Bill W

[Students For Liberty @sfliberty]

In July 1985, over a billion people watched Live Aid.

Months earlier, Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie had written "We Are the World." All of it was a response to a famine in Ethiopia.

Almost nobody remembers who actually caused the famine. 🧵

[Michael Haynes 🇻🇦 @MLJHaynes]

NEW: Over a thousand Catholics are processing with the Eucharist in a Rosary procession through Derry

Comes as part of a global initiative, with 400 parishes & 50 Marian shrines holding prayers in unison

🎥@MLJHaynes

[Critically Thinking & Drinking 🧐 🥃🧉🍸🍹🤪 @TheCriticalDri1]

Very few times have I EVER heard the Star Spangled Banner sang this impressively. Bravo chads 🥃

[Phil J @PhilJC2]

This is quite the vox pop.

[Catholics for Catholics 🇺🇲 @CforCatholics]

WATCH: US Bishops dedicate and consecration the nation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus!

[Mike Netter @nettermike]

This article was written by a 26 yr old college student by the name of Alyssa Ahlgren, who's in grad school for her MBA. What a GREAT perspecitve..👍🏽

My Generation Is Blind to the Prosperity Around Us!
I'm sitting in a small coffee shop near Nokomis (Florida) trying to think of what to write about. I scroll through my newsfeed on my phone looking at the latest headlines of presidential candidates calling for policies to "fix" the so-called injustices of capitalism. I put my phone down and continue to look around.

I see people talking freely, working on their MacBook's, ordering food they get in an instant, seeing cars go by outside, and it dawned on me. We live in the most privileged time in the most prosperous nation and we've become completely blind to it.

Vehicles, food, technology, freedom to associate with whom we choose.These things are so ingrained in our American way of life we don't give them a second thought.

We are so well off here in the United States that our poverty line begins 31 times above the global average. Thirty One Times!!!

Virtually no one in the United States is considered poor by global standards. Yet, in a time where we can order a product off Amazon with one click and have it at our doorstep the next day, we are unappreciative, unsatisfied, and ungrateful. ??

Our unappreciation is evident as the popularity of socialist policies among my generation continues to grow. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently said to Newsweek talking about the millennial generation, "An entire generation, which is now becoming one of the largest electorates in America, came of age and never saw American prosperity."

Never saw American prosperity! Let that sink in.

When I first read that statement, I thought to myself, that was quite literally the most entitled and factually illiterate thing I've ever heard in my 26 years on this earth. Many young people agree with her, which is entirely misguided.

My generation is being indoctrinated by a mainstream narrative to actually believe we have never seen prosperity. I know this first hand, I went to college, let's just say I didn't have the popular opinion, but I digress.

Why then, with all of the overwhelming evidence around us, evidence that I can even see sitting at a coffee shop, do we not view this as prosperity? We have people who are dying to get into our country.

People around the world destitute and truly impoverished. Yet, we have a young generation convinced they've never seen prosperity, and as a result, we elect some politicians who are dead set on taking steps towards abolishing capitalism.

Why? The answer is this,?? my generation has only seen prosperity. We have no contrast. We didn't live in the great depression, or live through two world wars, the Korean War, The Vietnam War or we didn't see the rise and fall of socialism and communism.

We don't know what it's like to live without the internet, without cars, without smartphones. We don't have a lack of prosperity problem. We have an entitlement problem, an ungratefulness problem, and it's spreading like a plague."

[Sophia Rosa @SophiaRose95749]

Just watched this wild Matt Walsh interview and I’m still cracking up This Republican councilman from Indiana, Ryan Webb, decides to “come out” as a trans lesbian woman of color. Same dude, no changes to his appearance, keeps the male pronouns, but suddenly he’s the first “LGBTQ+ woman of color” on the Delaware County Council. He sits down with Matt Walsh, deadpan the whole time, explaining how brave it was to come out of three closets at once. The trans community? They lost their minds and rejected him immediately. Turns out identity politics has gatekeepers after all. The hypocrisy is next-level. For years we’ve been told gender and race are just “social constructs” and anyone can identify as anything. But the second a straight white Republican guy tries to play the game by their own rules? Nope. Not valid. You don’t get to join the club.This whole thing perfectly exposes how ridiculous the whole ideology has become. It’s not about genuine dysphoria or lived experience anymore it’s a power game with ever-shifting rules that only apply when it’s convenient. Ryan didn’t change a thing physically. He just said the magic words and watched the left eat itself. Absolute satire gold. If this doesn’t wake people up to how insane things have gotten, I don’t know what will. Watch the full thing you won’t regret it. Link in the reel or search Matt Walsh Ryan Webb. What do you think is this the peak of clown world or are we still climbing? #MattWalsh #IdentityPolitics

[Bishop Robert Barron @BishopBarron]

Three cheers for Pope Leo's comments regarding the Christian foundations of Europe and the defense of the unborn. Echoing the sentiments of Pope Benedict XVI, Leo reminded his audience that the essential structures of European society and Europe's commitment to human rights are unthinkable apart from Christianity. And speaking before a hard-left Spanish Parliament, the Pope presented an admirably consistent ethic of life, defending migrants, to be sure, but also insisting that no society which "casts into the shadows" the unborn can be called truly just. With bracing clarity, he insisted, "Every human life must be recognized and safeguarded from conception to its natural end, in every circumstance of its existence." And he concluded that "the moral greatness of a nation" is manifested in this principle. That he has been received so warmly in Spain I take to be an encouraging sign that the people of that country, especially the youth, have finally had it with a soul-flattening secularist ideology.

