Features

Advent forms us in the art of desiring God

Thursday, December 14th, 2017

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

Monday, December 11th, 2017

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

The Salvation Army’s Major Campbell Roberts

Monday, December 11th, 2017

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

Science and faith unite in Holy Sepulcher exhibit

Thursday, December 7th, 2017

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

Family breakdown and mental health problems in teens

Thursday, December 7th, 2017

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

Blessed Chiara Badano, teen saint

Monday, December 4th, 2017

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

Young Catholics: traditionalists and modernists

Monday, December 4th, 2017

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

Pope Paul VI, prophet

Thursday, November 30th, 2017

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

Human trafficking and Sister Eugenia Bonetti

Thursday, November 30th, 2017

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

Holiness: not one size fits all

Monday, November 27th, 2017

Have you ever noticed that things marked “one size fits all” rarely do? “One size fits all” is simply not the way humanity works. We’re all quite different, whether it’s the length of our arms and the girth of our waists or the extravertedness of our temperament and the sensitivity of our emotions. We will Read more