History Archives | Catholic Door

04 Jul

Catholics and the American Revolution

God bless America, land that I love! Stand beside her and guide her, through the night with a light from above… With the Fourth of July here, if your family is anything like mine, it’s time to revisit the lyrics to a few patriotic hymns on the big day. After all, no one wants to be the one at the family picnic who forgets the words to “God Bless America” or—even worse—the national anthem. It’s also time to revisit American history. [...]

By Emily History 0 Comments

23 Jun

The Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Today, June 23, the Church celebrates the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Although it is not a Holy Day of Obligation, why is this an important feast for Catholics? As Pope Pius XII explained in his encyclical Haurietis aquas (On Devotion to the Sacred Heart), the Sacred Heart is the foremost symbol and expression of Jesus’s love for us. As such, it is “the foundation and the culmination of the Incarnation and the Redemption.” The devotion extends [...]

09 Jun

The Sign of the Cross

The sign of the cross is one of the first gestures we learn to make as Catholics, and yet for all of its simplicity, the gesture is often unintentionally bungled. Although for many of us the gesture has become a deeply ingrained practice, we frequently overlook its symbolism, even as we bless ourselves at the beginning and end of our prayers, when entering and leaving a church, and before the Blessed Sacrament, as well as numerous other times throughout [...]

By Emily History 0 Comments

31 May

The Story of Our Lady of Fatima: 100th Anniversary

The Apparitions of the Angel In 1916, as World War I devastated Europe, three shepherd children in Fatima, Portugal, were visited three times by an angel while out tending their sheep. The first apparition took place in the spring of 1916. Lucia dos Santos, age 9, and her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto, ages 8 and 6, had taken shelter from the rain in a small cave, where they ate their lunch, prayed a truncated version of the Rosary, and [...]

By Catholic Door History, Saints Fatima 2 Comments