2018 has not been an easy year for Catholics around the world as more and more cases of sexual abuse of children have come to light. One particularly hard-hit community was my own native Diocese of Buffalo, NY. In October of this year I was shocked to learn that Siobhan O’Connor – former assistant to Bishop of Buffalo Richard Malone – had leaked documents to a local news station revealing that the Catholic Church’s leader in Western New York had... Read more
Friends of Vox Nova, on behalf of all the regular contributors, I want to wish each and every one of you a blessed Christmas. May the Christ Child, who brought light into the darkness of our world, continue to pour his light into your hearts. May the love of God, which is beyond all understanding, a love made flesh, be his gift to you this Christmas day. In addition, because of your readership, we have again earned a small royalty... Read more
Of all the liturgical seasons, Advent is uniquely colored by mystery, longing, and paradox. It is therefore the season most susceptible to the power of poetry, a form far more capable of channeling these three movements than prose. As Madeline L’Engle writes in her Advent poem, After Annunciation, “This is the irrational season / when love blooms bright and wild. / Had Mary been filled with reason / there’d have been no room for the child.” In this poem, On the Mystery of... Read more
Of all the liturgical seasons, Advent is uniquely colored by mystery, longing, and paradox. It is therefore the season most susceptible to the power of poetry, a form far more capable of channeling these three movements than prose. As Madeline L’Engle writes in her Advent poem, After Annunciation, “This is the irrational season / when love blooms bright and wild. / Had Mary been filled with reason / there’d have been no room for the child.” Advent is also the season of silence,... Read more
Today, December 12, Catholics around the world have celebrated the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, commemorating the Virgin Mary’s appearance to St. Juan Diego on Tepeyac Hill outside present-day Mexico City in 1531. Since that time, when the young Juan managed to convince the church authorities to build a church in her honor, this particular image of Mary has come to assume a multiplicity of meanings. Known as the Patroness of the Americas, she is held sacred by the... Read more
Of all the liturgical seasons, Advent is uniquely colored by mystery, longing, and paradox. It is therefore the season most susceptible to the power of poetry, a form far more capable of channeling these three movements than prose. As Madeline L’Engle writes in her Advent poem, After Annunciation, “This is the irrational season / when love blooms bright and wild. / Had Mary been filled with reason / there’d have been no room for the child.” Advent is also the season of silence,... Read more
Pray for everyone you encounter this Advent, but remember the poor in a special way. Resolve to be Christ to them this year. In return, they'll become Christ to you, and your Advent will be doubly blessed. Read more
There is always something about Advent that appeals to me deeply. Maybe, I’ve sometimes thought, it’s something about the sense of a fresh start as we begin a new liturgical year. It may also have something to do with the fact that it was close to the beginning of Advent when I first began attending Mass regularly, and thus I have loved Advent ever since I was coming to love liturgy. Maybe Advent simply appeals to my craving for structure... Read more
Those were the first words I heard when I came to after my colonoscopy this last February 10. I’d had some symptoms over the Christmas holiday last year – some bloody stools, a general sense of weakness, and so on – but was hoping against hope that it was just a terrible diet plus middle aged aches and pains. Nope – it was cancer. Hearing that news made the world go kind of grey – I felt both numb and... Read more
I once heard it said that we need to find ways to blaspheme the money god, and this especially holds true in a society where that god has such a profound and deadly hold. And so I say to everyone reading this, no matter who you are: on this most holy day of the Cult of Mammon, remember that you are worth infinitely more than your role in the economy. If you have to work a long and tiring shift... Read more
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In