A spiritual awakening is stirring among young people in the West, according to a steady stream of survey data.
In February, the Pew Research Center released a report showing that the decade-long decline in Americans identifying as Christian has leveled off. But new studies show that the downward trend is now in full reverse, with the engine driving the change occurring among Generation Z and millennials.
On Monday, Barna Group released data showing that “66% of all U.S. adults say they have made a personal commitment to Jesus that is still important in their life today,” marking “a 12-percentage-point increase since 2021.” The report went on to note that the rise in faith is being particularly driven by those in their 20s and 30s—Gen Z and millennials. “Since the pandemic … Millennials and Gen Z have shown significant increases in commitment to Jesus, while Boomers and Gen X (especially women in these older cohorts) have remained mostly flat in their commitment levels to Jesus,” the group observed
This article was written by Brian N. Chin, an assistant professor of psychology at Trinity College, for The Conversation.
“Avoid screens before bed” is one of the most common pieces of sleep advice. But what if the real problem isn’t screen time— it’s the way we use social media at night? Sleep deprivation is one of the most widespread yet overlooked public health issues, especially among young adults and adolescents. Poor sleep isn’t just about feeling tired — it’s linked to worsened mental health, emotion regulation, memory, academic performance, and even increased risk for chronic illness and early mortality. At the same time, social media is nearly universal among young adults, with 84% using at least one platform daily. While research has long focused on screen time as the culprit for poor sleep, growing evidence suggests that how often people check social media — and how emotionally engaged they are — matters even more than how long they spend online. As a social psychologist and sleep researcher, I study how social behaviors, including social media habits, affect sleep and well-being. Sleep isn’t just an individual behavior; it’s shaped by our social environments and relationships. And one of the most common yet underestimated factors shaping modern sleep? How we engage with social media before bed. Learn how social media use can disrupt sleep — and how to use it without negatively affecting your rest.
(LifeSiteNews) — An Indigenous whistleblower shared his positive experience at a Residential school, debunking the claim that the schools abused and murdered their students.
In an April 5 interview with Rebel News reporter Drea Humphrey, a Kamloops Band member and former Kamloops Indian Residential School student revealed that there was no “genocide” at the schools and many students benefited from the institution.
institution.
“A lot of the students were happy to be there,” the Band member, whose identity was kept anonymous, said. “They were away from abusive families, dysfunctional families, alcoholism. So, they were happy to be there.”
The former student revealed that he was treated well during his time at the residential schools in the 1970s. He also described the priests and nuns who ran the school as good people, referring to Father Noonan, the principal at the time, as “a real nice guy.”
Residential schools, while run by both the Catholic Church and other Christian churches, were mandated and set up by the federal government and ran from the late 19th century until the last school closed in 1996.
While some children did tragically die at the once-mandatory boarding schools, evidence has revealed that many of the children passed away as a result of unsanitary conditions due to underfunding by the federal government, not the Catholic Church.
As a consequence, since 2021, when the mainstream media ran with inflammatory and dubious claims that hundreds of children were buried and disregarded by Catholic priests and nuns who ran some of the schools, over 100 churches have been burned or vandalized across Canada in seeming retribution.
However, to date, there have been no mass graves discovered at any residential schools across Canada.
Pope Francis giving one of his many in-flight press conferences, Sept. 10, 2019 (Edward Pentin photo).
By Edward Pentin
VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis’ death this morning marks the end of a modernising and seemingly benign pontificate for most of the world, but for those who have followed it with any closeness, a time of turmoil, disruption and deep division.
Elected on a mandate of reform, Francis set out to make the Church less self-referential and more mission oriented, closer to the faithful and the peripheries, and more relevant to the times. In many ways he achieved this: those who would never give the Catholic Church a second glance, perceiving that she would not accept them, felt accepted and welcomed.
He strove to embrace Muslims, people with disabilities, migrants, the poor and the homeless, opening facilities for the latter in Rome and creating a Vatican department for the poor headed by the papal almoner whom he elevated to the rank of cardinal. His mission, he said, was to transform the Catholic Church into a “field hospital,” tending to people where they are, not judging them but offering them the Lord’s mercy and love instead.
