News

By Francis X. Maier, The Catholic Thing - In our house, we cling to the Christmas season like survivors of a torpedoed steamer.  The tree stays up until it’s a fire hazard.  The carols play through the Baptism of the Lord, with an encore or two until Candlemas.  We don’t retire the crèche until Presentation of the Lord.  Christmas anchors our year... One might reasonably ask why.  It’s a fair question.  Easter, not Christmas, is the central event of the Christian calendar. And alas, Christmas now comes with a boatload of vulgar commerce.  Some of it is entertaining. 

By Austin Ruse, Crisis Magazine - While our local diocese is full of horrible-looking churches, it is also full of faithful priests... We have a lot of spaceship churches in these parts, here in Northern Virginia, lots of churches in the round. If they look like churches, which most of them really don’t, they look like they may have been Protestant of a certain vintage... The three local churches we attend on Sunday or daily are perfect examples. Our parish, St. Catherine of Siena, is set on a marvelous piece of pricey ground in Great Falls. What a wonderful setting for something beautiful. Instead, they put up a low-slung bunker-type thing, no shape to it from the outside, flat roof.

By Matthew Plese, OnePeterFive - Drawing from both the wisdom of intellectual giants like Monsignor Joseph Fenton, the catechisms, and objective third party scientists, there can be no doubt that God confirms beyond a shadow of a doubt the truths of Catholic doctrine through miracles. Since miracles can only come from God and not from natural causes, and since God will never confirm a falsehood, legitimate miracles are the validation of a truth by God Himself.

By Msgr. Charles Pope - I open our New Year’s Eve late night Mass (11:15 PM) with the observation that we begin Mass in one year and end in the next. New Year’s Eve highlights the mysterious passage between years. In a way I suppose it is no more mysterious than the passage from Thursday to Friday or from 10:00 AM to 10:01 AM... In one sense, nothing could be simpler than time. I might ask you, “What time is it?” You might reply, “It’s 1:15.” Simple! But time has mysteries about it.