“The Lentiest Lent we’ve ever Lented.” Those words make up my favorite meme, which gained great traction on social media during the first few months of 2020. Even those who aren’t Catholic or Christian found themselves relating to this catchy phrase, as recently, thanks to the coronavirus, we’ve all been put through some version of … Read more
Jonah began his journey through the city, and when he had gone only a single day’s walk announcing, “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be overthrown,” the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast and all of them, great and small, put on sackcloth. When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose … 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
The newest Bond pic borrows too much from that other spy franchise. When you get older, fellow agent Rene Mathis tells James Bond, “villains and heroes get all mixed up.” Indeed, a conspicuous moral ambiguity infects virtually every scene in Quantum of Solace, the long-awaited follow-up to 2006’s franchise “reboot” Casino Royale. … Read more
Regrets? I’ve had more than a few. Stubborn vignettes cling inexplicably to the crags of my memory. There was the time in fifth grade when Heide, the prettiest girl in school, approached me in the lunch line, held up a quarter, and asked if I wouldn’t mind buying her a pretzel. I proved … Read more
When I moved my family to New Hampshire in the fall of 2001 and we were casting around for a good parish (not as simple as it sounds — Catholic life here in the most secular state in the country hasn’t been done many favors during the reign of Cardinal Law’s former lieutenant, Bishop … Read more
Me? I like my beer cold, my cars fast, and my Catholicism — thank you very much — crunchy. “If we took the bones out, it wouldn’t be crunchy, would it?” — Monty Python, The Confectioner’s Sketch Me? I like my beer cold, my cars fast, and my Catholicism — thank you very … Read more
Remember Candlemas? The folks at Calvary Temple proclaiming “Keep Christ in Christmas” don’t either. The source of our present secularization isn’t the lack of Christ… it’s the lack of Mass. The highway billboards have come down: Keep Christ in Christmas. Or the more eye-catching: _____mas: It isn’t Christmas without Him. I have to hand it … Read more
Charlie Brown famously wondered how Christmas had gotten so commercial. Clearly, Charlie Brown was not an Italian-American; if he were, he might have wondered how Christmas had gotten so gluttonous. This Christmas season, as per longstanding tradition, we packed up our five kids and headed down to Long Island, joining my parents, my brother … Read more
Media sources have put a charge into the leadup to today’s World AIDS Day by once again floating the suggestion that the Catholic Church is on the verge of approving condom use in limited circumstances; that is, for the purposes of preventing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. “Will Vatican Review Stand on Condoms?” reads … Read more