Pornchai Moontri: The Duty of a Knight - To Dream the Impossible Dream
. . . Editor's Note: The following is a guest post written by Pornchai Moontri. . . . I was a teenager when I went to prison. Over the years, I was sent back to solitary confinement over and over, for up to three-and-a-half years at a time, because I was so hostile. The longer I was there each time, the more inhuman I felt and became. Living for years on end in solitary confinement joined with the guilt I felt for the life I took during a struggle when I was 18 years old. So I just gave up on myself as a human being. I sank to the very bottom of the prison I was in, and stayed there. Then in the spring of 2005, after almost 14 years in and out of solitary confinement, I was told that I was to be shipped to another prison in another state. I sat for 10 months alone in my cell wondering about whatever hell was coming next, and I told myself I didn't care what comes next. Then one day, guards in riot gear came and chained me up. . . .
Faith Trumps Relativism: Pope Benedict XVI at World Youth Day
. . . "The answer comes down to this," she wrote: "1960s-style liberation - from moral codes, family obligations, religious commitments - has betrayed us . . . So our baby-boomer parents partied hard, yet in so many cases left us only the hangover: heartbreak, addiction and broken homes, rising rates of teenage depression and suicide. The anything-goes religion of the late 20th century cannot prevent, or even explain these consequences. For Anna Williams, the solution for Catholic youth in the first decade of the 21st century has been evident. The solution is the great adventure of orthodoxy evident in The Catholic Spring seen in young Catholics throughout the Western world - including In our seminaries. They reject the assumptions Of the 1960s in favor of the creeds, practices, and moral codes that defined religious life in the Catholic Church for centuries. Why, Anna Williams asks, are these million young Catholics at World Youth Day so happy to be Catholic? "Because they've recognized that the Church's teachings are, in fact, true, and because freedom lies in self-sacrifice." . . .
The Beatification of Pope John Paul II: When the Wall Fell
. . . In his 1948 book, The Gathering Storm, Winston Churchill wrote of a 1935 proposal to Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin suggesting that the Soviet Union should not suppress Catholicism, but should rather encourage it in order to gain favor with the Pope. Stalin famously responded, "The Pope? How many divisions has he got?" Ironically, that conversation took place on May 13, 1935, forty-six years to the day before the Soviet Union tried to kill Pope John Paul II because he was the most feared man in all of Europe. The Pope survived. Stalin's successors in the Soviet Union learned the answer to his question far too late for their own survival. Karol Wojtyla has earned the place in history summarized by the title given to him by Father Richard John Neuhaus and other admirers. He helped rid the world of Satan's most earthly Evil Empire. Without doubt, he was - and is - Pope John Paul the Great. . . .