A ‘plague’ comes before the fall: lessons from Roman history
By Colin Elliott | May 15, 2024
A ‘plague’ comes before the fall: lessons from Roman history - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (thebulletin.org)
The ruins of the Colosseum in Rome. Credit: Livioandronico2013. CC BY-SA 4.0.
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The Pax Romana—the 200-year “golden age” of the Roman Empire—was a marvel of diversity, connectivity, and unchallenged hegemony. By the middle of the second century AD, imperial Rome ruled territory across three different continents. Roughly one-quarter of the Earth’s population, some 60 million people, lived under Rome’s vast aegis, and the emperors of the age—most notably Marcus Aurelius—enjoyed the consent of those they governed. The Empire’s elites—witnessing the disciplined legions, widespread religiosity, cultural efflorescence, and dominant economy—likely expected their world order to endure forever.
In the year 166 AD, however, seemingly eternal Rome was caught completely off-guard as a …More

CNN identified several of the counter-protesters who caused chaos at a protest at UCLA recently. Kyung Lah reports.
Video: Violence on UCLA campus was linked to outsiders, CNN investigation finds | CNN

Giovanni di Benedetto (active c. 1350–1390) was a famous illuminator of manuscripts and painter of frescos. He was one of the masters of the studio attached to the court of the Visconti family which, during the Middle Ages, ruled over the Duchy of Milan (present-day Lombardy in northern Italy). The miniature that illustrates the cover of your May issue of Magnificat comes from a Missal-Book of Hours that he produced around 1385. It depicts the coming of the Spirit of Christ upon the world as a dove sending the rays of its light from the highest heaven.
Infunde amorem cordibus
This sort of image of the Holy Spirit, alone, flooding the world with its rays, was frequently used from the 13th century on, as a supplement to the depiction of Pentecost, especially in works of private devotion. Its purpose was to show that although the Holy Spirit was indeed sent to the apostles—on Pentecost—so that they and their successors might be the authentic witnesses of Jesus to the ends of the earth, …More

Author - Damien Murphy - TFP Student Action
On February 3rd, something truly terrible happened. Robbers broke into our Cavan base, stealing and vandalising. Thankfully our statue of Our Lady of Fatima was not harmed.
However, the robbers did smash several doors, stole safes, and broke filing cabinets. My colleague in Cavan immediately had the doors replaced in order to secure the property but we now have another problem...
Our base in Drogheda is also vulnerable to robbery. I need to quickly take measures to ensure that our base in Drogheda is also not robbed or vandalised. Cameras, doors, locks... I have a solid plan to ensure the security of the base.
Can you help us secure our premises? If you are able to help with a donation, we would be extremely grateful. Can you help us make our base REALLY secure?
Yes Damien, I will support you with a donation!
It's not just robbers either that I am concerned about.
Ireland is increasingly more hateful towards Catholics and any opposition to the …More

Colleges Warn Student Demonstrators: Enough
After years of tolerating unruly protests, some schools are starting to suspend and expel students, raising questions about where they should draw the line.
April 18, 2024
The 100-year-old annual honors convocation at the University of Michigan is typically a decorous affair, with a pipe organ accompanying golf-clap applause.
This year’s event was anything but. Protesters rose from their seats, and unfurled banners with “Free Palestine” written in red paint. They shouted, “You are funding genocide!”
Unable to continue with the ceremony, university officials cut it short, as hundreds of disappointed students and their parents stood up and walked out.
Two days after the honors convocation, the university’s president, Santa J. Ono, issued a stern rebuke: Enough.
“Like many of you, I am proud of our university’s history of protest,” he said. “But none of us should be proud of what happened on Sunday.” He announced that the school would draft a new …More

12 Gennaio 2024
Gaza: 10.000 bambini uccisi in quasi 100 giorni di guerra. Dal 7 ottobre è stato segnalato un numero record di gravi violazioni contro i bambini, tra cui la negazione dell'accesso a un'adeguata assistenza umanitaria all’intera popolazione infantile | Save the Children Italia
Più di 10.000 bambini sono stati uccisi dagli attacchi aerei e dalle operazioni di terra israeliane nella Striscia in quasi 100 giorni di violenza
Gaza: 10.000 bambini uccisi in 100 giorni di guerra (savethechildren.it)
secondo gli ultimi dati forniti dal Ministero della Sanità di Gaza, e altre migliaia risultano dispersi, presumibilmente sepolti sotto le macerie.
"Per ogni giorno senza un cessate il fuoco definitivo, sono stati uccisi in media 100 bambini. La situazione a Gaza è orrenda e rappresenta una piaga per tutta la nostra umanità”, ha dichiarato Jason Lee, direttore nazionale di Save the Children per i Territori palestinesi occupati.

