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As the Jews and Israel have been the subject of hatred and vitriol, many Jews have leaned into their Jewish identity.

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The mosaics decorating the interior dome of St. Peter’s Basilica depict the Blessed Virgin Mary next to Christ the Redeemer and the Apostles. / Credit: Daniel Ibañez/CNA

CNA Newsroom, Aug 14, 2025 / 18:27 pm (CNA).

EWTN’s “Crushed by the Woman,” set to air Aug. 15 — the solemnity of the Assumption — aims to answer common questions Protestants ask regarding the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The 30-minute program features a lineup of notable Church figures who explore the beliefs Catholics hold regarding the Blessed Mother and the many misconceptions non-Catholics have about her.

The program addresses questions such as: Does devotion to Mary take away from Jesus or offend Our Lord? What does the angel Gabriel’s “Hail, full of grace” greeting mean? Is the assumption of the Blessed Virgin contrary to the Bible? Why do Catholics pray to Mary? Why do Catholics say Mary did not have other children? How is Mary our perfect mother? 

Father Dwight Longenecker, who was raised a fundamentalist and ordained an Anglican priest before converting to Catholicism, and Mark Miravalle, a professor of theology at Franciscan University of Steubenville and president of the International Marian Association, are joined by several other Church leaders to provide answers to these questions. 

“Quite often, our Protestant brothers and sisters will say: You believe in something called the assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, that she was taken up into heaven and that she was crowned as the queen of heaven,” Longenecker says in the program. “That’s nowhere in the Bible. Why do you believe these things?”

“Catholics are not Bible-only Christians. You are,” Longenecker continues. “We believe in the inspiration of the Bible, but we also believe that the Holy Spirit speaks through the Church…speaks through the lives of the saints… speaks through the teaching of the Church. Therefore, we’re not Bible-only Christians. We’re not obliged to prove our religion according to your terms.”

Miravalle points out that nowhere in Scripture does it say that Scripture is the only source of revelation. “[T]o hold that is an unscriptural position,” he says. 

Ann-Marie Altomare, director at Our Lady of Guadalupe Family Life Center in Ave Maria, Florida, provides further examples: “[W]e also know there are a lot of things about the apostles, how they were beheaded or how they died as martyrs, that are not written in Scripture.”

Addressing the question of why Catholics pray for Mary’s intercession, Longnecker says: “We need a mother to intercede, to protect us from external dangers. We need a mother to remind us of our personal dignity, that we’re all made in the image and likeness of God. One mother united Jesus and her other children, you and me, together.”

“[W]ithin the Catholic understanding, she stands for motherhood,” he adds. “She stands for fertility. She stands for children. She stands for family, and this is exactly where, in our society today, Catholics are being attacked, because we still stand up for virginity, for chastity, for family, for marriage, for children. We stand up against abortion, we stand up against the sexual immorality in society, and so, we will be attacked for that.”

“Crushed by the Woman” can also be watched online here.

This pair became the centerpiece of a campaign that raised more than $180,000 for Israeli hospitals treating the victims of the October 7 terror attacks.

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All rivers lead to home.

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(RNS) — As the sun rose Thursday morning (Aug. 14), hundreds of Catholic sisters walked through downtown Atlanta as part of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious’ “Outdoor Pilgrimage of Hope.” From 7 to 8 a.m., approximately 470 participants prayed in unison along a 1.2-mile route, guided by readings, music and periods of contemplative silence.

The walkers paused at three locations, each dedicated to one of the key issues they prayed to heal — forced migration, climate change and racism.

Another 75 people joined virtually on Facebook Live from the assembly hall of the Hyatt Regency Atlanta, where the four-day conference of the association of leaders of American Catholic women’s congregations is being held this year.

With an Atlanta Police Department escort, as pilgrims paused the three times, their prayers echoed LCWR’s resolution and commitment to live out the challenges of the late Pope Francis’ “Laudato si’” environmental justice encyclical.

“This is an initiative that is happening throughout the United States as a means of welcoming a variety of people to engage in this year of Jubilee,” said Bridget Bearss, co-chair of the pilgrimage and LCWR’s associate director for transformative justice. “We are committed to deeply investing ourselves in being pilgrims on the journey on behalf of ‘Laudato si’,’ the themes of ‘Laudato si’.’”

