WOW Worst drought in a hundred years. Vietnam could be ‘sowing the seeds of the next crisis.

Vietnam is expected to show annualized growth of 6.3% in the fourth quarter when it releases the data sometime next week.

That would be the first slowdown in annual growth since 2012 and below the 7% growth that was expected by Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung. MORE

Kim Jong Un is the Grinch who stole Christmas.

North Korea’s tubby tyrant wants the few Christians in the hermit state to spread cheer only to celebrate his grandma, Kim Jong-suk — not the birth of Jesus.

Jong-suk — who was born on Christmas Eve in 1919 — was an anti-Japanese guerrilla and Communist activist, wife of North Korea’s first dictator, Kim Il Sung, and former leader Kim Jong Il’s mother. MORE

MOSCOW — The flight data recorder of the Russian military passenger plane that crashed into the Black Sea near the resort town of Sochi, killing all 92 passengers and crew members on board, has been recovered, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Tuesday. MORE

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men, with roughly 40,000 new cases diagnosed in the UK every year, according to the National Health Service. Current treatments, such as radiotherapy and surgery, regularly cause lifelong incontinence. In addition, 90 percent of men who undergo such treatments struggle with erectile problems. MORE

Vol 9 Issue 52a ~ Editor: Rev. Fr. Courtney Edward Krier
December 24, 2016 ~ Christmas Eve

1. Baptism: Means of Salvation (98)
2. Christmas
3. Saint Anastasia
4. Family and Marriage
5. Articles and notices

Dear Reader:With this issue we want to extend to all our readers a most blessed filled Christmas. Continue reading →

Adoration of Isa ( A Fast way to Heaven, ha.)

Billions of Christians around the world are excited to celebrate Christmas this weekend. Those in the world’s second-largest religious community, Muslims, don’t share quite the same excitement. In a few Muslim-majority countries, like Saudi Arabia, Brunei and Somalia, Christmas celebrations are banned. In Turkey, my country, they are not illegal, but some Islamist groups still organize annual protests against Christmas trees and Santa Claus costumes, which they consider Western impositions. MORE

In his annual Christmas address to the Vatican bureaucracy, Pope Francis on Thursday (Dec. 22) warned that those engaged in “malicious resistance” to the reform of the Roman Curia are inspired by the devil.

It marked the third consecutive year that the pope has slammed the highest levels of the Catholic Church’s administration in his annual holiday greeting at the Vatican. MORE

The children told prosecutors the two Roman Catholic priests repeatedly raped them by an image of the Virgin Mary inside the small school chapel in remote northwestern Argentina. Only their tormenters would have heard their cries because the other children at the school were deaf. MORE

World  Wow, it took them 40 years to see the light.

One of the top bishops in the Catholic Church, American Cardinal Raymond Burke, said there is “a very serious division in the Church which has to be mended” or it “could develop into a formal schism.” MORE

American Jewish support for Israel is eroding. But the most important reason is not Israel’s policy on the Palestinians. More significant is the unending submission of Israeli leaders to the dictates of the government-sponsored Orthodox religious establishment. MORE

Suicide and depression and being turned into “sacrament dispensing machines” are part of an ongoing struggle for many Irish priests.

Diocesan priests in Ireland are ““often pitied, patronised, reviled, insulted, disrespected, ignored and resented.”

These words came from Fr Brendan Hoban at last week’s annual meeting of the Association of Catholic Priests (ACP). MORE

The blood of St Januarius has failed to liquefy at the expected time prompting concerns about what it might signify.

St Januarius was a Bishop of Naples who is believed to have been martyred around the year 305 during the Diocletian persecution. MORE