Priesterbruderschaft St. Petrus - Sonstige
Zum Seminar für Brautleute und Ehepaare vom 21. – 25. Mai in Marienfried sind noch Plätze frei. Es richtet sich an alle, die ihre Ehe vertiefen oder sie von vornherein auf ein richtig gutes Fundament stellen wollen. Gerne gebe ich weitere Informationen.
Zu Christi Himmelfahrt, 9. Mai 2024, werden wir wieder eine feierliche hl. Messe in der ehem. Klosterkirche in Rheinau feiern. Auch zum Zweck weiterer Werbung lege ich eine Information in den Anhang.
Mein Mitbruder P. Altmann pilgert vom 10. – 17. Mai nach Fatima und hätte dazu noch Plätze frei: JulianAltmann@gmx.de
Für die Priesterexerzitien vom 26. – 31. August in Wigratzbad sollte noch geworben werden. Sprechen Sie gerne Ihre Priester darauf an!

Last week, Susanne DeWitt, an 89-year-old Holocaust survivor who later became a molecular biologist, spoke before the Berkeley, Calif., City Council to request a Holocaust Remembrance Day proclamation. After taking note of a “horrendous surge in antisemitism,” she was then heckled and shouted down by protesters at the meeting when she mentioned the massacre and rapes in Israel of Oct. 7.
At the same meeting, a woman testified that her 7-year-old Jewish son heard “a group of kids at his school say, ‘Jews are stupid.’” She, too, was heckled: “Zionists are stupider,” a protester said. At the same meeting, others yelled, “cowards, go chase the money, you money suckers” and “you are traitors to this country, you are spies for Israel.”
Protest movements have an honorable place in American history. But not all of them. Not the neo-Nazis who marched in Chicago in 1978. Not the white supremacists who chanted “Jews will not replace us” at their Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., …More

“If I could live my life over, I would like to be nothing but a very little child constantly giving my hand to the Child Jesus.” These were the last words of Bossuet (1627–1704) on his deathbed. Céline Martin (Sister Genevieve of the Holy Face) quoted these ultima verba of the Eagle of Meaux as the most beautiful formulation of the “little way” of her Sister Thérèse, the way of childhood and self-abandonment.
In this spirit, on the cover of this issue of Magnificat for Holy Week, a great painter and contemporary of Bossuet, Mathieu Le Nain (1607–1677), shows the point to which the Child Jesus could lead us by the hand, if only we consent to followed him.
Contemplating the arma Christi
The dusky atmosphere, reinforced by the funereal, dark purple curtain that unveils the scene, gives the picture a dramatic dimension. However, at the highest point of the dark sky, a porthole of golden light comes to illuminate a handsome child dressed in a white tunic that is too big for him, as though …More

Few know better than the Taliban what a relentless foe the Islamic State’s affiliate in Afghanistan can be.
Much of the West considers the Taliban, which reclaimed power in the country in 2021, to be an extremist Islamic movement. But the Islamic State Khorasan, the affiliate that has been linked by U.S. officials to a terrorist attack in suburban Moscow on Friday, has slammed the Taliban government, calling the group’s version of Islamic rule insufficiently hard-line.
The Islamic State Khorasan, or ISIS-K, is one of the last significant antagonists that the Taliban face in Afghanistan. It has carried out a bloody drumbeat of attacks throughout the country in recent years, seeking to use the violence to undermine the Taliban’s relationships with regional allies and to portray the government as incapable of providing security in Afghanistan, experts say.
In the months after the Taliban seized power, ISIS-K carried out near daily attacks on their soldiers at roadside checkpoints and in …More

