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The Politics of Resentment

Last month, President Barack Obama declared that “the private sector is doing fine.” Last week, he claimed that his main first-term mistake was a mere failure to “tell a story to the American people.” But Obama’s biggest blunder of the summer may be the bizarre claim he made at a campaign rally in Virginia last […]

Be Still My Soul (Healing in the Fire, part 6)

Please click for: Part1, Part2, Part3, Part4, Part5 I considered not including the first part of this posting. It’s too incredible for most people to believe and so I rarely mention it, but it’s absolutely true.  It happened. I decided to include it to illustrate God’s hand over my life. In 1982, there was a recession […]

Natural Family Planning Builds a Culture of Life

Pope Benedict XVI offered an encouraging message to the recent meeting of the Equipes Notre Dame (translation: Teams of Our Lady), a pro-marriage apostolate. The Holy Father invited all Christian married couples to be “the gentle and smiling face of the Church.” There is no greater way for couples to achieve this than to joyfully […]

Help Wanted: Father

Job Description  Long term (as in lifetime) position in challenging and ever-changing work environment. Candidates must possess excellent communication skills and be willing to adopt a G-rated vocabulary. Applicants must also trade any existing sports vehicles in for a “babe” repelling, baby-friendly minivan. Some undercover work necessary such as checking up on kids and getting […]

Ferial Day

It Takes a Village to Raise a Business

Many conservatives are reacting strongly to a recent speech given by President Obama in which he seems to denigrate the entrepreneurial spirit of American enterprise. “If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own,” said the president at a campaign event [the other] week in Virginia.”You didn’t get there on your own,” he reiterated. […]

The Crisis of Community

In recent years social critics like Robert Putnam (Bowling Alone) and Charles Murray (Coming Apart) have documented and deplored a decline of community among Americans. It’s  a development that affects churches along with other institutions of civil society. But “decline of community” is an abstraction and hardly self-explanatory. A story told by a man I […]

Court Asked to Immediately Stop the HHS Mandate

The Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, today announced it has filed an emergency motion asking that Federal District Judge Robert H. Cleland of the Eastern District of Michigan stop the HHS Mandate which goes into effect on August 1, 2012.  The motion was filed late […]

America, Wake Up!: There’s No Such Thing As ‘Safe Abortion’

As Planned Parenthood faces national scrutiny over the gruesome death of 24-year old Tonya Reaves in an Illinois clinic last week, the abortion giant has issued a statement expressing condolences to the family. “While legal abortion services in the United States have a very high safety record, a tragedy such as this is devastating to loved ones and we […]

Poem: “Listening for a Summer Song”

Listening for a Summer Song She peels late June Redhaven peaches on the porch. Juice bursts through tender, fuzzy skin Dripping into the bowl’s hungry mouth. Fruit flies swarm in the sweltering air at the knife’s approach. Another reason to peel outside, in the heat, she muses. She peels and she wonders, Alone but for […]

Christian Revolution Under Constantine: 1700th Anniversary Series, Part 1

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 The air of centuries ago is healthful to inhale, especially when it blows balmy and pristine.  Wafting from the past, the great Christian revolution of the 4th century has the capacity to ennoble modern hearts and uplift minds that have sunk like stones into what is seen […]

You Were Thirsty and I Gave You…Eh, Nevermind

We had two cubic yards of dirt delivered and dumped next to our driveway. I immediately got to work with a shovel and wheelbarrow, transporting the dirt all the way around to the side of the house where I needed it. It was a hot day and tiring work. My seven and five-year-old daughters were […]

Moral Life Animated (with Stick Figures)

When we perform an act of faith, hope, or love in God, we are in direct contact with Him, and this is especially true at Mass. God is no longer remote, He is as close to us as any two persons can be because Christ is not only present in the Eucharist, He dwells in […]

Penn State Penalty Unfair, but the Right Thing

Every parent worth his or her salt at one time or another has done what the NCAA did this week when sanctioning Penn State University. Confronted with the misdeeds of our children, we parents often are forced to act in a manner that quickly and emphatically sends a message: Your actions have consequences, not only […]

A Geek and Her God: An Interview with Leah Libresco

Leah Libresco was raised in an atheist household on Long Island. She gained notoriety as an atheist blogger who focused on such diverse topics as math and morality. She often wrestled with Catholic ideas: the blog, mischievously titled “Unequally Yoked,” initially started as a place where she could interrogate and consider arguments raised by her […]

A Reflection On the Benedictine Vow of Stability

Most Catholics are familiar with the three vows taken by most religious of poverty, chastity and obedience. To these three, St. Benedict (whose feast we celebrated July 11), added a fourth for the Benedictine order, the vow of stability. Our summer seminarian who had considered joining the Benedictines at one time spoke to us today […]

Opposites Attract, But Can They Go the Distance?

Dear Anthony, I’ve recently started dating a girl who everyone says is wrong for me. They don’t like that I broke up with a girl who seemed perfect for me in order to date this girl I’m seeing now.  I keep telling people opposites attract just to get them off my back.  But honestly, I […]

Disinviting God

We are now in the midst of  National NFP Awareness Week (Jul 22-28), during which the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is asking American Catholics to “celebrate God’s design for married love and the gift of life” by learning more about natural family planning (NFP). Catholic teaching on contraception has roots in the natural […]

Manna: What Is It?

There in the desert [the whole Israelite community] complained to Moses and Aaron and said to them, “We wish that the Lord had killed us in Egypt…you have brought us out into this desert to starve us all to death.” …in the morning there was dew all around the camp. When the dew evaporated, there […]

Are You or Your Children Addicted to the Net?

Newsweek ran a very interesting article recently: Is the Onslaught Making Us Crazy? Tony Dokoupil examines the growing body of evidence that the internet is changing the way we think and feel. He writes, The current incarnation of the Internet – portable, social, accelerated, and all-pervasive – may be making us not just dumber or […]

Unhappy Anniversaries

Unbeknownst to many, July 21, 2012 marks the 45th anniversary of an event that has severely and negatively impacted the life of every single Catholic on the planet; namely, the issuance of a decree by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) suppressing the requirements outlined in the Oath Against Modernism. Together with […]

One space after a period. Not two. Here’s why.

Many people still put two spaces after a period. “That’s what my English teacher taught me,” they say. The practice is a holdover from the era of the typewriter when characters all took up the same amount of space. For example, an “i” took exactly the same amount of space as an “m.” So the […]

The Obama Nullification Doctrine

In December 1828, South Carolina had 5,000 copies of John C. Calhoun’s “Exposition and Protest” printed and distributed throughout the state. A defiant document, Calhoun’s “Exposition” outlined a theory of constitutional interpretation first adumbrated in the infamous Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, which asseverated the right of states to declare “null and void” acts of the […]

Gates Family Planning Summit: What Comes Next?

Pro-life protesters at the Family Planning Summit in London last week signaled that opposition to the multi-billion dollar campaign is not going away. Held on the 100th anniversary of the first eugenics conference in London, the UK’s Department for International Development (DfID) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation harnessed the seats of power – governments, […]