 |
Joseph Lee Hooker is an American pop, Christian, and inspirational music singer and songwriter. Born near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Hooker has achieved his largest successes with Roman Catholic-themed music, including Singing the Rosary and Our Priests. His latest album, Heaven's On Its Way, was released in March 2011.
| This section of a biography of a living person does not include any references or sources .(September 2017) |
Hooker was born in Wilmington, Delaware and raised in Linwood, Pennsylvania, a Philadelphia suburb. He wrote mainly secular pop and rock-n-roll music with positive, patriotic, inspirational or environmentalist messages until the early 1980s, when he felt God calling him to focus his music more directly on spiritual themes. For a time, he put his secular music aside to devote his time to "Singing the Rosary", a fully sung and orchestrated version of the holy rosary. The first of its kind, "Singing the Rosary" was given to Pope John Paul II in 1991.
Eventually his faith, and his self-admitted need for conversion, led him to Medjugorje, in present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina, where on Easter Sunday of 1990, he met his wife, Bridget, an American also on a pilgrimage. The two were married soon after, and his wife often accompanies him on his albums as a producer, backup vocalist and co-composer.
Hooker is known in Pennsylvania's Delaware Valley for his advocacy and untiring environmentalist efforts as president of We Are the People, Inc., an environmental advocacy group that he founded to fight pollution in his neighboring town of Marcus Hook.
Hooker is a photographer and the copyright holder of two photographs, "The Good Shepherd" and "The White Cross", both taken in Medjugorje that have attained worldwide attention. These photos depict what many claim is a "miracle" or a "divine manifestation" in the clouds.
Hooker and Hylak's first son, Luke John, died as a child from liver cancer; this tragedy has profoundly influenced Hooker's later music and spirituality. The family now resides in West Grove, Pennsylvania, where they own a multilingual web design and ASCAP music publishing company, Come Alive Communications, Inc.
Perhaps Hooker's greatest acclaim came in 2009 with Our Priests, a short album whose eponymous lead single garnered awards from Roman Catholic societies worldwide. This first track voices support for the countless Catholic priests who live selfless lives of devotion to the Church while a relative few fuel the institution's scandal. Pope Benedict XVI bestowed an Apostolic Blessing on the work in February 2010. [1]
The Rosary, also known as the Dominican Rosary, refers to a set of prayers used primarily in the Catholic Church, and to the physical string of knots or beads used to count the component prayers. When referring to the prayer, the word is usually capitalized ; when referring to the prayer beads as an object, it is written with a lower-case initial letter.
Our Lady of Fátima is a Catholic title of Mary, mother of Jesus, based on the Marian apparitions reported in 1917 by three shepherd children at the Cova da Iria in Fátima, Portugal. The three children were Lúcia dos Santos and her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto. José Alves Correia da Silva, Bishop of Leiria, declared the events worthy of belief on 13 October 1930.
Medjugorje is a village in the municipality of Čitluk, Herzegovina-Neretva Canton of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, an entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Since 1981, it has become a popular site of Catholic pilgrimage due to Our Lady of Medjugorje, a purported series of apparitions of the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus, to six local children that are supposedly still happening to this day.
The Apostolic Movement of Schoenstatt is a Catholic Marian movement founded in Germany in 1914 by Fr Joseph Kentenich, who saw the movement as a means of spiritual renewal for the Catholic Church. The movement is named after the small locality of Schönstatt which is part of the town of Vallendar near Koblenz, in Germany.
The "Salve Regina", also known as the "Hail Holy Queen", is a Marian hymn and one of four Marian antiphons sung at different seasons within the Christian liturgical calendar of the Catholic Church. The Salve Regina is traditionally sung at Compline in the time from the Saturday before Trinity Sunday until the Friday before the first Sunday of Advent. The Hail Holy Queen is also the final prayer of the Rosary.
Pavol Mária Hnilica, S.J. was a Slovak prelate of the Catholic Church who served as a titular bishop of Rusadir from 1964 until his death in 2006.
The Third Order of Saint Dominic, also referred to as the Lay Fraternities of Saint Dominic or Lay Dominicans since 1972, is a Catholic third order which is part of the Dominican Order.
Radio Maria is an international Catholic radio broadcasting service founded in Erba, province of Como, in the diocese of Milan, Italy, in 1987.
