“Choosing Christ is the most important decision anyone can make because it is the only decision that has eternal consequences.” ~Father Larry Richards The young Catholics of the world are preparing for World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro this upcoming July. Pope Francis has already marked this event as his first trip back home [...]
Being marooned, either on a desert island or in space, has a long literary and film history. There is something about the solitary individual (sometimes the small group) battling against his circumstances, knowing that no cavalry is going to arrive. When the stakes are “perform or die” you normally have captivating drama. The pairing of [...]
The forward of Kathleen Basi’s new book, This Little Light of Mine says, “No one can teach well what he or she doesn’t know well. The best way to ensure that religious formation “takes” is for parents to live their faith, to be seekers alongside their children. Then, children see that religion is not something [...]
This article focuses on the meaning and uses of the term “tradition.” The next article will speak of the serious error of nostalgia as a motivation for design. I believe it was C.S. Lewis who coined the term “verbicide”. The meaning and significance of the words “tradition” and “nostalgia” have both suffered from this. Here [...]
In one of his typically simple, direct, and forceful homilies, Pope Francis warned recently against idols and idolatry. “We have to empty ourselves of the many small or great idols that we have and in which we take refuge, on which we often seek to base our security,” he told a congregation in Rome. The [...]
I was named after a tugboat. Seriously. I was born in the late 1950s and many girls I went to high school with shared that tugboat’s name: Cheryl Ann. Apparently in the mid 1950s there was a popular show called “Waterfront” which starred Preston Foster as the captain of the L.A. Harbor tugboat. To this [...]
I have a love/hate relationship with the comment box. On my blog where it’s moderated and readers are spiritually mature and have attended Combox-Finnishing school, I can kick my shoes off and put my feet up like I do on my sister’s coffee table. But elsewhere on the world wide web, writing about politics or [...]
We still buy the lie. Women are told that if they want to be successful in the world, they have to be more like men, or like a how-to-succeed-in-business stereotype: aggressive; detached from commitments; and self serving. No softness, no vulnerability, and certainly no thinking of others. We have to put ourselves first or we [...]
With the most sincere of apologies to my AP English teacher Brother Aquinas, I never read The Great Gatsby. And owing to old age, any knowledge that I had of the plot from my perusal of the Cliff Notes version has been lost through the years. So I went into today’s viewing of Baz Luhrmann’s [...]
Few novels are rich enough in characters to become a series, but the Lily Trilogy belongs in this rare company. The characters around Lily, a woman with Down syndrome who has a profound affect on the world around her, are so vividly drawn, so realistic and multifaceted, that they become friends with whom you want [...]
Just as it is helpful for women to talk to women now and again regarding the spiritual life, the same holds true for men! David N. Calvillo’s book, Real Men Pray the Rosary: A Practical Guide to a Powerful Prayer, is a forthright conversation with men (and us women who sneak a peek) about his own [...]
Robin Hood is a legendary folk hero who stole from the rich and gave to the poor. He is said to have revolted under a corrupt king (scholars do not agree on which king) by stealing from the rich then redistributing it to the poor. The point of Robin Hood is less about actual history [...]
Imagine giving your mother a gift that is born of the emotions in your own heart and hand-created simply for her, to share not only the love you feel, but the many ways in which she has touched and shaped your life. You may think you’re not creative enough to come up with such a [...]
When you fall in love, you want to spend as much time together as possible and learn all you can about your loved one. For author Chris Stepien, his ebook Three Days: The Search for the Boy Messiah was about love. His love of God led Stepien to want to know him better. His love [...]
The first step in renewing architecture in the Catholic Church is to make a commitment to the truth. As the Church teaches, Truth is a person, not a concept. We know the “Truth will set us free,” and so it is our desire to be free from any and all erroneous beliefs that enslave us. [...]
The older the script, the more likely it is that Hollywood will produce a good and uplifting film. The newest version of the Jackie Robinson saga, entitled simply “42,” is well worth viewing twice. I took my wife the 2nd time, and she loved it too. Living as we do in times dominated by the [...]
The mainstream media has done an excellent job of completely ignoring the trial of Kermit Gosnell. As everyone knows by now, Gosnell was the Philadelphia abortionist famous for “snipping the spines” of newborns who happened to survive his efforts to abort them. The state health authorities ignored his clinic for 17 long years. Then one [...]
“…let us be protectors of creation, protectors of God’s plan inscribed in nature, protectors of one another and of the environment.” – Pope Francis, March 19, 2013 Our new Holy Father spoke about our responsibility to care for and protect the environment several times in his homily on the day he was formally installed as [...]
What can mothers today learn from a poor Jewish woman who lived two thousand years ago? If the woman in question is Our Blessed Mother, the answer is everything. Marge Fenelon explores ten of these lessons in the new book, Imitating Mary: Ten Marian Virtues for the Modern Mom (Ave Maria Press, 2013). Fenelon writes [...]
How many times have you — as a parent — sat in Mass and not heard a word the priest said because you were playing referee, peacekeeper, or bad cop in the pew? Since I can answer that question in the triple digits, I was thrilled to learn about the new DVD “Understanding Sunday Mass: A [...]
Graduation from college is a transition from working towards a goal to accomplishing it. Some are ready to save the world while others simply want to make their mark in it, but either way, it is the threshold of new possibilities. Inevitably however, within any group of graduates, time brings surprises both good and bad. [...]
Dear God, I Don’t Get It by Patti Maguire Armstrong Liguori Publications, 2013 Why does God answer some prayers and not others? This is a question that plagues even adults. Sometimes, we pray so hard and think we know what God should do in our lives. And then, God does something else or He does [...]
Do you think you would benefit spiritually by spending thirty hours in prayer and meditation? Yeah, right, you are likely thinking. Where would I find time for that? I’m a very busy mother. Motherhood has its ironies. When we are pregnant and feel the need to “rest up,” sleep is often hard to come by. [...]
