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As Time cries, “Advance!”, we look back on a year that might fill the mouth of Time with lamentation. The Syrian civil war, the Christchurch mosque massacre, economic collapse in Venezuela, Hong Kong protests, the El Paso Walmart shooting, the Sri Lanka Easter terror attack, the Notre-Dame fire, and political upheaval in America. What is the common man to conclude when considering the depravations and deprivations of his fellows as church bells chime on New Year’s Eve? There is no better tale to ring an old year out and a new year in than Charles Dickens’s The Chimes. This little story by the great storyteller deals with the temptation to look back on the tragedies of a year gone by with dejection, even believing that man is “born bad.” While Catholics do not believe that man is born bad, ...

Let’s consider this an educational moment. Since journalists are paying lots of attention, right now, to Christianity Today and other things linked to the late Billy Graham, let’s do a flashback to some poll numbers published in the fall of 2018. This polling was done by the Billy Graham Center Institute at Wheaton College, working with LifeWay Research. One of the goals was to understand why evangelicals voted the way that they did in 2016. Lots of things grabbed my attention, but here are some numbers that I think journalists need to ponder at the moment in light of the recent CT editorial by departing editor Mark Galli. You may have heard about it. The headline proclaimed: “Trump Should Be Removed from Office.” But back to CT in 2018. The bytes that jumped out at me: * Only half of the ...

 |  Dec. 31, 2019 COMMENTARY: May 2020 be a year full of grace for everyone. We’ll all need it. During and after the grim martial law period in the early 1980s, many freedom-minded Poles would greet each other on Jan. 1 with a sardonic wish: “May the new year be better than you know it’s going to be!” As 2020 opens, that salutation might well be adopted by Catholics concerned about the future of the Church, for more hard news is coming. So let’s get some of that out of the way, preemptively, before considering some resolutions that might help us all deal with the year ahead in faith, hope, and charity. Financial scandals in the Vatican will intensify. It’s been clear for some months now that the dam of secrecy, masking irresponsibility (and worse), is cracking. So expect more dis...

By Tom Hoopes, December 26, 2019 The family is essential to society’s health and a rock of emotional security to all who give themselves to it. Family life is difficult drudgery and can have a heart-numbing effect on our dreams and hopes. This Sunday, the feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph Year A, the readings show both. For Joseph in today’s Gospel, family life is a combination of high purpose and hard work. The Gospel begins with the departure of the magi and the message of an angel. It is hard to imagine a more exalted moment for a father, when great men have sought out his child and angels intervene for his safety. But the message of the angel must have been hard for Joseph to take: “Rise, take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I tell yo...

(CNN) — While most good things get more expensive, one dream got ridiculously cheap in 2019 thanks to the rise of the €1 home in Italy. The story quickly went viral, drawing global interest, particularly as other towns and villages from the northern Alps to sunny Sicily were attempting the same thing. Soon, some of these towns found themselves besieged by buyers. Mayors fielded thousands of requests, websites crashed, sleepy villages were invaded and locals freaked out. The silence of narrow alleys was broken by foreign voices and loud reporters. Dusty cobwebbed doors were unlocked for the first time in decades as people lined up early in the morning to secure an Italian casa dolce casa (home sweet home). As CNN reported in November, some of the first buyers have already moved in and, for ...

Just as when He awoke in swaddling clothes in a manger, Christ can awaken in our hearts in prayer. In that mysterious moment, His eyes communicate the same invincible joy that they did when they gazed into the eyes of His virgin mother. We know in that single instant what she knew — that He has given Himself to us and for us, and that we are the object of His delight.  If we allow ourselves to be captivated by His gaze of love, we will soon find that we cannot but give ourselves to Him in return. Just as He opened His eyes and saw the world for the first time, when we allow Him to open His eyes in our prayer, it is as if we have been seen for the first time. When we rest with Him in silent prayer, the Word who made the world opens His eyes anew and sees us and the whole world again th...

Photo by guenterguni / Getty Images. Medieval monks had a terrible time concentrating. And concentration was their lifelong work! Their tech was obviously different from ours. But their anxiety about distraction was not. They complained about being overloaded with information, and about how, even once you finally settled on something to read, it was easy to get bored and turn to something else. They were frustrated by their desire to stare out of the window, or to constantly check on the time (in their case, with the Sun as their clock), or to think about food or sex when they were supposed to be thinking about God. They even worried about getting distracted in their dreams. Sometimes they accused demons of making their minds wander. Sometimes they blamed the body’s base instincts. But the...

The Sunday that falls in the Octave of the Solemnity of Christmas is dedicated to celebrating the Holy Family.  The Readings for this Sunday focus on the rights and responsibilities of family members toward each other, and the Gospel focuses on the role of the “most forgotten” member of the Holy Family, St. Joseph, who cared for and protected the Blessed Mother and infant Jesus through the dangerous early years of Jesus’ childhood. God sets a father in honor over his children;a mother’s authority he confirms over her sons.Whoever honors his father atones for sins,and preserves himself from them.When he prays, he is heard;he stores up riches who reveres his mother.Whoever honors his father is gladdened by children,and, when he prays, is heard.Whoever reveres his father will live a long...

“By God, you will be no doctor or apothecary, but a great composer.”—Jean-François Le Sueur, to Hector Berlioz, upon hearing the premier of the Messe Solennelle Saint-Roch Church, Paris Its premier in 1825 marked one of the most remarkable musical debuts ever by a composer, and the score’s rediscovery 167 years later in a church attic is one of the most astounding events in musicological history. For the composer of this work eventually destroyed all but one of the surviving copies of the score. This is the Messe solennelle of the young Hector Berlioz (1803-1869), who had defied his parents’ wishes for him to be a doctor—earning him the curse of his mother that would haunt him for the rest of his life—fleeing his home to study with the composer Jean-François Le Sueur. Berlioz had little mu...

The field of astronomy this decade delivered an embarrassment of riches: stunning accomplishment after stunning accomplishment from the exploration of space. Humans sent robots to the farthest reaches of the solar system, to the sun, to the gas giant Jupiter, and more. Meanwhile, our telescopes peered deeper into the cosmos. They showed us images never seen before, like the first-ever image of a black hole, which was just declared to be Science’s “breakthrough of the year.” We put together our favorite astronomy images and videos from the 2010s, in no particular order. Some of these images are awe inspiring for their beauty, or their remoteness, or for helping us understand our tiny place in the universe. Others are awe inspiring for the engineering achievements they represent, and give ho...

What is a perennial truth if nothing other than a truth which springs up every year? We who are strangers and sojourners in the city of man, we who aspire towards citizenship in the city of God, we know that Christmas is all about celebrating Christ’s birth. All of Christian literature, all of the literature that celebrates or dimly shadows Christendom stands in testimony that Christendom is the Feast! Search your Homer. Search your Virgil. Sit with Beowulf at the mead-benches in Hrothgar’s Heorot or with Gawain at the halls of Arthur or King Bertilak. All of us, pilgrims proceeding to Canterbury know that our pilgrimage begins and ends with feasting! The culmination of Christendom is centered around the sacrum convivium, the sacred feast in which Christ Himself is ultimately consumed! And...