Pope Francis declared 2025 a Jubilee, or Holy Year, a Catholic observance held every 25 years for prayer, reconciliation and pilgrimage. The tradition traces its roots to the Hebrew Jubilee in the Book of Leviticus and has developed over centuries in the Catholic Church. This Jubilee Year’s theme, “Pilgrims of Hope,” calls on Catholics around the world to renew their faith and share hope through prayer, reconciliation and public witness.

Sister Susan Francois of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace in New York has participated in the LCWR assembly since 2015. On Thursday morning in Georgia, she posted two TikTok videos on the account @sistersusanfrancoiscsjp, showing the overcast walk featuring “hundreds of Catholic sisters and friends” praying in unison. 

One TikTok user commented “This is true Christianity” on the video, and another wrote “I’m not religious in anyway but this moved me with such faith for humanity.”

RELATED: Rest, reorientation and hope – the pillars of 2025’s Catholic Jubilee year

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For Francois, the walk felt personal. In recent months, Francois and a few other Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace have been gathering at a privately run immigrant detention center in Newark, New Jersey, to stand alongside families who face harassment and other obstacles while trying to visit detained loved ones. 

“I met a 7-year-old girl last Saturday who was trying to visit her dad before he was deported to Ecuador,” Francois said. “Their faces were in front of me, and I was just holding them especially in prayer and sending them love.”

Participants also prayed in Spanish to the Virgin of Guadelupe. 

“It was a very powerful experience,” said Annmarie Sanders, a member of the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and communication director for LCWR, who participated in the walk. “There’s lots of great poverty here in downtown Atlanta, so it felt like a wonderful opportunity for us to make public our commitment to work, particularly for those three issues, forced migration, climate change and racial equality.”

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LCWR’s annual assembly this year gathered 860 people, including 570 leaders of women’s religious congregations, among them sisters from 18 countries. And for the first time this year, chief administrative officers, communicators and justice promoters who serve congregations attended. 

The LCWR represents 294 congregations and about 35,000 women religious in the U.S. Running annually since the organization was founded in 1956, the conference began Tuesday and runs through Friday, with major addresses by Jesuit priest James Martin; Sister Simona Brambilla, prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life; and LCWR President Kathy Brazda.

“I think the belief that the power of our prayer could really make a difference — to just see nearly 500 people coming together in that sense of faith to put more positive energy into the atmosphere — will hopefully influence the course of the world to create a more peaceful place,” Sanders said.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (RNS) — Four years ago, the Rev. Matt Conner presented his congregation with a stark reality: Newell Presbyterian Church had about 18 months of financial solvency ahead. The time had come to seriously consider its future.

Chartered in 1890 in what was then a sleepy part of northeast Charlotte dotted with dairy farms and tobacco fields, the church grew, and then started a slow decline. These days about 50 people attend Sunday morning services and the church has an annual budget of $190,000.

But Newell Presbyterian has one asset increasingly in demand in the now bustling neighborhood of subdivisions and apartment complexes: land. The church sits on 9.5 acres, accumulated plot by plot by devoted church members who had long since passed on.

After forming a “dream team” to consider its options, the church recently voted to sell a 4.5-acre parcel to a nonprofit developer for the construction of 50 affordable townhomes right next to its sanctuary. Homeowners would have to earn 80% of the area median income (about $85,000 for a family of four) to qualify. The sale is expected to be inked in October.

Newell Presbyterian is one of hundreds of declining congregations with underutilized space, excess land, deteriorating buildings and soaring maintenance costs. But these churches are finding that they can stanch their fiscal woes by selling or, in many cases, leasing some of their land and repurposing their properties for affordable housing.

At least 200 and as many as 400 houses of worship (mostly churches but also synagogues and mosques) have repurposed their property for affordable housing over the past decade, said Nadia Mian, a researcher at Rutgers University’s Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy who is cataloging those projects.

Newell Presbyterian found that in selling its land it had found a new treasure: its soul.

“I’ve gotten to watch and be a part of a kind of spiritual growth in this space and time and a calling to be even more mission oriented,” said Conner. “This is a church getting clearer about who we are and why we exist.”

Though the church hasn’t grown in numbers, Conner said it has grown in faith and commitment, and its members speak of a renewed sense of purpose and mission, a deeper spirituality rooted in a sacred responsibility to neighbor and place.

RELATED: Church membership may be declining, but many churchgoers are double-dosing

In 2021, on the Feast of Ascension, when Christians celebrate the resurrected Jesus’ leavetaking of his disciples, Conner asked a group of church elders to walk the grassy 4.5-acre field next to the church. “Pray, pay attention and dream,” he told them. “What do you see?”

