The Three Comings of Christ...
During this Advent season, we are called to contemplate three distinct comings of Christ. The first is his coming in the past, twenty centuries ago at the first Christmas. Answering the Prophet Isaiah’s plea, our Lord rent the heavens and came down for the sake of his servants by assuming a human nature. Through the Incarnation, God wrought an awesome deed we could not have hoped for, something unheard of from of old...
Pope Francis on First Sunday of Advent: ‘I’m Improving, but My Voice Still Doesn’t Work’...
There are many benefits to being a Catholic convert...
As an adult convert to the Catholic faith of long standing (I came into the Church in 1997 at the tender age of 23), I am very grateful for the completion of the faith first given to me in baptism in a Christian Reformed Church in 1978. For most of my life as a Catholic I have experienced both love and admiration from cradle Catholics. While I’m happy to take the love, sometimes the admiration makes me a bit nervous.
There’s an Advent lesson hidden in Thomas Cole’s series of paintings, “The Voyage of Life”...
“How I have walked ... day after day, and all alone, to see if there was not something among the old things which was new!” wrote the American painter Thomas Cole. Advent is a kind of walking, like an artist, looking for what has not been seen before. As we begin a new liturgical year, we eagerly scan the horizon, looking for the new graces God will send. We walk familiar terrain, hoping to see what is new. And the lesson is that in Advent, there is always something new to see.
I do not regret acting on the assumption that the Pope would be above petty quarrels...
Like any journalist I hate to be beaten to a story, and this week Catholic World News (CWN) was late on a big one. Yet I have no regrets. If you’ll join me for a few minutes behind my editorial desk, I’ll explain why, and in the process, tell you something about CWN and about the Catholic world we cover. Last Saturday, when I read the first report on La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana...
This Sunday, We Look at the Church and Say: ‘Come, Lord Jesus! Enough Is Enough’...
Lord Jesus, please come. Enough is enough. We don’t understand what you’re doing. Are you avoiding us? Why? We need you here. Surely you have noticed! We make our own the urgent words of your prophets and evangelists on the First Sunday of Advent Year B. There, we see that you told us what it would be like, waiting for you. You were right. “It is like a man traveling abroad,” you say in Sunday’s Gospel. “You do not know when the lord of the house is coming, whether in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or in the morning.” The Church expected you in the morning...
The Tsar, the rule of law, and the making of a legend...
Last night, I made it to the movies to see the new Napoleon biopic. I’ll spare you a full amateur film review, though I thought it was by no means on a par with Ridley Scott’s great works but still pretty good. The French news magazine Le Point called the film “very anti-French and very pro-British.” I would say it definitely lived up to that promising review. One of the most interesting figures in Napoleonic history is Tsar Alexander I...
The Baby Indi Gregory tragedy (and the NHS itself) reminds us that doctors aren’t deities...
With the God of the Bible having largely disappeared from public consciousness in Great Britain, the closest thing to a replacement deity is the British National Health Service. Created after World War II, the NHS was the object of intense affection for decades and, as recently as this year, 72% of Britons polled said that the NHS was “crucial” to their society. This obsessive and often mawkish devotion to a false god has made a wholesale reform of the NHS — or, better, its replacement — virtually impossible. And the NHS is desperately in need of reform or replacement.
We Tried 8 Methods of Cooking Bacon and the Winner Was Hands Down the Best...
If your only tool is a hammer: A problem of focus...
Here’s How to Get the Special Nativity Scene Plenary Indulgence in December and January...
Becciu’s Nixon moment: In media blitz, cardinal insists he is not a crook...
8 Fascinating Facts About Equatorial Countries...
The ‘Mediterranea’ NGO scandal is a reminder that a Pope’s friends can be as dangerous as his enemies...
Perhaps under the heading that no good deed ever goes unpunished, Pope Francis today finds himself dragged into a new controversy which, among other things, illustrates that even the very best of intentions have the potential to generate heartache. The case centers on an Italian non-governmental organization called “Mediterranea,” the head of which is a former leader in the “no-global” movement and a longtime leftist activist named Luca Casarini, who recently took part in the Synod of Bishops on Synodality as a special nominee of Pope Francis.
Who cares when you put up your Christmas lights?
Taking a break from doom-scrolling about the war in Israel, I noticed chatter on social media about Christmas. For many, this was the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend — those last moments before getting back to regular routines. Rather than focusing on the coming of the Infant Jesus, the comments were about hell. Specifically, going to hell for putting up Christmas decorations early...
Why we are (or are not) so often in the wrong...
