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By Tom Hoopes, December 19, 2019 It is appropriate that the Church focuses on St. Joseph for the Fourth Week of Advent, Year A. Joseph is the patron saint of preparing for Christmas — and, as Patron of the Church, for the Second Coming of Christ. We are closer than ever before to the Second Coming of Christ. We are living in the world’s “fourth week of Advent” — the end days, according to the Church; “the last hour.” It’s time for last-minute preparations, the same preparations as Joseph made. First, Joseph took his wife’s cross onto himself. When Mary is found with child, “Joseph her husband, since he was a righteous man, yet unwilling to expose her to shame, decided to divorce her quietly.” You don’t have to know anything about the ancient world to understand what this means. If a m...

When it comes to our struggle in personal prayer there are some things that we need to unlearn. For too many, private prayer is often a formal, even stuffy affair, that drips of boredom and unnecessary formality and has lots of rules. Perhaps we learned some of our lessons too well. And yet many of the youngest children have not learned these lessons, and they seem to pray with great ease. They are unassuming and will say almost anything to God. It is true that children may have a lot learn about public and liturgical prayer, but when it comes to personal and private prayer they have much to teach us. Perhaps a parable is in order: A young girl received her First Holy Communion and, when she returned to her pew, she was noticed by her parents to be in rather deep prayer. After Mass they as...

ROME – Last Friday, Pope Francis took part in the inauguration of a new headquarters in Rome for Scholas Occurrentes, a high-tech network of schools around the world inspired by the pontiff. The first lady of his native Argentina, Fabiola Yañez, was on hand, as were the first ladies of Brazil, Paraguay, Colombia and Belize. At one stage Francis and Yañez exchanged a hug of greeting, which was captured by a photographer who later discovered a curiosity in the image: On his right hip, under his white papal cassock, Francis was wearing a small black electronic device with a green light and various buttons. On Dec. 18, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruini told Crux the device was a rarely used radio microphone, which had to be put on the pope in that tight space because of the angles and acoustics ...

NEW YORK — President Donald Trump and his Democratic opponents are courting voters with less than a year before the 2020 election – and many of them are chasing support from a variety of religious voters. The Trump campaign announced last week that the president’s re-election efforts would include launching three coalitions: “Evangelicals for Trump,” “Catholics for Trump” and “Jewish Voices for Trump.” Despite being impeached by the House, the Trump campaign’s focus on these three religious groups aims to expand the president’s support, especially in battleground states where the former real-estate mogul won in 2016. An analysis of the 2018 midterm elections conducted by Pew Research Center found continuity in the voting patterns of key religious groups. For example, white evangelica...

O Radix Jesse, qui stas in signum populorum,super quem continebunt reges os suum,quem Gentes deprecabuntur:veni ad liberandum nos, jam noli tardare. O Root of Jesse, standing as a sign among the peoples;before you kings will shut their mouths,to you the nations will make their prayer:Come and deliver us, and delay no longer. It may be that today’s O Antiphon reveals an unfamiliar title for Christ: Radix Jesse, or Root of Jesse. Who is Jesse? Why is Christ the root of this man? In 1 Samuel we learn that Jesse, the son of Obed and the grandson of Ruth, had eight sons, and the youngest was David. During the reign of King Saul, the Prophet Samuel was sent by God the Bethlehem to anoint the next king of Israel. David was summoned from the flocks he was tending, and was anointed by Samuel (1 Sam...

Disney’s conclusion to the expanded Skywalker saga goes long on nostalgia, short on surprises. Steven D. Greydanus What should Star Wars be? Not what was it 40 or 20 years ago, but what should it be today? Five films into the Disney era of Star Wars, with a completed third trilogy ostensibly bringing the Skywalker saga to an end, there are two conflicting ideas — neither of which, as yet, definitively has the upper hand. One vision immerses us in a warm bath of nostalgia; another dashes revisionistic cold water in our faces. The former is a gauzy slideshow tour of well-known characters and types, locations, images, themes and story beats; the latter, a demolition project in the pursuit of renovation, of change and growth. J.J. Abrams’ Episode VII — The Force Awakens, which kicked off the n...