Issue of December 20th – January 2nd
No room at the inn? More people, less space
What do parishes do when crowds for Christmas Mass fill to overflow
For many Catholics, especially those belonging to large parishes with lots of young families, the experience Mary and Joseph had arriving in Bethlehem rings true on Christmas Eve.
Catholic schools and Latinos: a match made in heaven?
ND study looks at ways to increase Latino enrollment
Catholic schools and Latino students in the United States need each other.
Without more Latino students, Catholic schools as they have been known will continue to disappear from American urban areas, and Latino students will likely continue to lag behind their peers in marks of educational achievement, such as high school graduation rates and college attendance.
Bridging the gap between women and pregnancy centers
Heroic Media uses TV and billboard ads to save lives
Television spots and billboards urging young women in crisis pregnancy situations to seek help should soon be seen around the Chicago area.
Visiting the land of Jesus
Editor Joyce Duriga takes a media tour of Israel’s holy sites and the town of Christ’s birth
Jesus walked on the Sea of Galilee. I fell in.
See, there were these large, round, slippery stones in an area of the shore where I was wading. In between those closely packed stones were sharp edges of sea shells mixed with sand. It made for tricky wading.
Parishes learn asking leads to more giving
But requests must respect the culture within their own communities
Ask and you shall receive, the Gospels say, and many parishes that have used the archdiocese’s planned offering program, have found that to be true. But how you ask needs to be tailored to the culture of the community, according to stewardship professionals.
Breaking abuse cycle starts with love
“Precious” is a hard movie to watch. The title is the ironic name of a young woman (played with perfectly stifled emotion by newcomer Gabourey Sidibe) who is anything but precious to her brutal parents (her devil incarnate-mother is played by Mo’Nique). Based on the novel “Push” by Sapphire, and set in Harlem in 1987, “Precious” is an unblinking look at abuse of every kind heaped upon an adolescent who is basically treated as a slave in her own home.
After 95-plus years these Catholics still active
Age makes no difference to Gus Schaller, Dorothy Tapajna and Catherine Schouten when it comes to practicing their Catholic faith or volunteering at their parishes. Each of the three is observing a century of life, or nearly a century, but they still continue their unbroken traditions of Mass attendance, participation in devotions and service to their churches.
Christmas spirit — St. Richard School’s (S. Kenneth) 75 carolers sang at the Harold Washington Library as well as Brookfield Zoo and Chicago’s City Hall Dec. 17. . . . St. Joseph Parish (Summit) will present “Jesus Is The Reason For The Season” at 3:45 p.m. Christmas Eve. It was written and directed by Chicago based singer-songwriter Karen Lynne Piejko.
It’s not every day that the children get to play Santa Claus and the grownups are the elves.
But that’s the way it goes at Christmas shopping days at my kids’ school, when each class gets an opportunity to do its Christmas shopping, browsing from displays of dollar-store and other merchandise, with the help of personal shoppers in the form of their schoolmates’ parents.
When John David Mooney was fresh out of college at the University of Notre Dame, he headed to Rome as an artist-in-residence with the Second Vatican Council.
It was the best education he had, Mooney said. And it ended with Christmas Mass with Pope Paul VI and a private audience. The young artist had met the then- Cardinal Giovanni Montini a few years before at Notre Dame and the pope recalled the meeting and asked Mooney a question.
