I keep an orderly kitchen — spices fresh and organized; cereal safely resealed into sorted Tupperware containers; a fitted lid for every pot, pan and roaster. I have been heard to screech, “Who loaded the dishwasher without rinsing the dishes?” Scissors, tape, and push pins all have a right place, and the telephone book remains … Read more
Here’s some advice for anyone starting a job as literary editor for a Catholic online journal: For your first book review, avoid novels whose central character is an atheist lesbian who fights to adopt a child and who eventually commits suicide. Here’s some advice for anyone starting a job as literary editor for a … Read more
I’m genealogy crazy, to my wife’s occasional dismay. As of a few years ago, I’d traced most of my ancestral lines back to about 1600, but one particular branch was giving me problems: the Kendalls, the source of my middle name. Two years ago, I discovered my grandmother’s grandfather, Adelbert A. Kendall, but I couldn’t … Read more
Last week, Simcha Fisher invited us to talk about natural family planning, and boy did we comply. More than 90 comments later, one thing is clear — this is a topic we like to debate. I’ve read many different discussions about NFP where Catholics will debate its use and its abuse, its effectiveness … Read more
Director Yôji Yamada, creator of more than 70 films and a legend of Japanese cinema, has always been most famous for his contemporary dramas and TV series (his Otoko wa tsurai yo series alone has 48 installments). But like many Japanese directors, he was drawn from a young age to the samurai films of Akira … Read more
The Anglican Church is cracking up, Rev. Dwight Longenecker argued yesterday. Today, David Mills wonders about the fate of our closest kin: the Anglo-Catholics. Catholics who keep up with Anglicanism may have observed that the whole thing seems to be visibly coming apart. On the one hand, at June’s rally of the world’s … Read more
Last May in Tucson, Arizona, two young men named Armando Estrada and Rosendo C. Valenzuela were working for Mamie Gong, an elderly Chinese woman. Mamie, who owned a trailer park and some land outside the city, had hired the men to help her clean up some trash that had accumulated on the vacant parcel. … Read more
In connection with the same-sex marriage controversy now burning in California, I read the following about a priest from a famous gay-friendly parish in Pasadena: The Rev. Susan Russell of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, who has been blessing same-sex unions for 16 years, told the San Jose Mercury News this month that she … Read more
Out from Under: The Impact of Homosexual Parenting Dawn Stefanowicz, Annotation Press, 245 pages, $14.95 As a clinical law professor in 1986, I represented six-year-old Tiffany in a proceeding to terminate her mother’s parental rights. It was a heart-breaking and difficult case because the mother-daughter bond was strong — and hugely inappropriate. My little client’s … Read more
I like to think of myself as a seasoned mom. But even a seasoned mom sometimes meets her match. It’s in our most trying motherly moments, I have found, that God graces us with the gift of humility — by opening our eyes to our helpless dependence upon others. One warm spring Saturday morning a … Read more
“No human law,” writes the great Pope Leo XIII, can abolish the natural and original right of marriage, nor in any way limit the chief and principal purpose of marriage, ordained by God’s authority from the beginning. Increase and multiply. Hence we have the family; the society of a man’s house — a society limited … Read more
Documentary films are a strange breed. They hold a unique place in the cinematic ecosystem — hybrid creations falling somewhere between the cold, factual reality of the daily newscast and the creative, emotionally manipulative construct of the fiction film. Their obvious efforts to deal with The Real World have audiences everywhere accepting them as … Read more
After I finished with some business at the county building a few years ago, I went to fetch my daughter from the common area where she had been waiting. She was talking with another young girl, and I walked up to the two of them. “You look like your dad,” the other girl said. I … Read more
Britain’s Royal Family is often — no, make that always — in the news. Its position in the public mind has utterly changed over the past four decades — from something that held a real, and understood, place in the constitutional scheme of things into something more like a soap opera, and often described … Read more
People usually laugh when they hear me say that I think the Internet age will lead to mass conversions to orthodox Christianity. Anyone who’s spent much time online knows that the ratio of sites with base or immoral content to those with spiritually edifying content is approximately a zillion to one, so what makes … Read more
My husband and I met a consecrated virgin last week. Later he commented to me, “She is full of light,” and then added: “Why didn’t I find a girl like that when I was young?” I broke out laughing. But he did not. “Honey,” I nudged him with a helpful tip toward his improvement, “You … Read more
Let’s hear it for fathers. But hurry, because fairly soon it might be politically incorrect, and then perhaps illegal to speak out and cheer for them, as it will be deemed insulting to those who have made children deliberately fatherless. Our government here in Britain has just passed legislation affirming the rights of lesbians to … Read more
With Father’s day just around the corner, it’s a good time to take a look at the importance of fathers in our society. In 1950, 6 percent of America’s children lived in a home without a father. Today, almost one out of every four children does not have a “Dad” at home, and about 40 … Read more
Once upon a time, not so long ago, atheism was the belief system that dared not speak its name. Even the most ardent skeptic paid lip service to faith, or at least to the blessings that mankind derived from it. But that’s not the case anymore. Atheism is a strong and growing influence in our … Read more
Recently my state, Rhode Island, became the second in the nation to ban discrimination against people who have employed surgery and massive doses of hormones to form upon their bodies parodies of the sex God saw fit not to give them. Justices in California, meanwhile, overruling the little wards of that state (once upon a … Read more