They initially came back with different answers: a soccer field, a farmers market, a student hub for the nearby University of North Carolina Charlotte campus.

Over time, the church elders coalesced around a dream of a housing community that would nurture young families, just as the church had nurtured them 50 years before.

Trent Thompson, 71, remembered how he and his wife moved to Charlotte in the early 1980s so he could finish his undergraduate degree at the university after his service in the Coast Guard. Shortly after they found the church, their first son was born, 11 weeks premature. Church members enveloped the young family with care during the two months their son was in the hospital.

“The church loved us and helped us out with anything we needed, prayer requests, people visiting us, meals,” said Thompson. “That meant a lot to us.”

Freda Schlaman, 79, remembered that the church had a vibrant youth program that her two daughters loved — so much so, one of them later became a Presbyterian minister. “It was a small church and it was what we needed,” said Schlaman. “We fell in love with the people along the way.”

The church’s members envisioned an affordable housing complex that would allow today’s young families — many of whom are priced out of Charlotte’s competitive real estate market — to do the same. They were clear they did not want to build rental apartments, but rather offer working-class families — teachers, firefighters, social workers — homes they could afford.

That meant the church would build fewer units and likely get less money from the sale than if it had sold to a commercial developer. “A lot of churches will just say, ‘Sell it. Let’s get some money so we can have operating capital,’” said Thompson. “But our point was, we’re not gonna do that. As the stewards of the community, we wanted to help to rebuild the idea that Newell is a community that thrives on the family concept. We wanted people that get a chance to put down roots.”

The church turned to DreamKey Partners, a nonprofit real estate development company that has worked with a handful of other churches in the Charlotte area. Church leaders won’t say how much money they will get from the sale, since the contract hasn’t yet been signed. A lot also depends on whether the city will award the project the full $3.1 million from its Housing Trust Fund, designated to provide gap financing to developers to build affordable housing.

The church is already considering a phase two: renting out parts of its education building to nonprofit business incubators, perhaps starting a coffee shop, and creating a playground or park for the children.

The church’s goal, said Conner, using a biblical reference, is not to store up money in bigger barns. “We are selling some land for the sake of this call to build up the beloved community, and honestly all it costs us is a yes,” Conner said.

Eight miles away from the Newell church, another Presbyterian congregation has also committed itself to affordable housing. Caldwell Presbyterian has converted a 14,000-square-foot building that once housed Sunday school classrooms into 21 studio apartments for people coming out of chronic homelessness. After it opens in October, the church will turn the building over to a local nonprofit that will oversee day-to-day operations.

For Caldwell Presbyterian, the vision is the same as Newell’s, even if the initial impetus was not. A bigger, midsized church, Caldwell wasn’t financially squeezed. But like Newell, it saw a need.

“We’re in the middle of a profound and deep national housing crisis,” said the Rev. John Cleghorn, the pastor. “One of the ways the churches can make the most direct type of impact, is not only to provide the housing, but to provide a community adjacent to, in relationship with the housing. What could be more Christlike?”

Like many cities, Charlotte welcomes the churches’ building boom. The city’s Faith in Housing initiative gives faith-based organizations tools and resources to carry out affordable housing projects. A summit the city held last year brought together leaders from some 90 houses of worship for a daylong educational workshop about the hows of affordable housing and the variety of city, state and federal tax credits, grants and loans.

“When you think about it, honestly, who has the most land? Religious institutions and schools,” said City Council member LaWana Mayfield. “What we’re doing is creating a tool kit to help educate and energize the community to not just think about housing, but to reimagine their space.”

Charlotte’s Mayfield Memorial Missionary Baptist Church, a predominantly Black congregation that built 51 rental units for people making 30% to 80% of area median income, is a big believer in congregations working on affordable housing.

“If we could get just 5% of the churches in Charlotte to do this — and not just churches but faith communities — our housing problem looks very different,” said the Rev. Peter Wherry, the church’s pastor.

One thing Newell’s newfound mission won’t do is save the church’s finances long term. Members have no expectation that the owners of the townhomes they are building will want to join the church. And it is possible the church may dwindle in size even more.

But they are also clear-eyed about the larger vision of community that is driving them.

“You know, this is not our land,” said Thompson. “God created this land for us to use. This is not just for the church but for others who need it.”

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We casually say each day is a gift. But perhaps it’s only on birthdays where this phrase sinks in.

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