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From closets to subway tile: How previous epidemics shaped the design of your home…
Subway tile in Nate Berkus and Jeremiah Brent’s New York apartment Photo: Douglas Friedman If you’re doing your part and social distancing from inside your home, you may start to notice small details of your house or apartment you hadn’t thought about before—like why your older home doesn’t have a closet, or how white subway tile became so ubiquitous. You may also be wondering if there’s anything you can do—aside from the usual cleaning and disinfecting process—to help keep your home as virus-free as possible during the coronavirus outbreak. Whether you realize it or not, a number of the design features in our homes today originated, or were popularized, because of previous infectious disease outbreaks, like the 1918 flu pandemic, tuberculosis, and dysentery. There is a very long, very int...
Can Christians go woke?
If we have suffered wounds from rampant infidelity to Christ, we won’t resolve them by a different sort of infidelity to him. The division between orthodoxy and ideology among Christians has reached a new level of obstinacy. Both sides fear the other poses an existential threat to their core values. And in a way both are correct. By Noelle Mering There is a recurring movie scene, some version of which might be familiar to most, where a woman, fed up and visibly disgusted, gets in a car and tells the driver to take her anywhere but here. Her aversion to what she is leaving behind is palpable and her destination is irrelevant. It’s a funny encapsulation of that feeling of having had enough with such intensity that we are consumed by the thing we are rejecting. But in reality, of course...
Some motivation to say the Liturgy of the Hours…
Someone writes: What advice would you give to a priest that had trouble staying loyal to the liturgy of the hours–especially if they have trouble finding them fruitful or just a checklist thing to do? I’d have several pieces of advice: 1) We all go through periods of spiritual dryness in which particular activities do not seem fruitful to us and more like a checklist. Do not worry about this. Accomplishing our duties even when they do not seem personally rewarding actually increases the merit of doing them, as it is persevering in spite of difficulty. This represents the principle that God uses to bring good out of adversity, the supreme example of which is Christ’s redemption for the world from the Cross. However, the same principle is at work in our lives when we do what we should in spi...
Vatican congregation issues new norms for ecclesiastical institutions of higher learning…
Archbishop Zani said that the instructions aimed to promote a missionary spirit among ecclesiastical higher education institutions. VATICAN CITY — The Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education issued Wednesday three new instructions on ecclesiastical institutions of higher education. The congregation issued the new norms concerning the affiliation, aggregation, and incorporation of such institutions Dec. 9, in Italian, French, Spanish and Polish. Archbishop Vincenzo Zani, the congregation’s secretary, told Vatican News that the instructions sought to strengthen the worldwide network of ecclesiastical institutions. The instructions state that ecclesiastical institutions of higher education must apply to the congregation when seeking a change regarding affiliation, aggregatio...
8 ways to gain a plenary indulgence in the Year of St. Joseph…
This is amazing news! 🙌 Pope Francis declared the new liturgical year as the Year of St. Joseph. The year begins Dec. 8, on the 150th anniversary of Pope Bl. Pius IX’s declaration of St. Joseph as patron of the Catholic Church. It is also the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. Pope Francis establishes this year “in which every faithful following [St. Joseph’s] example can daily strengthen their life of faith in the full fulfillment of God’s will.” “All the faithful will thus have the opportunity to commit themselves, with prayers and good works, to obtain with the help of Saint Joseph, head of the celestial Family of Nazareth, comfort and relief from the serious human and social tribulations that today grip the contemporary world,” the decree states. The decree comes after Fr....
In memory of Walter Hooper (1931-2020), secretary and literary executor of C.S. Lewis — and a man who had nearly 50 godchildren…
And I smile to think How God’s completenessFlowed round my incompletenessRound my restlessnessHis Rest. – Walter’s Desired Epitaph When I was a junior in undergraduate, I went off to Oxford for a term abroad. It was early January and the August or September prior I had begun catechesis to enter the Catholic Church. Now, having travelled in the middle of it, I was keen to find a good priest to prepare me. The day after I arrived, I happened to pass by the Oxford Oratory, where, as a small sign on its gates boasts, St John Henry Newman had preached, Gerard Manley Hopkins was a priest, and J.R.R. Tolkien a regular. Another sign listed Mass at 10.00a on Saturday, so I planned to go the next day. After that morning Mass, I looked around for a man in a collar and saw one talking...