[GoodNews Hub @_Achetypal]

Why did God make people GAYS?

[Mason-Dixon Latin Mass Society @MDLatinMass]

An 18-line Latin prayer proclaiming Christ as the Son of God, invoking Saint Titus, containing the words of Saint Paul, and carried by a man well over a hundred years before the first Bible ever existed, is the most Catholic thing you'll see today.

[James Lucas @JamesLucasIT]

The most famous religious song in the world was not written as a prayer.

You have heard Ave Maria a thousand times. Everyone assumes Franz Schubert wrote it as a setting of the ancient Catholic prayer, the Hail Mary, but he did not...

This melody was never composed for the Latin prayer at all.

In 1825, at the age of 28, Schubert was working his way through a German translation of a poem by the Scottish writer Sir Walter Scott, The Lady of the Lake. It is an adventure story, set among the warring clans of the sixteenth-century Scottish Highlands. In one scene, the heroine, a young woman named Ellen Douglas, is in hiding with her father in a mountain cave. Alone and afraid, she sings a song asking the Virgin Mary for help.

Schubert set seven songs from that poem to music. Three of them were sung by Ellen, and this was the last of her three. He called it, plainly, Ellens dritter Gesang — 'Ellen's Third Song.' Its opening words were the two she would naturally cry out in her prayer: Ave Maria.

That was all it took...

The melody was so achingly beautiful that, in the years that followed, people began fitting the full Latin text of the actual Hail Mary prayer over his music. The fit was so natural, and the result so moving, that in the popular imagination the song became the prayer.

Schubert died in 1828, at thirty-one. He had written more than six hundred songs, and much of his work was still unpublished and little known beyond a small circle in Vienna.

He never knew that one melody, written for a fictional girl in a cave, would become one of the most beloved pieces of music in human history.

It is a strange and beautiful thing. The most famous prayer ever set to music began as a song about someone who was simply afraid, and reaching, in the dark, for something to hold onto. Perhaps that is exactly why it has never stopped moving people. It was a real prayer before it was ever a holy one...

If you enjoyed this, I write a weekly newsletter read by over 50,000 people who love rediscovering the beauty of the past. You can join us here:

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If you'd like to support my work, a paid subscription is what makes it possible.

[Paulina Guzik @Guzik_Paulina]

In what will certainly become one of the most fundamental speeches of his pontificate, Pope Leo XIV told the Spanish Parliament, before receiving a 7-minute standing ovation: "The defense of human life is neither a partisan issue nor a confessional interest: it is a goal of civilization."

"If life ceases to be recognized as a fundamental value, what future can our societies have?" he said, speaking to a gathering of politicians, many supporting abortion and euthanasia.

"Can a community that casts into the shadows the unborn child, the elderly, the sick, those who suffer in silence, or those who depend entirely on the care of others be called fully just?"

"Every human life must be recognized and safeguarded from conception to its natural end, in every circumstance of its existence. When this certainty is obscured, the most vulnerable are the first victims, and the law loses its deepest meaning: to serve and protect every person."

"For this reason, the moral greatness of a nation is manifested, above all, in its capacity to accompany, protect and love those lives that are most fragile," he said, repeating what John Paul II emphasized decades ago.

Starting his speech he commented that Church's is the "message offered in the spirit of service to the human person."

"When the Church addresses anything concerning public life, she does so while respecting the proper mission of institutions and the legitimate responsibility of those who have received the mandate to legislate," Pope Leo said, emphasizing "the Church offers a reflection born of the desire to serve the common good."

He hailed Spain as country that "has known how to view the human being as more than just a cog in the social, economic or political order. It has recognized the human being as a creature open to truth, endowed with freedom, and driven by a thirst for eternity that no temporal reality can quench -- in a word, as someone whose dignity takes precedence over all utility and to whose service legislative action is subject."

He said it was Catholic orders that "helped to shape a legal and moral consciousness capable of remembering that authority always entails responsibility and that every human being must be recognized as a subject of rights and duties."

"That aspiration continues to resonate today: that dignity, justice and the common good should be the measure of social relations, both at the national and international levels."

Referring multiple times to his "Magnifica Humanitas" encyclical, he said: "When the common good ceases to be a shared horizon, public action runs the risk of fragmenting into partial interests, incapable of safeguarding what belongs to all."

"In this context, the family — the primary human reality and the natural foundation of the community — takes on particular importance," Pope Leo said.

"The family will always be the first school of humanity, where one learns, before anywhere else, the basic grammar of living together: welcoming life, caring for others, forgiving, serving and belonging."

"Human life can never be treated as a commodity," the pope said.

