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Tabb’s Poetry XLVI

Dec 11 13 • John B. Tabb • 0 comments

Five poems by John B. Tabb.

Advent: Waiting Like Mary and Joseph

Dec 11 13 • Terry McDermott • 0 comments

I have just finished my annual routine of climbing into the attic and hauling out the box that stores our much-used Advent wreath. Candles? Check. Prayers? Check. Matches? We’ll need to get more of those. Like most families, the season of Advent falls right in the middle of a very busy time. School, work, extracurricular […]

Why Aren’t They Preaching About What I Think is Important?

Dec 10 13 • Kevin M. Tierney • 10 comments

Catholics tend to have a love/hate relationship with the concept of a homily. In Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis laments how everyone suffers when it comes to the homily. The priest suffers because he has to give it, and the laity suffers having to listen. This can be made worse by the fact that preachers can have […]

Second Sunday of Advent: How’s Your New Year Going?

Dec 9 13 • Karen Lynn Ford • 0 comments

The Advent season includes the feasts of many popular saints, including St. Nicholas, St. Ambrose, St. Juan Diego, and St. Lucy. As I mentioned in my post about St. Nicholas, I didn’t learn much about the lives of the saints until I was an adult. I recognized St. Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day because they […]

Poem: “Brown Sugar and Cinnamon”

Dec 9 13 • María Morera Johnson • 0 comments

Brown Sugar and Cinnamon Heaven smells like brown sugar and cinnamon, Don’t you think? And if it doesn’t, what then? It must smell like fresh rain, then. Or my grandmas’s kitchen on a Saturday afternoon. It could smell like a baby after a warm bath, part soap, part lotion, part angel. Or firewood on a […]

Controlling Women’s Desires in Kenya

Dec 9 13 • Anne Morse • 0 comments

The Kenyan government recently outlined a new brand of coercive population control. Unlike China’s policy which uses coercion to control the number of births, Kenya is trying to control population earlier in the reproductive process by changing women’s desires to have children. In the early 1980’s, the average woman in Kenya had 8 children. In […]

Breaking Our Partisan Chains

Dec 9 13 • Jason Hall • 0 comments

If you’ve been following the litigation challenging the now-infamous Health and Human Services mandate requiring employer-provided group health plans to cover abortifacients, sterilization, and artificial contraception, you may be aware that a company named Eden Foods has filed one such lawsuit. Eden Foods is an organic food company that began as a co-operative venture with the mission of providing […]

The Advent of Virtue – Week Two

Dec 8 13 • Fathers for Good • 1 comment

Last week we kicked off the Fathers for Good Advent series with a reflection on the virtue of fortitude and discussed ways in which it can help us grow with our families in these blessed days before Christmas. (You can read Week One here.) This week, we match the cardinal virtue of prudence to our Advent […]

Winter and Our Desire for Holy Silence

Dec 7 13 • Mike Eisenbath • 0 comments

I never have been a big fan of winter. Give me 90-degree temperatures with a chance to wear shorts and a T-shirt rather than 20 degrees, layers of clothing and slick streets. I’ll take baseball, walks to the ice cream shop and the smell of fresh-cut grass any time. Well, there is one thing I […]

Why Religion Matters More Than Science

Dec 6 13 • Stacy Trasancos • 2 comments

I just finished writing a thesis about the late Father Stanley Jaki’s work for a Master’s degree in Theology, and my brain hurts. I love that about scholarship. You learn, assimilate, and then possess new knowledge. It’s hard, but you earn it. In the end, it’s more exciting than going to the mall, buying a […]

Stem Cell Funding Shifts Toward Ethical Research

Dec 6 13 • Rebecca Taylor • 0 comments

I have always said that if you want accurate information about stem cell research and its possibilities, you should be reading the business section. Anything else is probably misleading, hyped or even flat out lies. In other words, follow the money. The money will tell you what is truly promising research. The money is painting […]

Poem: “When the Snowbird Sings”

Dec 6 13 • Katie Furman • 0 comments

When the Snowbird Sings The snowbird sings his winter song And sings it merrily, When frost is sparkling in the sun There on the holly tree. The lovely song of tinkling bells Is bright and sweet to hear, And like the white and silent snow Falls softly on the ear. So tiny snowbird sing your […]