Pope’s Wednesday audience: ‘Even death trembles when a Christian prays’…
VATICAN CITY — Prayer is so powerful that “even death trembles when a Christian prays,” Pope Francis said at the general audience Wednesday. In his address Dec. 9, the pope said that this was the case because Christ triumphed over death at the resurrection. “Even death trembles when a Christian prays, because it knows that everyone who prays has an ally stronger than it has: the Risen Lord,” he said. “Death has already been defeated in Christ, and the day will come when everything will be final, and it will no longer scorn our life and our happiness.” In his audience address, the pope continued his cycle of catechesis on prayer, which he began in May. He dedicated the address to the prayer of petition, which the Catechism of the Catholic Church recognizes as one of the principal form...
Of preludes, postludes, and appreciation for sacred liturgy…
In the first video below there is a scene, not exceedingly rare today, of a piano placed in an airport or shopping mall. A person approaches the piano and begins to play, meekly at first, but then displaying virtuoso talent. Soon a crowd assembles in appreciation of the remarkable gift before them, both the man and the music. Sadly, I have not noticed a similar appreciation expressed by Catholics at Sunday Mass, weddings, or other similar moments when virtuosity was displayed by the church organist. For example, a few years ago I was at a large Mass of the faithful at a large church in Washington, D.C. where very talented organists are known to play. For the postlude, the organist played the Symphonia from Cantata 29 by J.S. Bach, a phenomenal and difficult piece (see the second video also...
Why would CBS News say that Archbishop Wilton Gregory was the first ‘black’ cardinal?
It was the kind of newsroom error that lights up Twitter, while also inspiring more than a few folks in cyberspace to say to themselves, “I need to let GetReligion know about this!” I am referring to the headline at CBSNews.com that currently proclaims: “First Black American Cardinal said he hopes to begin on ‘positive’ note with Biden after contentious relationship with Trump.” When that story went online, it said that Washington, D.C., Archbishop Wilton Gregory was the first “Black Cardinal” — period. See the difference? Other news organizations made the same error. At Axios, for example, the headline eventually morphed to become: “Wilton Gregory becomes first Black cardinal in U.S.” Note that the URL for that story still contains this: “www.axios.com/washington-archbishop-first-black-ca...
Bishops who say they’ll give Communion to Biden are giving scandal to their brother bishops, to priests, and to the Catholic faithful…
Readers may recall that during the 2004 presidential campaign, Sen. John Kerry led the Democratic ticket. As a Catholic, Kerry held certain policy views that conflicted with the moral beliefs of his Church. This led to internal tensions among U.S. bishops about how to handle the matter of Holy Communion for Catholic public officials who publicly and persistently diverge from Catholic teaching on issues like abortion. At the time, Washington’s then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, along with Pittsburgh’s Bishop Donald Wuerl, had very different views from my own regarding how to proceed. I believed then, and believe now, that publicly denying Communion to public officials is not always wise or the best pastoral course. Doing so in a loud and forceful manner may cause more harm t...
St. Joseph, proclaimed Patron of the Universal Church 150 years ago, is needed today more than ever…
Dec. 8, 2020, marks the 150th anniversary of Blessed Pius IX proclaiming St. Joseph as “Patron of the Universal Church.” The timing was providential, for several reasons. The date also celebrated the 16th anniversary of Pius IX’s proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. With the declaration on that Dec. 8, Pope Pius IX called the day “sacred to the Immaculate Virgin Mother of God and Spouse of the Most Chaste Joseph.” Now, 150 years later, Father Matthew Spencer, provincial superior of the Oblates of St. Joseph, finds the title “perfectly apt and very important to our times.” He makes strong connections between today’s society and the situation during the time of the proclamation. “The time when Pius IX lived was facing a lot of darkness, and the Church was facing a lot of p...
Apostolic Letter ‘Patris Corde’ on the 150th Anniversary of the proclamation of Saint Joseph as Patron of the Universal Church…
APOSTOLIC LETTER PATRIS CORDE OF THE HOLY FATHERFRANCIS ON THE 150th ANNIVERSARY OF THE PROCLAMATION OF SAINT JOSEPHAS PATRON OF THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH WITH A FATHER’S HEART: that is how Joseph loved Jesus, whom all four Gospels refer to as “the son of Joseph”.[1] Matthew and Luke, the two Evangelists who speak most of Joseph, tell us very little, yet enough for us to appreciate what sort of father he was, and the mission entrusted to him by God’s providence. We know that Joseph was a lowly carpenter (cf. Mt 13:55), betrothed to Mary (cf. Mt 1:18; Lk 1:27). He was a “just man” (Mt 1:19), ever ready to carry out God’s will as revealed to him in the Law (cf. Lk 2:22.27.39) and through four dreams (cf. Mt 1:20; 2:13.19.22). After a long and tiring journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, he beheld t...