I have a significant fear of being wrong. It is not that I simply want to avoid the embarrassment of being wrong about some question of fact. The problem is that I do not want to be wrong about the difference between virtue and vice in my own personal life. I don’t want to find out only after I die that some habitual attitude or behavior led to the accumulation of unrecognized sins. Insofar as these are unrecognized without deliberate fault, they would be venial sins...
Meet Peter Sonski, the Devout Catholic 2024 Presidential Candidate You’ve Never Heard Of...
The Long Weekend, Super Sunday, or Double Christmas — how will you do Mass this Dec. 25?
Kissinger was counselor not just to presidents, but to popes...
150 Years Ago, St. John Henry Newman Preached a Sermon (“The Infidelity of the Future”) That’s Coming True Before Our Eyes...
St. John Henry Newman’s name was oft taken in vain during the recent Synod on Synodality for a synodal Church. Thankfully, the American bishops showed it due reverence at their recent meeting in Baltimore, voting in favor of Newman being declared a doctor of the Church. Throughout the long synodal process, whenever a divergence from Catholic teaching was proposed, Newman’s name was surely to be invoked in the manner of an ancient superstition...
Pope Francis Says He Has ‘Very Acute Infectious Bronchitis’ and Canceled Dubai Trip to Avoid Temperature Extremes...
Pope Francis told health care professionals on Thursday that he has “very acute infectious bronchitis” and was advised not to travel to Dubai to avoid the extreme change in temperature.The pope, who will turn 87 on Dec. 17, quipped, “As you can see, I am alive,” as he met participants in a health care ethics seminar in a morning audience at the Vatican.
Socialism, capitalism, idealism, and a reason American politics is what it is...
The expensive designer suits struck me, as did the very high end stereo. I’d heard him speak on world hunger in college a few times, where he’d speak in faded jeans, sandals, and a peasant work shirt. His politics were correspondingly leftwing. His appeals to help feed the world’s hungry included calls for his affluent American audience to live simpler lives. He implied that the world’s poor lacked food because we all had too much. He cried sometimes.
St. John Henry Newman and ‘The Infidelity of the Future’...
Pope Francis Tries to Settle Accounts...
For years now, Pope Francis’s governance of the Roman Catholic Church has been seemingly designed to drive the church’s conservative and liberal wings ever further apart. Thus the persistent question hanging over his pontificate: How will he hold this thing together? By opening debate on a wide array of hot-button subjects without delivering explicit changes, he has encouraged the church’s progressives to push the envelope as far as possible...
Cardinal Burke and the Pope, a Miraculous Medal, and the News...
Here are the readings for the upcoming First Sunday of Advent...
Get this entire Catholic website as an instant digital download...The full contents of the New Advent website are available as a digital download. It includes the Catholic Encyclopedia, Church Fathers, Summa, Bible and more and it's only $19.99...
CATHOLIC LINKS
Adoration: Adoration DirectoryAudio: Lighthouse
Bibles: Douay - Knox - NAB - RSVCE
Blogs: Blog Directory
Bulletins: Seek and Find
Calendars: Easter Table
Catechisms: Baltimore Catechism - Catechism of the Catholic Church
Events: Catholic Event Finder
Forums: Catholics Answers
Novenas: Pray More Novenas
HHS Mandate: Becket Fund
Jobs: Jobs for Catholics
Latin: Ecclesiastical Latin Resources
Latin Mass: TLM Altar Server Tutorial - TLM Mass Directory
Mass Times #1: MassTimes
Mass Times #2: Catholic Mass Time
Movie Reviews: USCCB Movie Reviews
Panoramas: St. John Lateran - Sistine Chapel
Readings: Today's Readings (USCCB)
Retreats: U.S. Retreats and Retreat Centers
OTHER LINKS
Cameras: EarthCam (Live) - Aerial PanoramasComics: Calvin and Hobbes - C&H Search Engine - Dilbert - Peanuts
Customer Service: GetHuman
Find Things: Mailboxes (USA) - Payphones - Phone Numbers
Money: Missing Money
Privacy: Do Not Call
Reading Lists: USLHE - Marines
Scanners: Air Traffic Control - Radio Reference - Broadcastify
Shopping (Local): Yard Sales
Tracking: Airplanes - ISS - Satellites - Ships #1 - Ships #2
Travel (Flying): Turbulence - VFR Maps - SeatGuru - FlightAware
Travel (Hotels): Bed Bug Registry
Weather: ECMRF (Europe) - NCAR/RAP - Wind Map - National Weather Service (USA)