On August 31, 1986, Aeromexico Flight 498 was on final approach to Los Angeles International Airport when it collided midair with a private Cessna that had drifted into restricted airspace above Cerritos, California. The impact tore both aircraft apart. All sixty-four passengers and crew aboard the DC-9 were killed. The three people in the Cessna were killed as well. Fifteen people on the ground died when the jet slammed into a quiet residential neighborhood in a massive fireball.

The underlying premise of feminism is that women are better off mimicking the behavior of men — and not good men who are devoted to their wives and family — but the selfish and promiscuous man committed to his career and his autonomy. Work and career ought to be women’s priority. Fifty years of this rhetoric has given us enough time to see the wreckage and the foolishness of the megachurch’s dogma that motherhood is nothing but slavery and drudgery.

In the medieval church, folk piety was rich in the theatrical and festive observation of Christ’s nativity. We see and hear a faint echo of it down to our own times in Christmas carols, pageants, living creches, and even quasi-religious pop entertainment like A Charlie Brown Christmas. Some tend to downplay the importance of the Christmas season in comparison to Lent and Easter in the early church, but that’s just not true...

Picture a football stadium full of 80,000 people. Research indicates that you will influence that many people during the course of your lifetime (even if you don't have your own YouTube channel). But who is in your stadium? And what does it sound like in there? Are people cheering for the ways you positively affected them? Are they booing for all the terrible things you did? Or are they silent because you were on your phone...

There is a specific virtue of running a household well. For me, discovering it was one of the great fruits of studying ancient and medieval thinking. According to Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, “domestic prudence” arranges everything in one’s home life toward the true happiness of its members. This can really help us in thinking about how to celebrate Christmas. A key feature of the great virtue of prudence is how it is different from any other know-how, or practical knowledge.

Pope Leo XIV is expected to appoint Bishop Ronald Hicks of Joliet as the next Archbishop of New York, The Pillar has confirmed, with an announcement expected as early as Dec. 18.

Feast date: Jan 07

Saint Raymond of Penafort, a Dominican priest who worked to aid Christian captives during the era of the Crusades and also helped organize the Church’s legal code, will be celebrated liturgically on Jan. 7.

A contemporary of Saint Thomas Aquinas, he inspired the theologian to write the “Summa Contra Gentiles” for the conversion of non-Catholics. At least 10,000 Muslims reportedly converted as a result of St. Raymond’s evangelistic labors.

Descended from a noble family with ties to the royal house of Aragon, Raymond of Penafort was born during 1175 in the Catalonian region of modern-day Spain near Barcelona.

He advanced quickly in his studies, showing such a gift for philosophy that he was appointed to teach the subject in Barcelona by age 20. As a teacher, the young man worked to harmonize reason with the profession and practice of Catholic faith and morals. This included a notable concern for the poor and suffering.

Around age 30 the Spanish scholar went to study secular and Church law at Bologna in Italy. He earned his doctorate and taught there until 1219, when the Bishop of Barcelona gave him an official position in the diocese. During 1222, the 47-year-old Raymond joined the Dominican order, in which he would spend the next 53 years of his remarkably long life.

As a penance for the intellectual pride he had once demonstrated, the former professor was asked to write a manual of moral theology for use by confessors. The resulting “Summa Casuum” was the first of his pioneering contributions to the Church. Meanwhile, in keeping with his order’s dedication to preaching, the Dominican priest strove to spread the faith and bring back lapsed and lost members of the Church.

During his time in Barcelona, Raymond helped Saint Peter Nolasco and King James of Aragon to establish the Order of Our Lady of Mercy, whose members sought to ransom those taken captive in Muslim territory. During this same period Raymond promoted the Crusades through preaching, encouraging the faithful to defend their civilization from foreign threats.

Pope Gregory IX called the Dominican priest to Rome in 1230, asking him to compile the Church’s various decisions and decrees into one systematic and uniform collection. The resulting five books served for centuries as a basis of the Church’s internal legal system. Raymond was the Pope’s personal confessor and close adviser during this time, and nearly became the Archbishop of Tarragona in 1235. But the Dominican did not want to lead the archdiocese, and is said to have turned down the appointment.

Later in the decade, Raymond was chosen to lead the Dominicans, though he did so for only two years due to his advancing age. Ironically, however, he would live on for more than three decades after resigning from this post. During this time he was able to focus on the fundamentals of his vocation: praising God in prayer, making him known through preaching, and making his blessings manifest in the world. Raymond’s later achievements included the establishment of language schools to aid in the evangelization of non-Christians.

St. Raymond of Penafort’s long pilgrimage of faith ended on Jan. 6, 1275, approximately 100 years after his birth. Pope Clement VIII canonized him in 1601. His patronage extends toward lawyers in general, and canon lawyers in particular.

A group of 31 priests of the Diocese of Charlotte, North Carolina, have submitted to the Dicastery for Legislative Texts a set of dubia, or queries about the legitimacy of, liturgical directives enacted or considered by Bishop Michael Martin, OFM Conv, The Pillar reported.

“Two-thirds of the signatories are pastors,” according to the report. The diocese has 75 parishes, 107 priests in active ministry in the diocese, and 141 total diocesan priests, according to the 2025 edition of The Official Catholic Directory.

In a pastoral letter released last month, Bishop Martin called for the routine distribution of Holy Communion by extraordinary ministers and banned the use of “altar rails, kneelers, and prie-dieus” during the distribution of Holy Communion.

The prelate also wrote that the distribution of Holy Communion by intinction “should not be considered an option in the Diocese of Charlotte,” even though a 2004 Vatican document forbids bishops from restricting intinction (n. 103).

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