John McGarrity

Husband, father, deacon; trying to make the world just a little bit better. Fan of the RedSox, Dolphins and Spurs.

[John McGarrity @dcngar6311]

I have read many of these articles & struggled. Struggled from the perspective of a man of faith & a father of a severely handicapped son. How do I tell people my life was forever changed / derailed by Sean’s birth?

How do I share that?

And how it has made me a better person?! https://t.co/VU6ZxBAVUl

[Tod Worner @ThinkerCatholic]

Just think about it.

https://t.co/eRc36u9iqP

[ChurchPOP @Church_POP]

A Franciscan friar is challenging Catholics to rethink how they go to Mass—and his simple “6 challenges” are striking a chord on social media.

Father Mark-Mary Ames, CFR, from the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, shared a practical guide to help Catholics enter more deeply into the Eucharist by rediscovering silence, focus, and intentionality.

Arrive 10 minutes before Mass
Instead of sliding into the pew at the last second, take time to pray. Offer your week to God—your joys, struggles, intentions—and prepare your heart for what’s about to happen.

Leave your phone in the car.
“You can do it, you can do it,” Ames says.

Yes, really. He calls this a “heroic act.” For most people, the world can wait an hour. Enter the sacred space without distractions.

Read the readings before Mass
Whether at home or during those 10 quiet minutes before Mass, knowing the readings helps you engage more deeply with the liturgy.

Close your eyes after receiving Communion
After receiving Jesus in the Eucharist, resist the urge to look around. Stay recollected. Speak to Him.

“Be with Jesus,” Ames says.

Keep your eyes closed after you receive Holy Communion until the priest says, “Let us Pray.”

He adds, “I know if you have little kids, that’s not possible.”

Make a thanksgiving after Mass
Instead of rushing out, take a few extra minutes to thank God. Let the grace of the Eucharist settle in.

Talk to at least one person
Before heading to your car, connect with someone. Build community. The parish is not just a place—it’s a people.

“Interact with at least one person before you head back to your car after you leave the church,” he says.

In a culture of distraction and hurry, these small habits can transform how we experience the Mass—turning routine into encounter.

More at: https://t.co/3oKwCYAWgU

🪶Kimmy Chacón

[Catholic Frequency @CatholicFQ]

“Late have I loved you, O beauty so ancient yet ever new! Late have I loved you!”

- Saint Augustine

[C. S. Lewis @CSLewisDaily]

“The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God.” - C.S. Lewis

[Catholic Frequency @CatholicFQ]

The world trains you to hide. Confession trains you to tell the truth and still be loved.

[Rocco Palmo @roccopalmo]

Papa Prevost’s biggest word to his native land from Peter’s Chair, with Pope’s Liberty Medal fulltext pending, from the delivery, a Francis-style “3 words” stick out: Leo’s call for a discourse marked by “Moderation,” and a national spirit of “Generosity” & “Nobility of Heart.”

[Hughes de Payens 🇻🇦✝️📿 @hdpayens]

The US Constitution is one of the greatest political achievements in human history.

It is also incompatible with Thomistic natural law.

These two things can both be true. A thread.

[Catholic Frequency @CatholicFQ]

“Our world no longer hears God because it is constantly speaking, at a devastating speed and volume, in order to say nothing.”

- Cardinal Robert Sarah

[Catholic Frequency @CatholicFQ]

Freedom is not the power to obey every desire. It is the capacity to choose the good.

[John McGarrity @dcngar6311]

Call it bubbles, or echo chambers, or self-referential circles; AI gives “empty calories” for the mind, like sugar for the body.

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

When simulation becomes the norm, it weakens the human capacity for discernment. As a result, our social bonds close in upon themselves, forming self-referential circuits that no longer expose us to reality. We thus come to live within bubbles, impermeable to one another. Feeling threatened by anyone who is different, we grow unaccustomed to encounter and dialogue. In this way, polarization, conflict, fear and violence spread. What is at stake is not merely the risk of error, but a transformation in our very relationship with truth.

[Amigo de Frodo @bpdflores]

Public officials may opine about theology, as is their right.
The Successor of Peter teaches. This is his office.
If what he teaches doesn’t sound like what we want to hear, we should admit the likelihood that the problem is in what we want to hear, and not in what he teaches.

[Father Jim Sichko @JimSichko]

Popes condemning war.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God” - Matthew 5:9

[Garrett Ham @garrettham_esq]

1/ I grew up Baptist. I used to think Catholics worshipped Mary. The argument that finally convinced me otherwise isn't the one most Catholics make. It's stranger and more interesting than the usual back-and-forth.

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

Even today there are tombs to be opened, and often the stones sealing them are so heavy and so closely guarded that they seem to be immovable. Some weigh heavily on the human heart, such as mistrust, fear, selfishness and resentment; others, stemming from these inner struggles, sever the bonds between us through war, injustice and the isolation of peoples and nations. Let us not allow ourselves to be paralyzed by them! #Easter

[I am Ken @Ikennect]

Texans and people who have visited will understand😂

[Jeremy Wayne Tate @JeremyTate41]

Today is March 25th, the day J.R.R. Tolkien chose to have the One Ring destroyed.

