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Lenten Message from Our Director "Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God" (Mt 5:8). It is a special gift of Divine Providence that the sixth commandment and the sixth beatitude are linked.

Wanted: Your Input for Courage Newsletter First Courage E-Newsletter February 2016 Dear Courage and EnCourage friends, We are fast approaching the third anniversary of the Courage e-newsletter in February. Since then our email list has doubled to more than 3000 subscribers! To revisit past newsletters, please check out our newsletter archives. Thanks to your dedicated interest, the rates at which our subscribers open our emails and click on links dramatically surpass the industry average. Building on this great start, we'd like to invite you to please fill out this short survey to let us know what you like and where you think we could improve. Please also include your suggestions for content, topics we can address, or your favorite resources to share. Recommendations can be included in the survey, or you may send us an email anytime. God bless you, The Courage Central Office

The Pope asks us to pray a Rosary daily that the Virgin Mary protect the Church in these times of crisis, and to pray to St. Michael the Archangel that he defend the Church from the attacks of the devil.

Dear Bishops of the Holy Catholic Church, When I was made aware of the efforts being made by pro-LGBT groups trying to persuade Catholic Bishops to change Church teaching on homosexuality, specifically at this year's Youth Synod, it devastated me.

Having already outlined Pope St. John Paul's thought on the human person and love as it is found in Love and Responsibility, the next series of articles are devoted to a second text, Man and Woman He Created Them, now known as the Theology of the Body (ToB), which he delivered as Holy Father. ...

What does it mean to be a man?

Explaining the Church's teaching on same-sex desires in today's world isn't easy. We feel hesitation, embarrassment...shame.

"Whenever the Church says 'no', she must also say 'yes'. There must be a 'yes' because that is what the Gospel is, as St Paul reminds us: an outstretched hand of practical help that understands the tangle of the human heart."

This is the fourth of a series of articles outlining Pope St. John Paul II's thought on human embodiment and sexuality.  'The very "core" of choosing a person must be personal.' (Love and Responsibility, 116)

Fr. Philip Bochanski, the Executive Director of Courage, addresses this challenging question in this short clip. Please feel free to forward this to others or to post the video on social media.

Precision of terms in the field hospital by Ann Schneible  During my tenure as a journalist in Rome, I had the opportunity to cover the 2014 and 2015 Synods on the Family, and one of the topics of discussion was the Catholic Church's languagesurrounding certain pastoral matters, particularly homosexuality. It wasn't a question of Latin vs. modern languages that we were concerned with. Rather, it was the magisterium's mode of expression (best translated by the Italian word "linguaggio") when addressing this topic: specifically, the terms "objectively" and "intrinsically disordered" used to describe same-sex attractions (SSA) and same-sex intimate acts, respectively. In today's cultural climate, where it is becoming increasingly easy to (even inadvertently) close someone off to constructive dialogue with the wrong word, these terms present a significant pastoral and communications challenge.

This is the third of a series of articles outlining Pope St. John Paul II's thought on human embodiment and sexuality. Read the first installment here and the second here.  Love lives not only within the lovers--as two numerically and psychologically distinct loves--but also between lovers. Wojtyła says, 'love is always some reciprocal relation of persons ... based on a relation to the good.' (Love and Responsibility, 57)

Ministering to millennials by Anna Carter Born in the late 80's, I came to youth ministry in the age of worship song hand motions and purity cards. The gay rights debate raged far and away from my Midwestern town of origin...or least severely under the radar. ...

Dear Friends of Courage and EnCourage, Fr. Philip Bochanski Executive Director These are the days of our Easter joy. ... As Catholics we are truly "set apart", consecrated to the Lord as his holy people. ... What a debt of gratitude we owe to the Lord for all that he has given us, especially through the Courage and EnCourage apostolates.

One of the most pressing issues we face today is a crisis of the self, which just happens to also be a crisis of being, time, faith, morality, family, society, culture, you name it--a crisis of everything, really.

One of the greatest challenges facing persons who experience same-sex attraction is the conflict between what the secular world tells us will bring us happiness, and our interior feelings. The world sends out messages that we should act upon whatever impulses we feel, as the pursuit of those desires is where real satisfaction is found.

“It is possible, with God’s grace, for everyone to live a chaste life, including persons experiencing same-sex attraction. To deny that the power of God’s grace enables those with homosexual attractions to live chastely is to deny, effectively, that Jesus has risen from the dead.”