. I would have liked to see some mention also of the rights of Catholic laymen and laywomen who own secular businesses, who also should be not be required to pay for products and procedures that they find morally objectionable.

(Found on the Archdiocese of Washington blog.)

Introducing the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist

Evangelizing the Culture

Eduardo J. Echeverria, STL, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy at Sacred Heart Major Seminary, gives a talk on "Evangelizing the Culture."

Peter Kreeft on Seeking and Responding to Truth

Peter Kreeft speaks at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Michigan in January 2010 (not to be confused with Aquinas College in Nashville, Tennessee, or Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, California).

Does the world need more children? (or "way too many of you, just enough of me")

Note: I was writing a post about population growth/decline and related issues on a public message board that I frequent. After reading through what I had written, I thought, "why not present it as a post on my blog as well?" I normally post only videos here, but I hope my readers (viewers?) will not mind if I interrupt the normal flow of videos with a more traditional blog post. Here is the post, with some slight edits to make it fit better in a blog setting:

Before I get to my main point, let me explain that the second part of the title of this post pokes a bit of fun at the attitude of some who promote population control -- particularly the idea that contraception, sterilization, and abortion should be pushed heavily on poor people in third world countries.

On a message board that I post on, I had mentioned my opinion that the world needs more children. Another participant expressed skepticism of this idea, so I tried to explain why I think that the world does need more children.

The actress who left Elvis and Hollywood to become a cloistered nun

I had read about Dolores Hart -- a former actress who made films with Elvis Presley and other stars, who left Hollywood to become a nun. But I only recently discovered the HBO documentary film about her, called God is the Bigger Elvis. It was posted on the Aggie Catholics blog, but the video has since been pulled from YouTube (possibly for a copyright violation).

I highly recommend watching the documentary if you can find it on TV or by other legitimate means. Since I can't post the documentary itself, here are several other videos featuring Mother Dolores Hart. The first one is a trailer for the documentary:



The second video is Mother Dolores being interviewed by Raymond Arroyo on The World Over Live on EWTN. (The segment with Mother Dolores starts at 28:44.)



And the third video is Mother Dolores speaking at Franciscan University of Steubenville on "Jesus the Actor":

Fr. Robert Barron on Effective Evangelization

Here is another video about evangelization, to follow up from yesterday's video.

As usual, Fr. Barron makes an excellent point, this time on how to evangelize effectively:



(Found at Aggie Catholics.)

Evangelization

Here is a good reflection and call to action regarding evangelization, from the Archdiocese of St. Louis:

Another HHS Contraception Mandate Video

Here is another good video on the HHS contraception mandate, which I found on the Bad Catholic blog:

Robert Spencer on Islam's View of Christianity

Vocation Video from the Bishops of Spain

You can read more about the video on EWTN News or NPR. If you can read Spanish, you may also want to check out the vocations website that is promoted by the video.

John Allen on the world-wide war on Christians

(Found on Fr. Z's blog.)

Simply Catholic

(Found on the Archdiocese of Washington blog.)