8 Things You Need to Know About the Immaculate Conception...
December 8th marks the feast of the Immaculate Conception. It celebrates an important point of Catholic teaching, and it is a holy day of obligation. Here are 8 things you need to know about the teaching and the way we celebrate it. First, who does the Immaculate Conception refer to? There's a popular idea that it refers to Jesus' conception by the Virgin Mary. It doesn't. Instead, it refers to the special way in which the Virgin Mary herself was conceived...
The Vatican trial, now ending, is a remembrance of things we thought were past...
In the galaxy of Italian Catholicism, Alberto Melloni and Sandro Magister may not quite be matter and anti-matter, but they’re definitely not on the same planet. Melloni is a progressive historian and essayist, an exponent of the “Bologna School” and its liberal reading of Vatican II, while Magister, an influential journalist, is a voice for the church’s conservative and traditional wing. When Melloni and Magister agree on something, therefore, you can be reasonably sure it’s beyond politics...
4 Ways Life is Like a Pig Slaughter...
It might sound like a jaded exclamation. In fact I am in complete earnest. And I rejoice that more people are having this experience once again. As commonly enacted until just a couple of generations ago, a pig slaughter can bring into focus key aspects of human life itself. Here are four things that are true of both an old-time pig slaughter–done on a homestead–and life.
In Bethlehem, These Modern-Day Shepherds Are Tending a Flock of Children Who Need God’s Mercy — and Your Help...
Amid the turmoil and war between Israel and Hamas, the Holy Child Program in the West Bank stands out as a model of help for both Christian and Muslim children and their families. Slightly less than 2 miles from Bethlehem and 6 miles from Jerusalem, the program in Beit Sahour was founded by the Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist — who are based 5,613 miles away in Meriden, Connecticut — to help children who suffer from untreated complex mental-health issues and experiences of intergenerational trauma...
Boy Walks 7 Miles on Muddy Roads to Receive Confirmation, Gets a Blessing From the Pope...
Pope Francis Prays for Victims of Bombing of Catholic Mass in the Philippines...
Pope Francis offered his condolences after at least four people were killed and 54 injured in a bombing at a Catholic Mass on Sunday in the Philippines. The pope sent a condolence telegram on Dec. 3 expressing his spiritual closeness to all affected by the bombing of the 7 a.m. Mass held in a gymnasium on the campus of Mindanao State University in the southern Philippines.
8 Fascinating Facts About Equatorial Countries...
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...
The art of speaking truth: Lessons from the prophet Nathan...
He was speaking truth to power and speaking it to a powerful man with a record of killing people who got in his way. But he didn’t walk into the room and condemn the man for his sins, perhaps because the powerful man would have reacted and not repented. He told the man a story about a rich man who stole from a poor man, and I’m guessing he knew the powerful man well enough that he expected the story to enrage him...
Church lockdown closures caused widespread mental and physical harm, says survey...
The closure of Catholic churches during the 2020 lockdown contributed to widespread mental and physical suffering, according to the results of a new study. The survey carried out by the Catholic Union found 62 per cent of people reporting that their mental and physical wellbeing were adversely effected directly as a result of not being able to go to church.
Straighten the Path: A Reflection on the Second Sunday of Advent...
Our God is coming. The time of exile—the long separation of humankind from God due to sin—is about to end. This is the good news proclaimed in today’s liturgy. Isaiah in today’s First Reading promises Israel’s future release and return from captivity and exile. But as today’s Gospel shows, Israel’s historic deliverance was meant to herald an even greater saving act by God—the coming of Jesus to set Israel and all nations free from bondage to sin, to gather them up and carry them back to God.
The good Magi and evil King Herod give us much to think about...
This is how the second chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel introduces us to the noble Magi and the infamous King Herod. Their good and bad examples in the story of Christmas present much for us to learn from and reflect on. The gospel tells us the Magi were astrologers from the East who saw a celestial sign which firmly convinced them the heir to the Jewish throne was born. The Magi were so convinced by this sign that they packed up valuable gifts and traveled...
It’s not hard to see why Disney’s terrible new “Wish” movie has bombed so badly at the box office...
That Arian punch, clerical cool, and the sound of our stratosphere...
Celebrating the sainted bishop of Myra is a custom in countries around the world, with Catholics and other believers putting out their shoes on the doorstep, to receive in them some candies and coins. You probably know that this custom got started the same way that fireplace Christmas stockings did — because of the story in which St. Nicholas snuck bags of dowry money into the home of a poor family in his diocese, so that the family’s daughters wouldn’t be sold into slavery.
The Three Comings of Christ...
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...
This Sunday, We Look at the Church and Say: ‘Come, Lord Jesus! Enough Is Enough’...
The Tsar, the rule of law, and the making of a legend...
The Baby Indi Gregory tragedy (and the NHS itself) reminds us that doctors aren’t deities...
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