Why? In Catholic tradition, this is the date of:

•The creation of Adam
•Abraham's sacrifice
•The conception of Christ
•The crucifixion of Christ

[ArchaeoHistories @histories_arch]

In 1962, a struggling McDonald's franchise owner in Cincinnati walked into Ray Kroc's office with an idea for a fish sandwich, and Kroc told him: "You're always coming up here with a bunch of crap. I don't want my stores stunk up with the smell of fish."

That franchise owner was Lou Groen, the neighborhood around his restaurant at 5425 West North Bend Road in Cincinnati was 87 percent Catholic, and on Fridays during Lent his daily sales had dropped to 75 dollars. He had a wife, twins at home, and a McDonald's that was bleeding money one meatless Friday at a time. He had watched the Frisch's Big Boy across the street doing full business every Friday because they served a fish sandwich, and he had gone to Chicago to tell Ray Kroc that McDonald's needed one too. Kroc was not interested.

The reason Kroc was not interested turned out to be that he was already working on his own meatless Friday sandwich. It was called the Hula Burger and it was a slice of grilled pineapple with a piece of cheese on a bun. Kroc believed in it enough to propose a competition. On Good Friday 1962 both sandwiches would be sold at select locations and whichever one sold more units would earn a permanent place on the McDonald's menu. Groen's granddaughter Erica Shadoin, who still owns and operates that same Cincinnati franchise today, later recalled what her grandfather said the moment he heard Kroc's idea: he knew immediately that his fish sandwich was going to win. The final score on Good Friday 1962 was Filet-O-Fish 350, Hula Burger 6. Kroc bought Groen a new suit as his prize.

What Groen had understood and Kroc had missed was something almost embarrassingly simple. The Catholic population of Cincinnati was not avoiding meat on Fridays because they wanted pineapple. They were avoiding meat because their faith required it, and what they wanted in its place was something that actually tasted like a meal. A breaded halibut fillet with tartar sauce on a steamed bun tasted like a meal. A grilled pineapple ring with cheese on a hamburger bun tasted like someone had run out of ideas on a Thursday night. Groen had spent months perfecting his recipe before he ever went to Chicago. He had even noticed one of his employees putting a slice of cheese on a fish sandwich he was making for himself one afternoon and decided it was a good enough idea to steal. That half slice of cheese has been on every Filet-O-Fish ever since.

By 1963 the sandwich was rolling out across the entire McDonald's system. By 1965 it became the first new item ever added to the permanent McDonald's national menu since Kroc had taken over the chain. Ray Kroc acknowledged the Hula Burger's failure in his autobiography Grinding it Out, writing: "It was a giant flop when we tried it in our stores. One customer said, I like the hula, but where's the burger?"

Today McDonald's sells 300 million Filet-O-Fish sandwiches every year. Twenty-three percent of those are sold during Lent. Lou Groen retired in 1985 owning 43 McDonald's franchises. He passed away in 2011. His granddaughter Erica still runs the restaurant at 5425 West North Bend Road in Cincinnati where the whole thing started, the 66th McDonald's franchise ever opened, the place where a desperate man with 75 dollars in daily Friday sales invented one of the most enduring items in the history of fast food because a pineapple slice on a bun was never going to be the answer.

© Eats History

#archaeohistories

[Damian Low @DamianLow3]

Hegseth “The war in Iran is protected by God”

Pope Leo XIV “Do not involve the name of God in choices of death. God cannot be enlisted in darkness.”

1-0 to Leo.

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

Reports from #Iran and across the entire #MiddleEast continue to cause deep dismay and raise the fear that the conflict will expand, and that other countries in the region, including dear Lebanon, may once again sink into instability. Let us #PrayTogether for the roar of bombs to cease, weapons to fall silent, and space to open for dialogue, in which people's voices may be heard.

[ChurchPOP @Church_POP]

We remember their sacrifice.

On March 4, 2016, gunmen burst into a Missionaries of Charity home for the elderly in Aden, Yemen, and murdered 16 people — including four religious sisters who had already been given permission to leave amidst the violence, but chose instead to “live or die with our poor.”

Ten years later, we remember: Sr. Anselm, Sr. Judith, Sr. Marguerite, Sr. Reginette, their Yemeni coworkers, the young Ethiopian Christians who tried to warn them, Sr. Sally (the only sister who survived), and Fr. Tom Uzhunnalil, the priest kidnapped that day and freed 18 months later.

Pope Francis called them “martyrs of charity” because they died exactly where Jesus told us to be: with the forgotten, the sick, and the poor.

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord.

[𝐀𝐮𝐠𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐨 @UgonnaMario]

This is why many people now call it a slow and silent Christian genocide:

• The victims are mostly Christians.
• The attacks keep happening, again and again.
• The goal is clear: weaken and erase Christian presence in entire regions.
• And each time, the government responds with silence or empty speeches.

Since the begging of 2025, hundreds of Catholic priests and religious have been abducted and killed.

Recently, Fr. Nathaniel Asuwaye was abducted from his parish with ten others, and three were killed in Kafanchan.

Fr. Emmanuel Ezema of Zaria Diocese was abducted and is yet to be released.

Fr. Joseph Igweagu was kidnapped four years ago (still in captivity).

Fr. Bobbo Paschal was abducted by armed Islamic terrorists from St. Stephen’s Catholic Parish, Kushe Gugdu, Kaduna State.
Another priest. Another community left in fear. Another wound on the Body of Christ.

May God protect them and all who live under daily terror.
May God remember Nigeria.