Before I jump into the interview with Donna D’Errico, I would like to thank her for answering a few questions regarding her life as both a Catholic and explorer. See if you can name what Catholic sacramental she is wearing on her expedition. JQ Tomanek: Can you give us a little background on yourself? Were you raised Catholic? Where did […]
The Venice Film Festival awarded a special jury prize Saturday to Paradise: Faith. The film is part of a trilogy; Strand Releasing has acquired the U.S. rights and plans to release it early next year. Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments as follows: One of the hallmarks of cultural charlatans is the propensity to insult […]
If there is one area of life most people can change in order to return to the Shire, in a metaphorical if not literal sense, it’s their eating habits. You can live in a 20-storey high-rise in Manhattan or Paris and still adopt a Hobbit lifestyle when it comes to eating. That’s because Hobbits are different from […]
Editor’s note: For Greater Glory comes out on DVD on Tuesday, September 11th. In light of this, Leticia Velasquez interviewed Eduardo Verastegui, one of the film’s actors. Velasquez: Eduardo, when I interviewed you in 2009 in Connecticut, you mentioned wanting to do a film about the Cristeros. Tell me how you got involved in For […]
The movie, October Baby became a successful symbol in the prolife movement. Like so many small voices refusing to be defeated against the mammoth abortion industry, neither could October Baby be defeated. This faith-based film went where Hollywood rarely ventures—into pro-life waters. It traveled another route where small films rarely go—opening #8 at the box […]
The title of Joel Osteen’s broadcast message this week was “Deal With It!” Joel wanted his audience to understand that there were things in life that we were just going to have to deal with and that would entail suffering. I was very interested to see Joel mention suffering in his broadcast, because suffering is […]
If things had gone according to his original plan, Mario Ancic would have been playing tennis at the Olympic Games in London this week. However, his life took a different course than he expected. The 6-foot-5-inch Croatian was riding high at the end of 2006. He was already an Olympic bronze medalist, a Wimbledon semifinalist […]
Got atheists friends or family? The stellar new DVD Cosmic Origins might help. In this film, some of today’s top scientists (many award-winning) weigh in on the mysterious origins of our universe. Old and new cosmological theories are presented, leading up to the possibility of an “intelligent Designer.” But the film, being mostly a scientific […]
The Memory Keeper’s Daughter is a Lifetime Original Movie available on DVD. It is based on the best-selling novel by the same name by Kim Edwards. Starring Dermot Mulroney, Gretchen Mol, and Emily Watson, it offers a very positive portrayal of a girl with Down Syndrome. In a world in which the majority of children […]
Every Christian has heard about the stunning conversion of St Augustine, the most famous doctor of the Church. His wisdom permeates Western culture and Catholics are familiar with his saying, “You have made us for Thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee”. We have heard about St Augustine’s long […]
For awhile my teens were fans of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? They loved the fact that the contestant was earning money for charity, the increasing difficulty of the questions, and the drama of the contest. But I didn’t like the questions which had little educational content. So aside from Jeopardy, which they find […]
A new study just out from Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, shows that girls as young as six are being conditioned by secular media to view themselves as sex objects. Yes, you read that right sex objects. At a time when they should be learning to read and exploring their artistic creativity, they are instead taking […]
I don’t often reread books. As a book reviewer, I always seem to have more good books in my “to be read” pile than I could ever have time for. Therefore, for me to read a book twice, it really needs to be something extraordinary and helpful to my life. A Little Way of Homeschooling […]
Sports are often said to be a microcosm of life. But for kids playing on their first team, sports can provide valuable life lessons and opportunities for developing virtues. Coaches, then, can be influential mentors who start youngsters on the right road. Yet it’s not as simple as it looks. I had been thinking about […]
It is now well-recognized that boys are not reading. What is the problem? Most commentators want to say that boys have an aversion to books. But the problem is quite the opposite: books—modern books, that is—have an aversion to boys. A recent edition of The New York Times Sunday Book Review featured a Robert Lipsyte article that […]
The Mass: The Glory, the Mystery, the Tradition by Cardinal Wuerl, the Archbishop of Washington D.C. and Mike Aquilina is a well-written and concise book about the Holy Mass. Though it was written to coincide with the implementation of the new translation of the Roman Missal last year, I think it can also be a great tool for […]
Today, Catholic radio operates in over 200 markets in the U.S. in addition to the Internet and Sirius Radio. But fifteen years ago, the Catholic airwaves were much quieter until a revolution of sorts began in Ann Arbor, MI. The city, home to the University of Michigan, is identified as a seedbed of learning. When […]
Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land! Barack Obama is not an American. No, 2016 — Obama’s America, does not deny that Obama was born in Hawaii; there is not a whiff of the “birther” controversy in this surprisingly engaging documentary. But the film […]
Would the type of person you are praying to meet and fall in love with find you attractive? When and if it should happen that you meet someone special, fall in love, and get married, the process starts with you. This is the premise of my first book, Would You Date You? I appeared on […]
The Catholic Press Association’s June convention handed out lots of awards, but none was for covering the story of Catholic priests falsely accused. This is Part II of a post I wrote [on my blog] at this time last year entitled “The High Cost of Father Marcial Maciel and Why I Resent Paying It.” To […]
The world of academia during the Seventies opened our minds so wide that our brains seemed to fall out. False teachings often undermined faith and morals. Yet, we came away believing we were more highly evolved than when we went in. I recall one professor warning a class of seniors: “You will be surprised that […]
No, that isn’t one of my misleading provocative titles. I’m not going to be all clever and then reveal that I, like every woman my age, think Darcy is just the most wonderful thing ever. He’s not. He’s kind of awful. If you haven’t read Pride and Prejudice–or at least seen the BBC movie–you might […]
Gore Vidal has died. Almost unknown to young adults, years ago he was considered the clever old man of belles lettres — a shocking rake with a bracing wit. The wit, though, distilled through the decades, comes down to us more as vinegar than aged claret, more snark than savvy. Mores the pity. We’d love […]
Moonrise Kingdom is a tasty escape into an ordinary-magical world of a quirky bunch of pre-teens and their families in 1965. The film is highly-stylized, deeply amusing, and incredibly well-cast. The always unexpected writer-director Wes Anderson (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, Fantastic Mr. Fox) gives us a more-deadpan-than-“Napoleon Dynamite” romantic comedy. Involving twelve year olds. Set […]