Healing Hearts: An Open Letter to the Pro-Life Movement

Dec 6 13 • Dr. Gerard Nadal • 1 comment

To some of the finest people I’ve been privileged to know: For decades I heard the call in prayer to stand up against the monstrous evil that has been unfolding in this nation since Roe v. Wade, which was handed down when I was twelve years old. For years I blinded myself to the horror […]

Filling Soles on St. Nick’s Day

Dec 6 13 • Jake Frost • 0 comments

Growing up, Saint Nicholas Day meant three things: the fireplace, stocking caps, and the biggest pair of shoes you could find. It started the evening before, when we finished the family rosary. We always ended our rosary with the ‘blowing of the candle.’ Well, actually it wasn’t a candle, it was a little oil lamp […]

Poem: “It is She”

Dec 6 13 • Anna Elissa • 0 comments

It is She Who is she that cometh forth as the morning rising, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible as an army set in array? It is she, most lovely bride, adorned with grace and Spirit. She steps with courage, and desire in her heart— on her head, red and […]

Iraq: “ How Can We Live in Such a Tragic Situation?”

Dec 5 13 • ACN-USA News • 2 comments

“In Iraq there are fewer and fewer Christians. The persistent violence, fear, lack of work opportunities and the issue of safety for life and limb are forcing us to leave our country, our homes and our families,” Msgr. Shlemon Warduni reported directly on the tragedy which seems never ending. “The future for Christians in Iraq, […]

Belgium’s Culture of Death

Dec 5 13 • Wesley Smith, J.D. • 7 comments

If you want to see what happens when a society enthusiastically swallows the euthanasia poison, look at Belgium. Perhaps influenced by its neighbor the Netherlands — which pioneered euthanasia permissiveness — Belgium legalized euthanasia in 2002. The country has since leaped head-first off a vertical moral cliff. As usual, when the law was being debated, […]

This is My Calling, This is My Vocation

Dec 5 13 • Melanie Jean Juneau • 0 comments

I am a conundrum: a rather outmoded sort of woman, ridiculed by modern career women, vilified by the earth’s prophets of doom and sanctified by the religious right. I was the least likely candidate to have a lot of children. I had never even held a baby before my first born.You would think having nine children would have […]

Fluke’s Gimmick

Dec 5 13 • Judie Brown • 0 comments

Sandra Fluke was once a law student at Georgetown University. One day, in 2012, the Speaker of the House of Representatives—pro-abortion Catholic Nancy Pelosi—held a Congressional hearing specifically to hear testimony from one witness. That witness was Sandra Fluke. According to reports, Fluke had been blocked from testifying at a House Oversight and Government Reform […]

Refuting the Myth of the “Invisible Church”

Dec 4 13 • David Gray • 0 comments

After they rejected the hierarchical Catholic Church, one of the early tasks of the protestant reformulators was to redefine what Church is; more precisely, to define the visible nature of the New Covenant community of God’s chosen people. It being clear to them through sacred Scripture that Christ Jesus actually did established a Church; they […]

Book Review: Yes, God!

Dec 4 13 • Patrice Fagnant-MacArthur • 0 comments

Have you ever looked at a priest or religious and wondered how it was that he or she came to be there – what made that person willing and able to say “yes” to God’s call? Susie Lloyd, author of Please Don’t Drink the Holy Water and Bless Me, Father, For I Have Kids, decided […]

Alabama v. Auburn: A Metaphor for Life

Dec 4 13 • Ken Connor • 1 comment

College football fans across the country are still buzzing over the shocking outcome of the Alabama-Auburn game. As a graduate of Florida State University, I couldn’t be more proud of Auburn. What a game! War Eagle! As expected, the odds makers picked Alabama to win. Who wouldn’t? Alabama has been unstoppable all year, and this […]

O Holy Night

Dec 4 13 • Elizabeth Tichvon • 0 comments

A reflection on today’s Sacred Scripture: “They glorified the God of Israel” (Matthew 15:31). Wherever we turn these days, Christmas music plays, and for some of us this year, the words to the traditional carols we’ve come to know by heart have suddenly taken on new meaning. Old familiar jingles about Christ’s birth now seem […]

Our Physical God

Dec 4 13 • Fr. Frank Pavone • 0 comments

It’s Christmas time again, and the Church focuses on the Incarnation, a word coming from the Latin “in carne,” which means, “in the flesh.” Christmas is God in the flesh: no longer only an eternal Spirit who fills the universe, but our brother, whom we can hear, see, and touch. One of the reasons he […]