....Migrants are hesitant to talk about their work or where they buy the candy. New York Magazine reported last year that some get it from wholesalers or cheap stores.
Monica Sibri, an Ecuadorean immigrant who advocates for migrants in New York, listed a number of reasons that she said newly arrived migrants had given her for bringing their children with them to sell on the trains.
Some, she said, wrongly assume that their children can miss a semester of school and catch up easily. Some face delays getting their children enrolled because of paperwork and vaccination records. Some, she said, sold candy with their children back in Ecuador and are simply doing the same thing here as a temporary measure.
“The families are not saying they don’t want to put their kids in school,” Ms. Sibri said. “What they’re saying is they haven’t figured out the paperwork that they need to be able to put them in, and some of them aren’t trusting the system.”
Ms. Sibri and other advocates are holding sessions …More

The first sea shipment of humanitarian relief to Gaza — food aid from the World Central Kitchen aid agency — could depart the Mediterranean island nation of Cyprus within days, European Union officials said.
Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Union’s executive body, described the shipment as a “pilot project” for a maritime aid corridor to Gaza, but offered few details of how it would take place or where in the territory it would be delivered.
The renowned Spanish chef José Andrés, the founder of the World Central Kitchen, posted images on social media on Friday showing pallets being loaded onto a vessel stamped with the names of his group and Open Arms, a Spanish aid group. He said that the plans for the shipment were “in the final stages,” and that it would “land in the beaches of Gaza with 200 pallets.” It remained unclear how the aid, if it reached Gaza, would be collected or distributed.
Since October, organizers and Palestinian cooks working with the World …More

(OSV News) — Two days after St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City was filled with mourners for an irreverent “homecoming” funeral for a prominent activist who identified as transgender, the cathedral’s rector acknowledged that many people “have let us know they share our outrage over the scandalous behavior” that took place at the service.
Father Enrique Salvo said in a Feb. 17 statement that at New York Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan’s “directive, we have offered an appropriate Mass of Reparation.”
“The Cathedral only knew that family and friends were requesting a funeral Mass for a Catholic, and had no idea our welcome and prayer would be degraded in such a sacrilegious and deceptive way,” Father Salvo said.
Hundreds were on hand Feb. 15 to commemorate actress and author Cecilia Gentili, an Argentine native who had battled sexual abuse from age six and trafficking, as well as homelessness, heroin addiction and incarceration. The 52-year-old died Feb. 6 of unnamed causes at the Brooklyn …More

Published Feb. 15, 2024Updated Feb. 16, 2024
The pews of St. Patrick’s Cathedral were packed on Thursday for an event with no likely precedent in Catholic history: the funeral of Cecilia Gentili, a transgender activist and actress, former sex worker and self-professed atheist whose memorial functioned as both a celebration of her life and an exuberant piece of political theater.
Over 1,000 mourners, several hundred of whom were transgender, arrived in daring outfits — glittery miniskirts and halter tops, fishnet stockings, sumptuous fur stoles and at least one boa sewed from what appeared to be $100 bills. Mass cards and a picture near the altar showed a haloed Ms. Gentili surrounded by the Spanish words for “transvestite,” “whore,” “blessed” and “mother” above the text of Psalm 25.
That St. Patrick’s Cathedral would host the funeral for a high-profile transgender activist, who was well known for her advocacy on behalf of sex workers, transgender people and people living with H.I.V., …More

Before dawn, Paolo Benanti climbed to the bell tower of his 16th-century monastery, admired the sunrise over the ruins of the Roman forum and reflected on a world in flux.
“It was a wonderful meditation on what is going on inside,” he said, stepping onto the street in his friar robe. “And outside too.”
There is a lot is going on for Father Benanti, who, as both the Vatican’s and the Italian government’s go-to artificial intelligence ethicist, spends his days thinking about the Holy Ghost and the ghosts in the machines.
In recent weeks, the ethics professor, ordained priest and self-proclaimed geek has joined Bill Gates at a meeting with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, presided over a commission seeking to save Italian media from ChatGPT bylines and general A.I. oblivion, and met with Vatican officials to further Pope Francis’s aim of protecting the vulnerable from the coming technological storm.
At a conference organized by the ancient Knights of Malta order, he told a crowd of ambassadors …More