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Kindle Organizing Notes

I do quite a bit of reading. Up until recently, I was convinced that paper books were the way to go. And then I thought an iPad would solve all my “I want to read it electronically” problems. Then, slowly, I started to think about how some of the “just like real paper” e-readers might be […]

The Higher Our Tech, the Ruder We Get

Get this: Social media are making us ruder. According to Reuters, social media users face “an increase in rudeness online with people having no qualms about being less polite virtually than in person.” I think our rudeness began ticking up with the introduction of another technological innovation: the telephone. As phones became commonplace in American […]

Weekly Wits: 4/18/13

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Poem: “The Dark Night of the Soul”

The Dark Night of the Soul (How does my love look when she sleeps?) How does my love look when she sleeps? She sleeps quietly, not snoring, Soon sighing as she is dreaming. When the nightmare and terror disturb That quiet surrender to peace, She stirs, moans, and cries out for Me. Her face distorts, […]

Annie, the Smiling Evangelist

She’s fearless. She’s charismatic. She’s radiant. A modern evangelist, Annie basks in Christ’s love and shares it with a simple, winsome touch. A heart overflowing with love is a powerful testimony, I’ve learned.  “We love because He first loved us.” (1 John 4:19). Annie’s love spills over, mysteriously opening hearts long shut to God’s mercy […]

Outdoing Your Spouse

Do you ever feel competitive with your spouse? If you enjoy a friendly challenge involving word games, board games, or sports games, why not try a spiritual challenge based on advice from St. Paul? Although St. Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians contains his most well-known wisdom on love, his Letter to the Romans also teaches […]

MSM: Merchants of SMear

Why Confess Sins to a Priest?

I would like to look at the matter from a different angle. I don’t really want to focus on a biblical rationale for every aspect of the sacrament of confession, not yet at least. Instead, I’d like for us to ponder why it is fitting that God chooses to use priests in the forgiveness of sins through the confessional.

Date Night for Parents

To: Marybeth From: Dad is Desperate for a Date My husband says we should have “date nights” without our three kids, but free evenings are almost impossible to find. Our children’s schedules are full of school, sports and social activities that keep us coming and going, and when we finally choose date night, I’m either […]

President Obama and ‘Equality’

As all the world surely knows by now, “equality” is the ideological key to President Obama’s domestic policies. That all people are created equal, the president says, is the “most evident of truths.” Whether that’s so or not, it is unquestionably the case that you express any reservations whatsoever about equality these days at no […]

The Wit and Wisdom of Will Rogers

Things are mighty heated these days. Tempers are flaring and minds are closed. Here’s the solution: the wit and wisdom of Will Rogers. “The short memory of voters is what keeps our politicians in office.” “We’ve got the best politicians that money can buy.” “A fool and his money are soon elected.” Rogers spoke these […]

How to Help an Aging Parent Who Refuses Help

During my speaking tours around the country, I get a chance to hear what is on the minds and hearts of adult children, the challenges that are the toughest for them to deal with.  One question I hear over and over goes something like this, “We see our parents struggling with their living situation, and […]

What I Saw at the Gosnell Trial

I spent the day yesterday in Philadelphia at the trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell. The prosecution in the Gosnell murder trial seems to be nearing the conclusion of its work. A small courtroom, able to hold about 70 people, but mostly empty throughout the day, was the site yesterday of this ongoing trial that looks […]

Timid Men

“Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty.” – Thomas Jefferson A recent video by Fr. Robert Barron, “Gay Marriage and the Breakdown of Moral Argument,” called to mind just how right Jefferson was. In his commentary, Fr. Barron said: In his great text, After Virtue, the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre […]

A Reflection on Pregnancy After an Abortion

I am pregnant with our fourth child, but this is my sixth pregnancy. Alicia and Gabriel were lost to abortion in 1994 and 2000 (may they rest in peace). This is one of the things women are never told: when the timing is “right” for a “wanted” child, they will have to answer routine questions […]

Why People With a Colorful Past Evangelize

I’m not wildly enthusiastic about showing my children pictures of me between 16 years old and 26, a full decade when I was the walking epitome of what not to be when you are young, single, and clueless about your Catholic faith. I didn’t exactly punk-out Duran Duran style in the eighties but I did […]

A Garden of Visible Prayer

The approach of spring is an excellent time to think of gardening. One of the projects on my bucket list is to create a beautiful flower garden in my “sacred space” near the statue of Our Lady in the forest adjoining our home. As my children were growing, then as I began writing fiction, this […]

Tabb’s Poetry XV

Five poems by John B. Tabb.

An Abortion Ghoul’s Chamber of Horrors

Last week, I wrote a column entitled “Brutality in the Brave New World” discussing an appalling movement within the scientific community in which researchers are exploring the “therapeutic” potential of the eggs of aborted baby girls. In a similar vein, a bioethicist writing for the Huffington Post in 2009 famously suggested that pregnant women wanting […]

Is God a Methodist? 42 Inspires and Moves

In an opening scene of Brian Helgeland’s moving film, 42, Branch Rickey, the famous president of the Brooklyn Dodgers and played by Harrison Ford, is reviewing files of potential black baseball players whom he might bring into major league baseball in the face of inevitable hate, vitriol, and racism. He picks up Jackie Robinson’s file. “He’s […]

Poem: “Beneath the Weight”

Beneath the Weight Beneath the weight of death we’d break If God did not lift up that mass, Why? For love and mercy’s sake Until the weight of death should pass Even God had strained and groaned So heavy did our burden prove, That when He moved away that stone It was eternity He moved […]

Are You Just a Mother?

We’ve all heard the new modern meme: You’re just a mom? or You are just a mom! or Are you just a mom? or Oh, you are just a mom. I put a question mark at the end of that first iteration for a reason. Today, more than ever, women — mothers in particular — […]

The Sky is Crying: John Adams Repents

A generation that never learns accountability and sacrifice will not value their inheritance.

The Progressive Income Tax Turns 100

In no time, progressives learned they could never get enough.