Listen to this inspiring talk by Bishop Fulton J. Sheen about the importance of adoration.
A lawsuit was recently filed by a Christian-based nonprofit women’s homeless shelter against the City of Anchorage, Alaska, the Anchorage Equal Rights Commission, and the executive director of the commission. According to the lawsuit, the Hope Center, which operates as the Downtown Soup Kitchen, is asking the court to allow it to exclude individuals who were born as biological males, but who now claim to be female. The Hope Center has been in business for more than 30 years.
Last week, I wrote about how the United States Constitution guarantees American citizens the right to due process of law, which includes the right to cross-examine witnesses who testify against them. I thought it would be worthwhile to show you how an effective cross-examination is conducted by an attorney.
The copy of the article shown above appeared in the Peoria Journal Star on July 2, 1987. The article explains how I was able to get a criminal case against a pro-life activist dismissed, because of the failure of the prosecution to disclose a witness. My client, Gerald (Jerry) Smith, was a well-known local pro-life activist who was frequently arrested for trespassing on the property where the local abortion clinic was located. In the case that was referenced in the article, Jerry was charged with Criminal Trespass to Property, a Class A misdemeanor that was punishable by up to a year in jail, and up to a $1,000 fine.
It happened on September 5, 1985. That was the day that a jury in one of my criminal cases deliberated for only 20 minutes, before finding my client not guilty. I’ve been a lawyer for more than 35 years. The 20-minute jury verdict is still an all-time record for me.
I’ve written before about how I grew up in a family neighborhood that included seven families. My grandparents, Tom and Effie Williams, lived next door to my parents. The other families in the neighborhood were made up of my aunts, uncles, and cousins.
I first heard the term “cocooning” in 1981, during my first year of law school. The term came from Faith Popcorn, a marketing consultant in New York. Popcorn later described “cocooning” in her book, The Popcorn Report, which was originally published in 1991:
In the marketing world, the phrase “passion brand” refers to a product that has a passionate following among its customers. In addition to being loyal to the product, the customers also personally identify with it. If necessary, they will expend the time and energy to defend the product when someone criticizes it. The ownership of the product becomes a statement in and of itself — a statement that the customer has achieved a special status because of their affiliation with the product.
On Monday, August 20, 2018, a Catholic priest was physically attacked while he was praying in the sacristy of St Michaels Byzantine Catholic Church in Merrillville, Indiana. According to the Merrillville police chief, Joseph Petruch, the attacker grabbed Fr. Basil John Hutsko by the neck and “threw him down on the floor and immediately started slamming his head against the floor, both sides, front and back.”
I want to discuss an emotion that we’re all aware of but try not to think about. It’s an emotion that is present within us from the day we’re born until the day we die. It hinders our ability to do what we know should be done.
During the 1990s, I had a devout Catholic friend who decided that he was going to pray every day that he would go straight to Heaven when he died. He didn’t want his soul to have to endure any suffering in purgatory. He decided that he was going to bypass purgatory and go straight to heaven.