Comments for Holy Family at http://www.thecatholicthing.org , comment 1 to 3 out of 3 comments http://www.thecatholicthing.org Sun, 19 May 2013 16:13:11 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/holy-family.html#comment-15105 Postscript: JMW Turner is a favorite of mine and I was unaware of this painting of the Holy Family. Thank You. - Graham Combs Sun, 30 Dec 2012 11:55:31 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/holy-family.html#comment-15104 I once wrote to the pastor of the church where I attend the Mass that the campaigns to abolish Nativity scenes from public spaces is not rooted in any Constitutional principle but in the desire to abolish the very image of the Holy Family and thereby family as we know it must be. Fr. Bramwell explains just why this is so. Those of us from broken families were the most susceptible to those ideas about villages and communes raising children but then again those fortunate to have intact and loving families assumed that somehow these things happened by magic. When "family values" became a punch line we should have known we were in trouble. Family is the value and the Holy Family is the gold standard. It may be way Christmas has such a strong undertow of nostalgia and sadness and yet some how hope erupts through and from that melancholy. Will 2013 be the year that the Church in particular but the country as a whole comes to understand what we have been doing or allowing to be done? I pray so. - Graham Combs Sun, 30 Dec 2012 11:54:16 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/holy-family.html#comment-15101 At Cana, Christ's presence and His Blessing raised Roman Catholic marriage to a SACRAMENT which brings graces to this union which it would not otherwise receive. Catholic couples should respond each day to this gift and to this responsibility with DAILY PRAYER as their enemies are many, from their government, sometimes members of the Church the media and the economic environment. These couples have to strive to be exceptional because, as Fr. John A.Hardon+ has noted, "ordinary Catholics" will not not succeed. - Manfred Sun, 30 Dec 2012 03:02:50 +0100