What happens when you concede, without a fight, to the spirit of the age? As riven with strife as the Catholic Church in America has been, I think it is instructive to take a look at a place where there is no strife, because there was no battle. I’m speaking of our good neighbor to … Read more
Natural family planning (NFP) needs a slogan, because as a “product” — if I might adopt business-speak — it’s not selling too well. According to some surveys, about 90 percent of professed Catholics reject the Church’s teaching on birth control. Even among priests, fewer than one in three considers artificial contraception to be “always” sinful. … Read more
In the beginning of our marriage, God saw fit to give us babies by the bucketful. Or so it seemed. As much as I reveled in those early years of motherhood, having four kids under five, then five kids under six, then six kids under seven, and so on, did take its toll on me. I … Read more
Jean Marie Baptiste Vianney was born on May 8, 1786, three years before the world would collapse into the chaos of the French Revolution. His schooling did not start until he was nine. It lasted only three years. When Jean was eleven, an underground priest stopped at the Vianney family farm. When he asked Jean … Read more
Celebrities do it. Bloggers do it. Politicians do it. And everyday Catholics do it, too. It’s Twitter, of course. Do you tweet? Do you twitter? Do you spend time with tweeple in the twitterverse? Do you have any idea what I am talking about? As a writer and a blogger, I started … Read more
One of the wonders of human life is the birth, perhaps once a century, of a child with talents so far beyond the ordinary that he or she must be called a prodigy. Today the Church celebrates a spiritual child prodigy: Catherine of Siena. She was born on March 25, 1347 as one of twin … Read more
One would be hard-pressed to find a man better suited to the task he had been given than Thomas E. Dillon. The students at his beloved Thomas Aquinas College, where he served as president for almost 20 years, were blessedly unaware of the incredible pressures Dr. Dillon bore day-in and day-out; still, they all recognized … Read more
Bless Me, Father, for I Have Kids Susie Lloyd, Sophia Institute Press, 192 pages, $14.95 A mother’s life is absurd. I have washed down peanut-butter toast crusts and a handful of Teddy Grahams with a pot of coffee and called it breakfast. I have sung show tunes while running the vacuum cleaner at 3:00 a.m. … Read more
Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor Brad Gooch; Little, Brown & Company; 464 pages; $30 Perhaps the most fascinating thing about Flannery O’Connor is that she is fascinating at all. Compared to other 20th-century literary figures, she lived a dull life. She never lost her mind. She didn’t sleep around. She didn’t have a drinking … Read more
I really should stop reading magazines. That might be an odd thing for a magazine editor to say, but it’s true that certain kinds of periodicals are bad for my self esteem. Take that popular homemaking magazine, for example. What’s it called? “Better Homes Than Yours,” I think. I browse through its slick pages, squint … Read more
Our culture pretty much winks at adultery these days. It winks sort of like Maurice Chevalier, lecherously ogling "girls, girls, girls" in some old musical number. Adultery is sold as a charming but lovable fault, as with that adorable rascal Bill Clinton. Or else it is sold as exciting and sexy, as with Brangelina. … Read more
With the Fourth Commandment ("Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which the Lord your God gives you" [Ex 20:12]), we begin to enter into territory that is closer to what we call "natural law." Basically, the command to honor your father and mother is one … Read more
In the months before his death, Bilal Russell worked with emotionally disturbed kids at Black Family and Child Services of Arizona, a non-profit social services agency in Phoenix. He loved the work, visiting foster kids who had a history of physical and emotional abuse, or neglect. In fact, he and a friend hoped to … Read more
I watched the nubile yoga instructor demonstrate. “This is an awesome stretch,” she crooned, lying down on her back on the mat. “Just put your hands like this over your head, flat on the mat. Now, spread your feet like this to anchor your energy,” she continued, bending like a jointed Barbie. “Now, push … Read more
Tiny hands cupped my face. “Mama, Mama,” I heard a voice whisper. “I need you.” “Gah!” I responded. To explain my somewhat inelegant response, I should tell you that it was about 2 a.m. when the tiny hands cupped my face and the small voice awakened me from a sound sleep. The little person needed … Read more
So here we are again, with another discussion about Catholics and the royal family. We have been here before, each time some royal falls in love with a Catholic, or even when royal marriages in general are discussed. This time it’s a bit different: There is no specific royal eyeing the aisle with … Read more
Literature offers us a rich panorama of marriages in which the woman is a shrew and the husband a victim. Not every male is a Petruchio and can “tame” his conjoint. But while not a marriage, the mysterious partnership between the great C. S. Lewis and Janie King Moore, which lasted half of Lewis’s life, … Read more
A few years ago, my son Ambrose was hospitalized with a lung infection. The two weeks he spent away from home were trying times for our family, but I have one particularly fond memory of his stay. One day, when I returned to his hospital room after being away for a few hours, he made … Read more
No one is ever really ready for the death of a loved one, whether it’s an aging parent or a sibling whose life is cut short prematurely. This reality was brought home to me when two of my aunts (Fredrena and Loupenn), my mother’s sisters, both died within a few months of each other. While … Read more
We see a lot of symbols every day, but most just tell the world how much something costs. They mark brand and status, not meaning. The famous Nike “swoosh” just means “expensive shoe.” A little horse on the pocket of a shirt just means “shirt trying to look expensive.” Signs and Mysteries: Revealing Ancient Christian … Read more