Francis sought to give women more leadership roles in the Church and was noticeably and controversially eager to embrace LGBTQ people, forcefully speaking out against laws criminalizing homosexuality, disturbing many Catholics — especially in Africa — by allowing non-liturgical blessings of same-sex couples, and permitting civil unions, even though previous popes had firmly opposed such changes.
“He’s my hero,” said the singer Elton John in 2014, the first of many other celebrities, politicians, and well known figures — most of whom support liberal positions at odds with the Church’s teaching — who would go on to express their admiration for the Argentine pontiff.
Francis had a clear ideological vision. The Church’s teaching, he wrote in his 2013 manifesto apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), must “radiate forcefully and attractively” but not be based — although it ultimately was — on “specific ideological options.”
He aimed to create a more listening Church, an “inverted pyramid” that takes the People of God as its starting point — in sum, a grand vision of decentralization ostensibly geared towards creating a more democratic, localized Church “permanently in a state of mission” and seemingly capable of dealing with the complexities of the faith and human relationships in the world today.
But critics warned that such an approach was more akin to a Protestant model that departed from the Church’s apostolic tradition, threatening to undermine Rome’s authority, and the hierarchy in general. Cardinals expressed alarm, notably after a synod on the family in 2014 was rigged to produce a radical and modernist ideological outcome.
More significantly, in his eagerness to embrace the progressive tenet of inclusivity and his own, broad concept of mercy, Francis often set aside canonical limits to papal power, especially when it came to defending some of his friends accused of clerical sex abuse. This also applied to areas of the liturgy (on Holy Thursday, he washed the feet of Muslims and women which had previously never been allowed).
He ruled autocratically, not unusual for a pope who has all legislative, executive and judicial powers, but Francis issued more papal decrees, not dissimilar to executive orders, than any pope in modern history.
Under his watch, bishops, priests, religious and laity who had been bearing good fruit in terms of reverence, spiritual life, fidelity to Catholic doctrine, and booming vocations were cancelled or ostracized. “The more spiritual and supernaturally orientated they were, the more persecution they seem to suffer,” a Portuguese priest told Newsmax on condition of anonymity due to fear of reprisals. “Meanwhile, in other quarters, those who committed abuses against doctrine, moral teaching and the liturgy seemed to go unpunished and were allowed to thrive.”
Following Francis' crackdown on the Latin Mass in 2021, Roman Rite Catholics "have in some cases been relegated to auditoriums and school gyms," notes Francis Rocca on TheAtlantic.com (April 9).
He quotes Pope Francis who claimed that he was allegedly trying "to preserve unity" in the Church.
"But whether the pope seeks unity through reconciliation or repression, he doesn't succeed. The edict [of Francis] has hardened and widened divisions among Catholics and alienated the Church's small but young, passionate and unyielding group of Latin Mass loyalists", Rocca writes.
In an aside, he claims that "most Catholics have accepted" the liturgical reforms, when in fact, in just one decade, half of the Catholics stopped going to church.
Rocca's article refers to the findings of Stephen Cranney, a sociologist at the Catholic University of America, who estimates that many tens of thousands in the United States (out of 75 million Catholics) attend the Roman rite at least occasionally [because they do not have regular access to it].
In 2023, Cranney and Stephen Bullivant, a sociologist of religion, surveyed Catholics and found that half expressed interest in attending the Latin Mass.
According to a recent survey that Cranney and Bullivant conducted of parishes that offer the Latin Mass, 44 percent of Catholics who attended the old rite at least once a month were under the age of 45, compared to only 20 percent of other members of those parishes.
Bk. x Comm. on Luke xxiv We see here the marvelous nature of the Lord's glorified Body. It could enter unseen, and then become seen. It could easily be touched, but Its nature is hard to understand. The disciples were affrighted, and supposed that they had seen a spirit. And therefore the Lord, that He might show us the evidence of His Resurrection, said: Handle Me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see Me have. Therefore it was not by being in a disembodied state, but by the peculiar qualities of the risen and glorified Body that He had passed through closed doors. John xx. 19. For that which is touched or handled is a body.
