In the ancient world people always told stories about the childhood of famous people. The stories illustrated the direction and qualities of their adult lives, and usually grew with the telling. So it was with Jesus. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke both begin with different stories of his birth that illustrate its significance. Later story Read more
Timothy O’Malley, director of the University of Notre Dame’s Center for Liturgy and author of the recently released book Bored Again Catholic: How the Mass Could Save Your Life, believes good liturgy is the key to new evangelization. In an interview with Crux, O’Malley offers his take on how Catholics should seize the many opportunities for the renewal Read more
The crowning jewel of “America’s Catholic church”—that is, of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception—was finally unveiled and blessed yesterday. The ceremony presided over by Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the archbishop of Washington and the director of the Board of Trustees of the Shrine, symbolically marked the completion of the largest Catholic Read more
Around a century ago, a baby was left on the doorstep of a Salvation Army children’s home, bundled in newspapers. Taken in by the Sallies, that child grew up to become Alf Roberts, father of Major Campbell Roberts. “His parenting was really done by the Salvation Army,” Campbell Roberts says, sitting at the desk in Read more
There is no more sacred place in Christianity than the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. And now you can visit it — virtually, anyway — in the nation’s capital at the interactive “Tomb of Christ” exhibit of the National Geographic Museum that unifies cutting-edge science and technology with faith. The science has been Read more
You might imagine that the way our parents behave towards each other and how they behave towards us ought to be a major factor in how we develop as teenagers. After all, our parents are the most important people in our lives. We see them at close range more than we see anybody else. They Read more
When we think about saints, we don’t usually think about teenagers who failed math class, stayed out late drinking coffee with friends, and loved listening to the latest pop music sensations. Yet, that describes Chiara Badano, an 18-year old soon-to-be canonized saint. Badano was born on October 29, 1971, in a small village in Italy. Read more
There are two groups of young Catholics: those who want to “draw the Church back” to a previous era, and those who think the Church should conform to social trends, according to a report from the bishops of England and Wales. The bishops surveyed around 3,000 young Catholic Britons ahead of next October’s synod of Read more
This coming July, we will mark the 50th anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s deeply controversial encyclical letter Humanae Vitae. I won’t bore you with the details of the innumerable battles, disagreements, and ecclesial crises that followed upon this text. Suffice it to say that this short, pithily argued letter became a watershed in the post-conciliar Catholic Read more
Though it’s almost grotesque to speak about “celebrity” in the context of something so tragic as human trafficking, if there is a celebrity in the fight against modern-day forms of slavery that involve an estimated 21 million victims and $32 billion annually in illegal profits, it’s an Italian Catholic nun by the name of Sister Read more