Note from the Managing Editor:
A friend of mine is finishing up her teacher training and for the last month or so has been doing a practicum in a public school. Last week, just before the Christmas break, she was visiting and observing teachers in a number of different classrooms.
While in a grade two class she listened as the teacher asked the children to tell some words that we associate with Christmas. "Snow man", "Santa", "presents" were suggested followed by appropriate encouragement from the teacher. Then one little boy said he associated Christmas with "Jesus." That answer apparently required a reprimand. "We don't use that word in here," the teacher explained.
I remember Father John Hardon, S.J., some years ago now, telling a group of us about his experience passing through a large airport during the Christmas season and watching as a large group of children were putting ornaments they had made on a huge Christmas tree. Father approached them and asked if they knew whose birthday we celebrate at Christmas. Not one of those children knew the answer to that question.
The birth of Jesus is anything but the banal and sentimental event many would turn it into. At the same time, for many people the very idea of Jesus and his birth is utterly intolerable. Bishop Robert Barron sheds some light on the matter in "Why Christmas Should Bother Everybody."
Concerning a particular neuralgic matter that seems to have a great many Catholics in a lather, Professor Donald S. Prudlo asserts that The Tradition Speaks With One Voice on Divorce & Remarriage.
I'd like to offer a sincere thank you to those faithful few of our subscribers (just over 1%) who have helped us out with a donation this Advent. We rely entirely on the goodwill of our subscribers for support. So please, if you value this project and find CERC helpful in advancing your education in Catholic faith and culture make whatever donation you can afford to keep us doing what we do. Please go here to donate.
And finally, Meaghen and I wish you all a wonderful and blessing-filled Christmas. - J. Fraser Field |
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"Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about." - G.K. Chesterton
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New Resources
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Gratitude and Thanksgiving.
- Pope Francis - from From Homily at Vespers Saint Patrick's Cathedral, New York City
I accompany you at this moment of pain and difficulty, and I thank God for your faithful service to his people.
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Why Christmas Should Bother Everybody - Bishop Robert Barron - Word on Fire
What bothers me is reducing Christmas to a level so low, so banal, that the great Christian feast is offensive to precisely no one.
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Make Friends Who Aren't Like You - Aurora Griffin - from How I Stayed Catholic at Harvard: 40 Tips for Faithful College Students
I was in Currier dining hall, sitting down to a working lunch with a stack of books, when a guy came up and asked to join me.
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A Society Worthy of Our Televisions - Theodore Dalrymple - Library of Law and Liberty
The best way to avoid disappointment is to have low expectations — they can almost always be met.
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"Medieval Science," Oxymoron? Think Again - Part 2 of 3 - Tamer Nashef - Catholic Education Resource Center
The second part shall focus on the crucial change in the way 12th-century Christian scholars viewed the universe and on the translation movement that came in the wake of the liberation of Toledo in the late 11th century.
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Some glimmer of dawn - Father George W. Rutler - From the Pastor
The maxim "It is always darkest before the dawn" supposedly dates to the seventeenth century, but sentiments like it have been around forever.
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Editorials of Interest:
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Editorials of Interest
Pope Francis at 80 - Father Raymond J. de Souza - NC Register
Eight Reasons to Thank God for His Ministry.
Prelate of Opus Dei dies at 84 - CNA
Bishop Javier Echevarría Rodríguez, the Prelate of Opus Dei, died Monday evening at the age of 84 in Rome, several days after being hospitalized with pneumonia.
A Remembrance of Javier Echevarría Rodríguez - NC Register
He lived side by side with two saints for forty years. That was his preparation for what came next: serving the Church as the Bishop-Prelate of Opus Dei from 1994 to 2016.
Chaplains of Death - First Things
In a pastoral letter, ten Catholic Bishops of the Canadian Atlantic Episcopal Assembly shirk their responsibilities as teachers of the faith. The issue is doctor-assisted suicide, which is now legal in Canada.
How Pornography Smothers Masculinity - Maccabee Society
Pornography emasculates a man — but what does this mean? It means that it drains a man of his desire for excellence, his will to improve, his pursuit for something transcendent.
Our profound ignorance of the crimes of Communism - Catholic World Report
According to a stunning new report by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, one-third of Millennials (32%) "believe more people were killed under George W. Bush than under Joseph Stalin."
The Persecution of Professor Esolen - First Things
Why is Professor Esolen being persecuted at Providence College? Because he spoke his mind plainly on questions of great consequence for the future of Catholic higher learning and got the PC Stormtroopers into an uproar.
Why Moral Absolutes Matter - Catholic World Report
Far from being rigid, moralistic or legalistic, insisting on the reality of moral absolutes promotes human flourishing and true human freedom.
A Merry Pascalian Christmas! - First Things
The real message of Christmas is the exact opposite: not to distract us from death but to point us toward death, and then its destruction in Christ. Were death not a reality, Christmas would not be necessary.
Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman and St. Justin Martyr, pray for us |
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