October is the month of the rosary. Catholics around the world are encouraged to join in praying the rosary daily to honor the Virgin Mary. On Oct. 7, Catholics celebrate the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. It was previously known by the alternate title of “Our Lady of Victory.”
The feast day takes place as a commemoration of the Battle of Lepanto, a 16th-century naval victory that secured Europe against Turkish invasion. Pope Pius V had encouraged the faithful to pray the rosary, and the Blessed Mother’s intercession was credited with the triumph of the “Holy League.” For centuries, the rosary has been considered a weapon of protection against evil and a powerful tool of intercession.
Cast onto one of the columns of the baldachin in St. Peter’s Basilica is the representation of a rosary. So small, it often goes unnoticed by the pilgrim. It is said that Bernini himself, wanting to dedicate his work to the Virgin, crafted the rosary onto the column after finishing the basilica. Daniel Ibañez
Pope Francis tweeted in 2017 that “the rosary is a synthesis of the mysteries of Christ: we contemplate them together with Mary, who gives us her gaze of faith and love.” Daniel Ibañez
Daniel Ibañez
October is the month of rosary and all Catholics are called to unite to ask for the intercession of our Mother and to meditate on the mysteries of the life and teachings of Jesus through her prayer. The recitation of the Holy Rosary is one of the most deeply rooted devotions among the Christian people. It originated around the ninth century as a simplification of the Psalter and spread rapidly among the unlettered laity as a simple prayer. The rosary is a crown of roses that we give to our Mother.
Millions of people around the world pray to Our Lady, asking her to care for them as a mother and thanking her for accompanying them through the journey of their lives. Daniel Ibañez
The Holy Rosary is a powerful weapon against the wiles of evil; it is so powerful that it disarms the devil and changes lukewarm hearts into hearts on fire and in love with Jesus, Our Lord. When we pray it with devotion we are configured to the Lord. According to the testimonies of Sister Lucia, visionary in Fatima, when we pray it with love, heaven opens and many graces are poured on the person who prays it. For this reason, it is important to pray it with love, shelling out these “aves marias” with joy and enthusiasm, knowing that we are beating and destroying all the lurking of the devil.
“As you recite the Rosary, pray to the Queen of the World for the holiness of the family.” — Blessed Alvaro del Portillo. Daniel Ibañez
Daniel Ibañez
There are many reasons to pray to the rosary. Perhaps the world needs peace. Perhaps your grandmother is sick. Why do you pray the rosary?
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Former collegiate swimmer Riley Gaines is sworn in during a House Oversight Subcommittee on Health Care and Financial Services hearing on Capitol Hill on Dec. 5, 2023, in Washington, D.C. / Credit: Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Vatican City, Nov 3, 2023 / 07:05 am At a Mass for Pope Benedict XVI and deceased cardinals and bishops on Friday, Pope Francis urged Christians, especially pastors, to be the humble servants of others. […]
Anna Del Duca (right) and her daughter, Frances, traveled from Pittsburgh to attend a pro-life rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court on Dec. 1, 2021, in conjunction with oral arguments for the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization abortion case. / Katie Yoder/CNA
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Dec 4, 2021 / 04:00 am (CNA).
Three legal experts are expressing optimism for a pro-life victory in the U.S. Supreme Court case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case that directly challenges Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that legalized abortion nationside.
“I am hopeful that the court will take the opportunity in Dobbs to correct the grievous error of Roe v. Wade, and get the court out of our nation’s abortion politics,” Carrie Severino, president of the Judicial Crisis Network, told CNA after the Supreme Court heard arguments on Dec. 1.
The case involves a Mississippi law restricting most abortions after 15 weeks and centers on the question of “Whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional,” or whether states can ban abortion before a fetus can survive outside the womb.
In Roe v. Wade, the court ruled that states could not ban abortion before viability, which the court determined to be 24 to 28 weeks into pregnancy. In 1992, the court largely upheld Roe in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. If Roe is overturned — one possible outcome of the Dobbs case — abortion law would be left up to each individual state.
“Today the court did a great job articulating its constitutional role: not to pick winners and losers on divisive issues like abortion, but to remain ‘scrupulously neutral,’ as Justice Kavanaugh said,” Severino tweeted just hours after the arguments. “The way it works out will look different in different states, but the Court should let the people decide.”
Although the arguments were held in December, the Supreme Court generally releases decisions in high-profile cases, such as this one, at the end of its term in June.
Keara Brown, originally from Columbus, Ohio, came with her Washington, D.C. team from pro-life group Live Action. They attended the pro-life rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court on Dec. 1, 2021. Katie Yoder/CNA
“I am very encouraged by oral argument and the prospect of a favorable decision this summer, but we should keep up our prayers for the justices,” legal scholar Erika Bachiochi told CNA.
Bachiochi serves as a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a senior fellow at the Abigail Adams Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she founded and directs the Wollstonecraft Project.
She identified one part of the oral arguments that she found surprising.
“Although I suppose shouldn’t have been, I was surprised by Justice Sotomayer’s naked pro-abortion rhetoric, especially with regard to her question concerning the ‘religious’ source of a 15-week abortion ban,” she said. “Does she really not know the science of fetal development?”
During the oral argument, Justice Sonia Sotomayor questioned Scott G. Stewart, the solicitor general of Mississippi.
“How is your interest anything but a religious view?” she asked. “The issue of when life begins has been hotly debated by philosophers since the beginning of time. It’s still debated in religions.”
She added, “So, when you say this is the only right that takes away from the state the ability to protect a life, that’s a religious view, isn’t it — because it assumes that a fetus’ life at — when? You’re not drawing — you’re — when do you suggest we begin that life? Putting it aside from religion.”