"A law does not attain its true greatness merely by having been formally enacted; it attains it when, in addition to being valid in form, it can stand before the dignity of the person and pass that test without shame."

"I invite you, then, to lift your gaze to the world around you, not to turn away from reality, but to remember that every decision by public authorities affects real people, especially those who have less power to make their voices heard."

"The expanse of one’s vision consists precisely in looking more deeply at what is at stake in every public decision. This is why, alongside technical solutions and legal reforms, a moral renewal is also needed."

Video: Vatican Media
(fragment of speech follows)

[Isabel Brown @theisabelb]

It's a beautiful thing to love your dog. I adore mine.

But in WHAT WORLD do we say you're a good person for doing anything possible to keep your dog alive with no kidneys facing Stage IV terminal cancer... while simultaneously you instantly decide to brutally kill your innocent baby in the womb because they *might* be facing a Down Syndrome diagnosis?

This is not compassion.

This is eugenics. Plain and simple.

[Ken LaCorte @KenLaCorte]

What we got wrong about weed.

Growing up, they told me a few puffs would ruin my life. Then, for decades, it was essentially considered a harmless "medicine" with few side effects. Now, scientists see some dangers.

So really, how dangerous is marijuana? Here's what I learned ...

Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction
1:12 - How We Got Here
6:01 - The Evolving Science
11:57 - The Gaps in the Science
15:12 - Putting It In Perspective

[Lila Rose @LilaGraceRose]

In a world that destroys children with Down syndrome, listen to this brave girl:

“You can try to kill off everyone with Down syndrome by using abortion, but you won’t be any closer to a perfect society. You will just be closer to a cruel, heartless one."  

Charlotte Helene Fien speaks before the United Nations

[Bishop Robert Barron @BishopBarron]

The horror film “Obsession” is a surprise hit at the box office this summer. Made for around one million dollars, it has already grossed over a hundred and fifty million. But it's not only a financial success; it's also a spiritually quite interesting film. What drives the plot is a young man's ardent desire to be loved by the woman whom he loves. Seeking a gift for Nikki in an occult store, Bear finds a device that advertises itself as “One Wish Willow.” If you break the stick and make a wish, it will come true. In his desperation, he follows the instructions, and it works like a charm. The previously diffident Nikki becomes totally devoted to the delighted Bear. All his dreams, it seems, have come true. Then things go, shall we say, south. I won't spoil any more of the plot. Suffice it to say that Nikki proceeds to devour the young man and push him toward despair.

Throughout this film, I kept thinking of Oscar Wilde's famous line: “the only thing worse than not getting what you want is getting what you want.” The spiritual issue here is one that the masters have recognized for centuries and one that stands at the very heart of Biblical revelation: if you tie your deepest desire to anything or anyone other than God, you will find, not satisfaction, but destruction. This is the moral teaching behind the great Shema prayer: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is Lord alone.” Jesus reiterates this when he says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and all your strength.” The psalmist affirms it when he sings, “Only in God will my soul be at rest.”

During the rite of Confirmation, I ask the young people a series of questions, the first of which is “do you renounce Satan and all his works and empty promises?” Up and down the ages, Satan has made the same empty promise: I will give you something less than God and it will make you happy. In point of fact, it will ruin you, and the more you seek to acquire it, the unhappier you will become. What becomes clear in the course of “Obsession” is that the owners of the occult shop where Bear bought the fateful wish-willow are in fact involved with very dark spiritual powers. In my conversations with exorcists, I hear over and over again that those who get ensnared by the devil commence by dabbling in the occult.

“Obsession” is a good horror movie. If you like the genre, and you're not too squeamish, go see it. For it won't just scare you; it will offer some important spiritual truths.

[Ojike Uzoma @Xtopher_Uzo]

Catholics, this is a very dangerous sound. Demons hate it.

It's the St Benedict exorcism prayer.

[Bill W @billweh]

@redsteeze Would somebody please update Uncle Bernie's note cards? Apparently he's been reading the same cards for the last 33 years and his handlers haven't noticed.

[RosarySon @SkyVirginSon]

THE CHURCH FATHER WHO WROTE THIS IN 107 AD AND IT SILENCES EVERY PROTESTANT ARGUMENT

St. Ignatius of Antioch was a student of the Apostle John. He was arrested and sent to Rome to be eaten by lions.

On the way, he wrote seven letters. In 107 AD, within living memory of the Apostles, he wrote:

“Where the bishop is, there let the multitude of believers be; even as where Jesus is, there is the Catholic Church.” (Letter to the Smyrnaeans, 8:2)

This is the first recorded use of the term “Catholic Church” and it comes from a man who personally knew the Apostle who leaned on Jesus’ chest at the Last Supper.

He also wrote:

“Take note of those who hold heterodox opinions… They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ.”

Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The Catholic Church by name. Obedience to bishops in apostolic succession.

107 AD. Not the Council of Trent. Not the Middle Ages.

The next time someone tells you the Catholic Church invented these doctrines centuries later, show them Ignatius.

He wrote this on the way to die for it.

Who will share this?

[Bill W @billweh]

I recommend you visit this link: https://t.co/08xk1I5D8D