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In the Gospel for this Fourth Sunday of Advent, we step back nine months to March 25th, the feast of the Annunciation, an all-but-hidden event that changed the world. God, whose focal presence departed the Temple just prior to the Babylonian invasion (cf Ez 10:18) and the loss of the Ark of the Covenant, now returns to the ark of Mary’s womb. The glorious presence of God returns now to His people, in an obscure town of fewer than three hundred, a town so small that no road led to it. We are reading here of a pivotal moment in the history of mankind. God not only returns to His people but also becomes one with them in the Incarnation. We do well to consider four aspects of this crucial moment. As we do so, we consider not only Mary’s glories but ours as well (in a subordinate yet real way)....

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio – articles – email ) | Dec 18, 2020 I wish to address the statement promulgated a week ago by five bishops insisting that it is in all cases immoral to allow oneself to be vaccinated with any vaccine which has been tainted by the use of fetal cell lines. This statement was apparently written by the very articulate Athanasius Schneider, an auxiliary bishop of Astana, Kazakhstan, and promulgated jointly by Bishop Schneider; Jan Pawel Lenga, the retired bishop of Karaganda, Kazakhstan; Archbishop Tomash Peta of Astana, Kazakhstan; Cardinal Janis Pujats, the 90-year-old former Archbishop of Riga in Latvia; and Joseph Strickland, bishop of Tyler, Texas. The statement was released on the Crisis Magazine website. It had been added to our library also, for a few...

Sister Mary Elizabeth, vicar general of the Sisters of Life, holds 6-month-old Esther at the religious community’s Holy Respite residence in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of New York City May 4, 2016. Holy Respite serves as a home and support center for pregnant women in crisis and new mothers. (CNS photo/Gregory A. Shemitz) “Please stop.” “Please shut up.” “I … can’t … take this.” Under a mask and a winter cap, a young Black woman stood across the street from Planned Parenthood in lower Manhattan. She has been directly outside the front door after her time inside, but there were two men there with a megaphone talking about babies dying and slaughter. She looked like she wanted to be anywhere else on the planet other than outside the building where she just started to do some...

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio – articles – email ) | Dec 15, 2020 It is difficult to offer a comprehensive critique of our Godless modern culture simply because it is so difficult to know where to begin. In this instance, I will start at the top, so to speak, with a consideration of the absurdity of our captivity to the modern bureaucratic State. I grant that it is not always easy to say exactly which modern bureaucratic solutions we would be better off without, but there is a peculiar feature of our intensely bureaucratic way of life today which merits serious reflection. By creating and funding comprehensive “programs” to “ensure” the well-being of entire populations, the modern State consistently creates fresh burdens which limit both human freedom and the pursuit of more authenti...

Vatican City, Dec 17, 2020 / 01:00 pm MT (CNA).- The Vatican’s liturgy congregation will permit priests to say up to four Masses on Christmas Day, the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God on Jan. 1, and Epiphany to accommodate more worshipers amid the pandemic. Cardinal Robert Sarah, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, signed a decree announcing the permission Dec. 16. The decree said that diocesan bishops may allow priests in their diocese to say up to four Masses on the three solemnities “in view of the situation brought about by the worldwide spread of the pandemic, by virtue of the faculties conceded to this Congregation by the Holy Father Francis, and due to the persistence of the general contagion of the so-called COVID-19 virus.” Acc...

Cardinal Wilton Gregory of Washington offered a welcoming smile to presumptive President-elect Joe Biden, promising dialogue on matters of mutual agreement instead of disagreement over abortion and religious liberty. In return, Biden kicked the Catholic Church in the teeth. The nomination of Xavier Becerra, attorney general of California and a Catholic, as secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), signals that a Biden White House intends to fully turn the screws upon Catholics and other religious believers in service of a radical pro-abortion and anti-religious-liberty agenda.  Becerra, among various outrages, went to the Supreme Court in order to force pro-life pregnancy centers to advertise abortions. He lost that time. But he will be back again, leading HHS in resuming its Obam...