In anticipation of the oral argument, the Charlotte Lozier Institute, the research arm of the Susan B. Anthony List, documented information about 15-week-old unborn babies, who can, among other things, already exhibit whether they prefer sucking their right or left thumb.
Earlier this year, Bachiochi, together with law professors Teresa Collett and Helen Alvaré, filed an amicus brief representing 240 women scholars and professionals and various pro-life organizations in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
In a piece published by the National Catholic Register, Alvaré, a professor of law at the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University, found the oral argument “promising for the pro-life cause.”
But, she added, “it would be impossible to cram into the few minutes of an oral argument all the reason, facts, principles, analyses — and hopes — of 50 years of pro-life argumentation,” she wrote. “There was no time to call out abortion advocates’ lies, more lies, and made-up statistics. No time to show that women have not depended upon abortion for their dignity and freedom, but that the opposite is true. No time to detail the miraculous, the beautiful humanity of the unborn.”
“Based strictly upon the oral arguments, it is clear that Justices Sotomayor, Breyer and Kagan will vote to uphold abortion rights,” she said. “It is more difficult to pronounce where the remaining Justices might fall, but their comments were largely promising.”
The holy rosary is a spiritual weapon of mass construction. Young and young at heart rosary warriors storm heaven relentlessly with those Planet-friendly tiny rosary missiles.
Daniel Ibañez takes nice pictures. One Pope Francis standing piously before Our Lady of Fatima statue. Head lowered rosary dangling from hands.
Francis appointed Cardinal Mario Grech Secretary General of the Synod of Bishops, assigning them facilitators rather than Apostolic witnesses to the faith during the Synod on Synodality. Grech announced, “What have we to fear” if we allow divorced and remarried outside the Church, LGBT+ to express their genuine feelings of love for Christ, to receive the Eucharist like all others. Appointed by His Holiness Synod relator, Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich advised it’s time we revise our doctrine on homosexuality.
Another Cardinal had strong reservations, “This is absolutely clear: that Jesus has spoken about the indissolubility of matrimony. And how is it possible that Cardinal Grech is more intelligent than Jesus Christ, where he takes his authority to relativize, to subvert [what is] of God? I cannot understand it. I must say it openly, because the definition of the pope is, and [based in] the Vatican Council and also the history of Catholic theology, he has to guarantee the truth of the Gospel and the unity of all the bishops, and in the Church, in the revealed truth” (Cardinal Gerhard Müller).
Would that it be said that Müller, reflecting on all this, that the Pope cannot “participate in the omnipotence of God” in this “hostile takeover” of the Church – that this indeed is the design of Pope Francis. Too inflammatory. So I won’t say it. I’ll instead say Daniel Ibañez takes nice pictures.
I’m glad you said it Father. With that image, I’ve been fighting back yet another uncharitable thought about Francis. All I could think about was his insulting nastiness towards a group that presented him a mosaic of a large number of rosaries early in his pontificate when, in one of his moments of exhibitionistic pseudo-charity, he told the group they should have instead donated the money spent on the rosaries to the poor.
Had his imaginatiion been pure, he would have forseen that the lives of many poor would experience spiritual gifts if, over time, the rosaries could gradually be dispersed among the Catholic needy encountered throughout the world during papal trips knowing they were once cherished by a generous Pope.
His carnage towards the Church is another more monumental matter.
The holy rosary is a spiritual weapon of mass construction. Young and young at heart rosary warriors storm heaven relentlessly with those Planet-friendly tiny rosary missiles.
Daniel Ibañez takes nice pictures. One Pope Francis standing piously before Our Lady of Fatima statue. Head lowered rosary dangling from hands.
Francis appointed Cardinal Mario Grech Secretary General of the Synod of Bishops, assigning them facilitators rather than Apostolic witnesses to the faith during the Synod on Synodality. Grech announced, “What have we to fear” if we allow divorced and remarried outside the Church, LGBT+ to express their genuine feelings of love for Christ, to receive the Eucharist like all others. Appointed by His Holiness Synod relator, Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich advised it’s time we revise our doctrine on homosexuality.
Another Cardinal had strong reservations, “This is absolutely clear: that Jesus has spoken about the indissolubility of matrimony. And how is it possible that Cardinal Grech is more intelligent than Jesus Christ, where he takes his authority to relativize, to subvert [what is] of God? I cannot understand it. I must say it openly, because the definition of the pope is, and [based in] the Vatican Council and also the history of Catholic theology, he has to guarantee the truth of the Gospel and the unity of all the bishops, and in the Church, in the revealed truth” (Cardinal Gerhard Müller).
Would that it be said that Müller, reflecting on all this, that the Pope cannot “participate in the omnipotence of God” in this “hostile takeover” of the Church – that this indeed is the design of Pope Francis. Too inflammatory. So I won’t say it. I’ll instead say Daniel Ibañez takes nice pictures.
I’m glad you said it Father. With that image, I’ve been fighting back yet another uncharitable thought about Francis. All I could think about was his insulting nastiness towards a group that presented him a mosaic of a large number of rosaries early in his pontificate when, in one of his moments of exhibitionistic pseudo-charity, he told the group they should have instead donated the money spent on the rosaries to the poor.
Had his imaginatiion been pure, he would have forseen that the lives of many poor would experience spiritual gifts if, over time, the rosaries could gradually be dispersed among the Catholic needy encountered throughout the world during papal trips knowing they were once cherished by a generous Pope.
His carnage towards the Church is another more monumental matter.
“The beauty of our weapons”! Yet:
2 Corinthians 10:4 For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds.
2 Corinthians 6:7 by truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left;
1 Corinthians 2:5 that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.
Praise be to God who gives us victory in Jesus Christ.