Prayer in the Catholic Church is "the raising of one's mind and heart to God or the requesting of good things from God." It is an act of the moral virtue of religion, which Catholic theologians identify as a part of the cardinal virtue of justice.
The history of Catholic Mariology traces theological developments and views regarding Mary from the early Church to the 21st century. Mariology is a mainly Catholic ecclesiological study within theology, which centers on the relation of Mary, the Mother of God, and the Church. Theologically, it not only deals with her life but with her veneration in life and prayer, in art, music, and architecture, from ancient Christianity to modern times.
The Mariology of the popes is the theological study of the influence that the popes have had on the development, formulation and transformation of the Roman Catholic Church's doctrines and devotions relating to the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The veneration of Mary in the Catholic Church encompasses various devotions which include prayer, pious acts, visual arts, poetry, and music devoted to her. Popes have encouraged it, while also taking steps to reform some manifestations of it. The Holy See has insisted on the importance of distinguishing "true from false devotion, and authentic doctrine from its deformations by excess or defect". There are significantly more titles, feasts, and venerative Marian practices among Roman Catholics than in other Western Christian traditions. The term hyperdulia indicates the special veneration due to Mary, greater than the ordinary dulia for other saints, but utterly unlike the latria due only to God.
Mariological papal documents have been a major force that has shaped Roman Catholic Mariology over the centuries. Mariology is developed by theologians on the basis not only of Scripture and Tradition but also of the sensus fidei of the faithful as a whole, "from the bishops to the last of the faithful", and papal documents have recorded those developments, defining Marian dogmas, spreading doctrines and encouraging devotions within the Catholic Church.
Catholic Marian movements and societies have developed from the veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary by members of the Catholic Church. These societies form part of the fabric of Mariology in the Catholic Church. Popular membership in Marian organizations grew significantly in the 20th century, as apparitions such as Our Lady of Fátima gave rise to societies with millions of members, and today many Marian societies exist around the world. This article reviews the major Marian movements and organizations.
Our Lady of Medjugorje, also called Queen of Peace and Mother of the Redeemer, is the title given to visions of Mary, the mother of Jesus, which began in 1981 to six Herzegovinian Croat teenagers in Medjugorje, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The alleged visionaries are Ivan Dragičević, Ivanka Ivanković, Jakov Čolo, Marija Pavlović, Mirjana Dragičević and Vicka Ivanković. They ranged from ten to sixteen years old at the time of the first apparition.
The rosary is one of the most notable features of popular Catholic spirituality. According to Pope John Paul II, rosary devotions are "among the finest and most praiseworthy traditions of Christian contemplation." From its origins in the twelfth century the rosary has been seen as a meditation on the life of Christ, and it is as such that many popes have approved of and encouraged its recitation.
Tomislav Vlašić is the leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Whole Universe seated in Italy. He is best known for being a former spiritual director of the alleged seers of the Marian apparitions in Medjugorje. He also claims to receive the messages from God the Father, the Holy Spirit, the Madonna, the Apostles and the archangels.
The Oblates of Jesus the Priest is a Roman Catholic religious congregation of sisters. Founded in Mexico in 1924, it is now represented in Mexico, the United States, Italy, and Ecuador. Their charism is “to love the priesthood and to make it loved,” so the apostolates of the sisters predominantly center on assisting priests and promoting the priesthood. These include, but are not limited to, ministering in seminaries, aiding retired priests, sewing vestments, assisting in rectories, working as secretaries for bishops, and conducting religious education in some parishes. The Oblate sisters are also very musical, emphasizing singing and playing instruments during their liturgies and sometimes writing their own music.
The Chaplet in Honour of the Holy Spirit, also known as Chaplet of the Holy Spirit and His Seven Gifts, is a modern Christian devotion to the Holy Spirit, asking for seven gifts of the Holy Spirit: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord.
Jozo Zovko, OFM is a Herzegovinian Croat Franciscan priest, most notable for being a parish priest in Medjugorje during the alleged apparitions of the Virgin Mary in 1981. He was very active in the promotion of apparitions around the world. He is an adherent of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. Zovko is currently under a suspension imposed on him by his bishops in 1989, 1994 and 2004 for disobedience and is forbidden to perform priestly duties in his home Diocese of Mostar-Duvno.