Dec 12th 2020 WHAT SHOULD you do if a 12-year-old girl says: “I am a boy”? If the answer were simple or obvious, the question would not be so explosively controversial. A good place to start, if you are a parent, is to affirm that you love the child. It should go without saying, too, that no child should be bound by gender stereotypes. Boys can wear dresses; girls can play with cars, or become plumbers. The question gets much harder, however, when children say they hate their body and want a different one. Gender dysphoria (a feeling of alienation from one’s natal sex) is real, and the proportion of children and adolescents diagnosed with it in rich countries is rising for reasons that are poorly understood (see article). One school of thought, which has spread rapidly, is that you should ...

Many of us have heard expressed the formulaic regret by someone declining to attend an event: “Though I can’t be there, I’ll be there with you in spirit!” Two reactions usually occur to us who receive such a reply: 1 That’s unfortunate. 2 Whatever the phrase “there in spirit” means, they probably won’t be present in spirit either. We human beings are body and soul. It is our dignity to combine the two orders of creation: matter and spirit. Angels are pure spirit, animals are matter, but the human person gloriously unites both orders in our one person. For the human person, physical presence is important because we are not disembodied energy and while absences are sometimes necessary, it is usually thought of as less than ideal when we “phone it in” or go virtual. Many people forget that th...

On the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Pope Francis gave remarks to artists on the importance of beauty, particularly “on art and its role at this critical moment in our history.” He notes three movements of beauty and its role in our current crisis, while citing the example of the nativity scene: We can speak of artistic creation in terms of three “movements”.  A first movement has to do with the senses, which are struck with wonder and amazement.  This initial, outer movement then leads to others, more profound. A second movement touches the depths of our heart and soul.  A composition of colours, words or sounds has the power to evoke within us memories, images and emotions… Yet artistic creation does not stop here.  There is a third movement...

In 1656, Oliver Cromwell, then lord protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland, canceled Christmas. Legislation was enacted to ensure that every Sunday was strictly observed as the Lord’s Day, but shops and markets were ordered to stay open on Dec. 25. Soldiers patrolled the streets with orders to seize any food discovered being prepared for Christmas celebrations.  Some five centuries later, the Puritan in 2020 would have felt very much at home, and not just in England, but across the world, as public displays of the great Christian feast are canceled, downplayed or quietly forgotten by many.  Whether in France, the United Kingdom or Canada, governments have issued strict regulations that will curtail the traditional Christmas celebrations for so many familie...

Life at the Poor Clare Convent at Arundel in Sussex, England, is one of prayer, work, silence and solitude.  Unexpectedly, the religious community has now become a chart-topping sensation with the release of its debut CD, Light for the World.  That album has now spent an astonishing six weeks at the No.1 spot in the U.K. “Specialist Classical” chart. In addition, the album is enjoying classical chart success internationally, reaching No. 3 in Belgium and No. 5 in Canada; it also hit No. 9 on the overall iTunes albums chart in Germany and No. 6 on the Amazon U.S. “Bestsellers” chart. This overwhelming response from the public has come of something as a surprise to the community. One of the nuns, Sister Gabriel Davison, said, “We are thrilled that our music has touched the hearts o...

Detail of St. Joseph with the Infant Jesus, c. 1620s, by Guido Reni. (Public domain/via Wikimedia) St. Joseph in all the crèche scenes can help. Remember that Eighties’ song “I Need a Hero”? This whole year has been quite the exercise in longing for one. That’s why Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are Time magazine’s “Person of the Year.” Time thinks they have one there — and I suspect it’s actually Harris. Meanwhile, the fact of the matter is that the kind of salvation people are looking for does not come from politics, and yet still we try. That this is folly is clear in so many ways. Consider the irrational, evil, anger — the kind that loots electronics stores and makes it impossible to communicate in any kind of constructive or respectful manner — and other miseries, but here we are. Advert...