And now, since our Lesson from Luke here faileth, let us have recourse to John, and consider how that, according to him, xx. 20, then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord, and received the grace of faith. According to Luke, He upbraided them with their unbelief, but according to John He said also, Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Luke, not John, hath, Tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high. Indeed, to me it seemeth as though the one Evangelist had busied himself with the greater and higher matters, and the other with the narrative, and such things as are more human: the one with the course, the other with the essence, of history. For as it is impossible to doubt the word of him who testifieth of these things, John xxi. 24, and who saw these things, and concerning whom we know that his testimony is true, xxi. 24,so is it sinful to think of negligence or falsehood as attaching to the other, even Luke, who earned to himself to be an Evangelist, albeit he was not an Apostle, and therefore we hold that both are truthful, neither are they at variance one with the other, either in the difference of the words they use, or in the sacredness of their characters as Evangelists. For though Luke saith that at the first the Apostles believed not, yet he showeth that afterward they believed: and although, if we regard only the first fact, the Evangelists seem divergent one from the other, yet, when we consider what cometh afterward, we see that they are at one.
The funeral of Pope Francis will take place at 10am local time on Saturday in the square in front of St Peter’s Basilica, the Vatican has announced.
Donald Trump, the US president, Emmanuel Macron, the French president, and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian president, are among world leaders who have confirmed that they will attend.
Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, is also reportedly set to travel to the funeral, but this has yet to be officially confirmed.
The gathering of world leaders for such an event as a pope’s funeral can cause some awkwardness.
In 2005, four kings, 28 prime ministers and 53 presidents attended the funeral of Pope John Paul II.
The then Prince Charles was two seats away from Robert Mugabe, who ignored a European travel ban to attend the funeral.
The pair shook hands, despite two British journalists in Zimbabwe having yet to be acquitted after being arrested for illegally practising journalism without proper accreditation.
Card. Burke: "Prophétis meis"
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Non relíquit hóminem nocére eis: et corrípuit pro eis reges.
Nolíte tángere christos meos: et in prophétis meis nolíte malignári.
-- Sanctae Mariae in Sabbat...
Sabbato in Albis ~ Semiduplex
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*Commemoratio ad Laudes tantum: SS. Cleti et Marcellini Summorum Pontificum
et Martyrum*
Allelúja, allelúja.
*Ps 117:24*
Hæc dies, quam fecit Dóminus: ex...
(LifeSiteNews) — An Indigenous whistleblower shared his positive experience at a Residential school, debunking the claim that the schools abused and murdered their students.
In an April 5 interview with Rebel News reporter Drea Humphrey, a Kamloops Band member and former Kamloops Indian Residential School student revealed that there was no “genocide” at the schools and many students benefited from the institution.
institution.
“A lot of the students were happy to be there,” the Band member, whose identity was kept anonymous, said. “They were away from abusive families, dysfunctional families, alcoholism. So, they were happy to be there.”
The former student revealed that he was treated well during his time at the residential schools in the 1970s. He also described the priests and nuns who ran the school as good people, referring to Father Noonan, the principal at the time, as “a real nice guy.”
Residential schools, while run by both the Catholic Church and other Christian churches, were mandated and set up by the federal government and ran from the late 19th century until the last school closed in 1996.
While some children did tragically die at the once-mandatory boarding schools, evidence has revealed that many of the children passed away as a result of unsanitary conditions due to underfunding by the federal government, not the Catholic Church.
As a consequence, since 2021, when the mainstream media ran with inflammatory and dubious claims that hundreds of children were buried and disregarded by Catholic priests and nuns who ran some of the schools, over 100 churches have been burned or vandalized across Canada in seeming retribution.
However, to date, there have been no mass graves discovered at any residential schools across Canada.
More: https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/former-residential-school-student-debunks-genocide-claims-recalls-positive-experience/