06 July 2020

• St. Junípero Serra statue destroyed at California state capitol...
  In a July 5 statement, Bishop Jaime Soto of Sacramento said that while “the group’s actions may have been meant to draw attention to the sorrowful, angry memories over California’s past,” their “act of vandalism does little to build the future.”
• 2009 Register interview: Ennio Morricone (1928-2020) reflects on his career and the Catholic faith...
  Ennio Morricone is considered by many to be one of Hollywood’s finest film score composers. In a career spanning nearly 50 years, he has written around 450 unique, stirring and atmospheric soundtracks for some of the world’s most memorable films. They include the Clint Eastwood spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s, such as The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and A Fistful of Dollars; the memorable score for The Mission...
• An insight on hope from St. Augustine...
  The word “hope” in modern English has lost much of the vigor assigned to what we call the theological virtue of Hope. In English hope often means merely a vague wish, as in, “I hope it doesn’t rain.” But the theological virtue of Hope (which I capitalize to distinguish it from worldly hope) is more vigorously defined as the confident expectation of God’s help in attaining eternal salvation. Notice therefore it is no mere wish, it is a confident expectation based on God’s promises and love for us.
• Pope’s Sunday Angelus: ‘Jesus invites us to go to Him and to follow Him to find solace’...
  Pope Francis described the three parts of today’s gospel, a prayer of blessing and thanksgiving of Jesus to the Father in his commentary before praying the noonday Angelus with the Covid-19-restricted crowd in St. Peter’s Square.
• Stop yoking around — A homily for the 14th Sunday of the Year...
  We in the West live in a place and at a time in which almost every burden of manual labor has been eliminated. Not only that, but creature comforts abound. Everything from air conditioning to hair conditioning, from fast food to high speed internet, from to indoor plumbing to outdoor grilling, from instant computer downloads to instant coffee machines...