Who Needs Oscar?: Catholic News Service’s Picks for the Top 10 Films of 2013

by John Mulderig NEW YORK (CNS) – For much of 2013, Hollywood seemed to be in the doldrums, turning out a good deal of product but very little of quality. With the approach of year’s end and the looming awards season however, things improved remarkably. That seasonal shift is reflected in the lists below, the […]

Ed Wilkinson

Every Month We Fete The Catholic Media

It used to be a big deal when we would mark February as Catholic Press Month. Not so much any more because Catholic Press means so much more to us than just producing a weekly newspaper. With the advent of the DeSales Media Group in 2010, communication in the diocese changed. No longer would all […]

Start the New Year With Good Energy

by Maureen Pratt Feeling sluggish? Dazed? Foggy? As if you’d like to hibernate for the rest of the winter? The period after the holidays can leave us feeling anything but energetic. A bit of that is the natural letdown from a festive and active season of celebrations, reunions and an outpouring of good cheer. If […]

Presepio: Italian Tradition Tells the Christmas Story (with slideshow)

The Christmas season is a time known for its traditions, from putting up lights and stockings, to singing carols and of course displaying a Christmas tree. But there’s a tradition that lives on today that has been passed on from generation to generation: the construction of a presepio, a Nativity scene depicting the birth of […]

St. Anthony’s Relics – Back in the Diocese by Popular Demand

by Marie Elena Giossi Local devotees of St. Anthony of Padua received a special gift this Advent – the opportunity to see and venerate relics of their beloved saint. As part of a world tour marking the 750th anniversary of the discovery of St. Anthony’s remains by St. Bonaventure, the relics have visited England, Ireland, […]

Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio

New Birth, New Beginning

My dear brothers and sisters in the Lord, Christmas is not only the celebration of historical fact, but it also allows us to enter into the process of being redeemed. It is a sign of the great and ultimate redemption for which we hope. At Christmas, we celebrate, in fact, the mystery for our own […]

Diocesan Youth Give in Spirit of Christmas

  Catholic school students throughout the diocese made sure that others could enjoy the season before they went on Christmas break. Pictured clockwise, from top: Members from Operation Shoebox, moderated by their math teacher Kathleen Gaughan, at St. Agnes A.H.S. in College Point delivered some holiday cheer this year to the local Veterans of Foreign […]

Surrounded by the Grace of God’s Love

by Father Robert Lauder AS ADVENT WINDS down, I imagine all of us, in different ways, look forward to the great feast of Christmas. There is a sense in which every time we pray, we are celebrating the feast of Christmas because all our prayers unite us with the Incarnate God. Still, I think it is […]

CavanaghCSJ

Come, O Come Emmanuel

by Sister Karen M. Cavanagh, C.S.J. TODAY THE CHURCH gives us one Word .. one Name… in Hebrew, it is a sentence. “They shall name Him, Emmanuel…” which means, “God is with us.” We are also presented with two men at very decisive moments in their lives. For each of them, the moments seem to […]

A New Holy Day

“We run the risk of concealing Christmas behind bourgeois customs and sentimentality, behind all those traditions that make this holiday dear and precious to us,” wrote Father Alfred Delp, S.J., from his cell in a Nazi concentration camp. “Yet perhaps the deep meaning is still hiding behind all those things. What this celebration is about […]