Kozak's Korner - Recommended Reading, Etc.

The Way of Serenity by Jonathan Morris

The Didache Bible Ignatius Press

The Joy of the Gospel by Pope Francis

The Sidewalk Chronicles - For info on this movie go to  http://www.catholicmediaworks.org/sidewalk_chronicles

ZENIT - The World Seen From Rome: Being Good Without God

Being Good Without God

Religion's Contribution to Society

By Father John Flynn, LC

ROME, February 01, 2015 (Zenit.org) - In an essay published last December Peter Hitchens, brother of the late Christopher Hitchens, a renowned atheist, reflected on the importance of religion.

In his essay, published December 3 on the Website of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Hitchens acknowledged that atheists can arrive at some moral principles, such as the Golden Rule, or doing to others what you would like done to you, but he also maintained that Christianity goes a lot further.

“Christianity requires much more, and above all does not expect to see charity returned. To love thy neighbour as thyself is a far greater and more complicated obligation, requiring a positive effort to seek the good of others, often in secret, sometimes at great cost and always without reward,” he said.

He rejected the affirmation made by his brother that the injunction to love thy neighbor as being too extreme, and pointed to the example given by mothers, doctors and nurses as showing that people are indeed prepared to make big sacrifices for others.

For the rest of this article go to:

http://www.zenit.org/en/articles/being-good-without-god--2?utm_campaign=dailyhtml&utm_medium=email&utm_source=dispatch

Stopping an Abortion That's Already Started

Walk for Life Speaker Explains How She Gave Birth to Healthy Boy After RU-486

By Kathleen Naab

SAN FRANCISCO, January 21, 2015 (Zenit.org) - This Saturday, thousands of pro-lifers will converge on San Francisco for the annual Walk for Life West Coast. One of the speakers at the event is Rebekah Buell, a young mother who planned to end the life of her son with the abortion pills RU-486.

ZENIT spoke with Buell about her choice to use chemical abortion and what she did when she changed her mind.

ZENIT: Tell us your experience of abortion.

Buell: I never thought I would be an abortion consumer, yet at 18 years old I found myself pregnant for the second time. The news of this pregnancy crushed me; here I was in my first year of college, in the midst of a divorce, and already a mother to an 11-month-old little boy. I thought being a single mother to two children would be completely impossible.

In order to not further disappoint my family, and to not further complicate my education, I made the decision to have a chemical abortion, which is a two-step process. On March 13, 2013, I walked into a Planned Parenthood clinic, sat down, and swallowed the RU-486 abortion pill, the first pill that is designed to cause the death of the unborn child. I was then sent home with the second set of pills (Misoprostol) and instructed to take them 24 hours later, as that is what causes the “fetus” to be expelled.

For the rest of this article go to:

http://www.zenit.org/en/articles/stopping-an-abortion-that-s-already-started?utm_campaign=dailyhtml&utm_medium=email&utm_source=dispatch
 

 

US Supreme Court to Decide on Same-Sex 'Marriage' from Zenit.org

Archbishop: "It's hard to imagine how the essential meaning of marriage ... consistent with every society throughout all of human history, could be declared illegal"

WASHINGTON, D.C., January 17, 2015 (Zenit.org) - The U. S. Supreme Court granted a request Friday to review the November 2014 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upholding the constitutionality of marriage laws in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee.

The decision regarding same-sex marriage is expected in June or July.

Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage, responded to the Court’s action, saying, “A decision by the Supreme Court on whether a state may define marriage as the union of one man and one woman may be the most significant Court decision since the Court’s tragic 1973 Roe v. Wade decision making abortion a constitutional right.”

The anniversary of that decision is next week, Jan. 22, and will be marked by the annual March for Life in D.C., as well as the West Coast Walk for Life.

Pope Francis just today spoke against a redefinition of marriage. At a meeting with families in Manila, he said: "While all too many people live in dire poverty, others are caught up in materialism and lifestyles which are destructive of family life and the most basic demands of Christian morality. This is the ideological colonization. The family is also threatened by growing efforts on the part of some to redefine the very institution of marriage, by relativism, by the culture of the ephemeral, by a lack of openness to life."

For the rest of this article go to: http://www.zenit.org/en/articles/us-supreme-court-to-decide-on-same-sex-marriage?utmcampaign=dailyhtml&utmmedium=email&utm_source=dispatch

 

Marriage: A Unique Relationship

By Father John Flynn, LC

ROME, December 14, 2014 (Zenit.org)

In May next year Ireland will vote on a proposal to legalize same-sex marriage. The bishops of Ireland have recently published a pastoral statement which said that “to redefine the nature of marriage would be to undermine it as the fundamental building block of our society.”

The statement was published in English, Irish and Polish and included a couple of prayers for marriage and the family.  

The bishops started their message by insisting that marriage is a unique form of love between a man and a woman that has special benefits for society. It is, they affirmed, “the single most important institution in any society.”

Re-defining marriage would undermine it and damage society, the statement argued. The understanding that marriage is between a man and a woman is present in all cultures and therefore maintaining this definition is not an act of discrimination or exclusion.

The Church, the statement pointed out in quoting the Catechism, teaches that persons who are homosexual must be treated with sensitivity, compassion and respect.

“It is not lacking in sensitivity or respect for people who are homosexual, however, to point out that same sex relationships are fundamentally and objectively different from opposite sex relationships and that society values the complementary roles of mothers and fathers in the generation and upbringing of children,” they explained.

The bishops also pointed out that children have a natural right to both a father and a mother and that this situation provides them with the best circumstances in which to be brought up. “It is therefore deserving of special recognition and promotion by the State,” they concluded.

Full Article here:

http://www.zenit.org/en/articles/marriage-a-unique-relationship?utm_campaign=dailyhtml&utm_medium=email&utm_source=dispatch