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Oak Tables and the After Life

Oak Tables and the After Life

Aug 10 12 • 0 comments

I am no theologian.  I know there are probably theological treatises on what happens in the afterlife when we die. I just know there is an afterlife.  How do I know?  My grandma’s oak table. My grandmother, Iris, was Italian.  Her family immigrated to San Francisco from Genoa.  She and my grandfather, also descended from […]

Amnesty International Uses Maternal Deaths to Push for Unrestricted Abortion

Amnesty International Uses Maternal Deaths to Push for Unrestricted Abortion

Amnesty International, a human rights organization that used to be abortion neutral, is now using the problem of maternal mortality to advocate for abortion. In a new report, ostensibly on medical care for maternal health, Amnesty calls on governments to repeal abortion laws and conscience protection for medical workers who may object. They also call […]

Putting Together a Last-Minute Curriculum

Putting Together a Last-Minute Curriculum

Aug 10 12 • 0 comments

It’s August, and while most of us have our school or homeschooling plans all neatly lined up and ready to go, I know there are a few parents out there scrambling to get a homeschool up and running at the last minute.  If you’re in the pinch right now, I’d like to offer four thoughts […]

Mission Territory

Mission Territory

Aug 10 12 • 0 comments

Will the present whiff of secularist persecution be a help toward healing what ails American Catholics as a Church? Leaving aside predictions, I’ll only say: it may. Cardinal Timothy Dolan has a flair for getting people’s attention. The Archbishop of New York did that recently by declaring the Big Apple “mission territory.” Many other bishops […]

humor

How to Be a Cowgirl Without Even Trying

Aug 9 12 • 1 comment

When our church had its annual fiesta, we stopped by and wandered over to the live entertainment. It was a cowboy with a long mustache and in full get-up doing rope tricks. At one point he asked for a volunteer and chose a boy. My seven-year-old daughter said to me, “I want to go up there.” […]

Morality in Medicine: Advice From Dr. Fox

Morality in Medicine: Advice From Dr. Fox

Aug 9 12 • 2 comments

Dr. Paul Fox has been a family physician for over three decades in the sticks of rural Virginia,  Florida and western Pennsylvania where he earned the respect and trust of his peers and patients. He and his wife have four children and six grandchildren. Dr. Fox is a convert to Catholicism and worships in the Byzantine […]

Trying and Trusting and Being "So Good"

Trying and Trusting and Being “So Good”

Aug 9 12 • 0 comments

She came home in tears, my little ballerina. She wanted the part of Clara in the dance theater production of The Nutcracker. So did about 37 other girls. Only one got the part of course, and that year it was not my daughter. I don’t normally throw celebrity quotes at my children. Because, well, normally I […]

Cathy, Dolan, and Discipleship in Action

Cathy, Dolan, and Discipleship in Action

Aug 9 12 • 1 comment

Dan Cathy, CEO of Chick-fil-A, made a simple statement that wound up creating an uproar among those who detest people of faith. Yet it inspired thousands to do as the cows in the Chick-fil-A commercials request—to eat more chicken! August 1 was a glorious day for hungry folks, people of faith, and commitment to work […]

What's In a Recovery?

What’s In a Recovery?

Thomson Reuters’ latest survey of Wall Street analysts’ expectations about next quarter’s corporate earnings has prompted some to wonder whether the canary in the coal mine is beginning to feel lightheaded. According to the Wall Street Journal, those in the know are expecting decreased earnings in the third quarter, the first quarterly decline since the […]

It Was A Beautiful Service, But…

It Was A Beautiful Service, But…

Aug 8 12 • 0 comments

JI attended a Protestant church a while ago for a worship service. A friend and colleague had died, and I was there to pray for him and his family. The church was beautiful. High ceilings, with stained glass windows on the back wall of the sanctuary. A pulpit made of beautiful wood, raised high in […]

Iran’s Islamicists Orchestrate a Baby Bust: Who Would Have Imagined?

Iran’s Islamicists Orchestrate a Baby Bust: Who Would Have Imagined?

Aug 8 12 • 1 comment

Elizabeth Crnkovich also contributed to this article. Iran’s fertility rate has crashed over the past few decades of Islamicist rule. So much so that the mullahs who run the country are now calling for more babies to be born. How did things come to such a pass? After all, the Koran, like the Torah and […]

Why I Hate Mr. Darcy

Why I Hate Mr. Darcy

Aug 8 12 • 5 comments

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 […]

Poem: "The Star"

Poem: “The Star”

Aug 8 12 • 0 comments

The Star She picked up the zucchini and belted out a ditty About living on a farm and singing a country tune. The girl with the microphone knew about foot long zucchinis and birds that say, “Bawk! Bawk!” as life’s refrain. “Bawk-Bawk! Bawk-Bawk! Bawk-Bawk!” She follows the clucking birds into the woods That invite her […]

In Defense of Cardinal Dolan

In Defense of Cardinal Dolan

Aug 7 12 • 2 comments

Chances are you’ve already caught wind of the firestorm that is brewing around the annual Al Smith Dinner. For those unfamiliar, the entire controversy is based largely on unverified, secondhand, claims that Cardinal Timothy Dolan has extended an invitation to attend the prestigious event as a co-keynote speaker to President Barack Obama – the most […]

Vain Repetition or Babble?

Vain Repetition or Babble?

Aug 7 12 • 0 comments

The early teen years are a time when charming misinformation is passed on from kid to kid with the solemn, easy assurance of time-tested wisdom. “Schnauzer” is a dirty word in German. The F-word is an acronym meaning “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge” (in fact, that became a Van Halen album title towards the end of […]

Healing in the Fire: Conclusion (Part 7)

Healing in the Fire: Conclusion (Part 7)

Aug 7 12 • 3 comments

Please click for: Part1, Part2, Part3, Part4, Part5, Part 6 In 1991, the MS forced me into medical retirement from the Canadian Civil Service. I sank into a clinical depression. Being put out to pasture at 38 years of age is not a pleasant prospect. Now, more than 28 years since my diagnosis with MS, my physical health is gone, but […]

An Irrational and Sinister Campaign

An Irrational and Sinister Campaign

Aug 7 12 • 0 comments

Why have an article on marriage law appear in a journal dedicated to economics? Surely the “purely” private domestic arrangements of a cohabiting couple are of no consequence to economic policy, or wider economic principles? While these questions may well represent a typical response to an article of this kind, we distributists, of course, know […]

What I Learned from Having the Sikh Temple Shooting (Practically) in My Backyard

What I Learned from Having the Sikh Temple Shooting (Practically) in My Backyard

Aug 7 12 • 4 comments

Sunday, August 5 was the date of our first annual parish picnic; little did we know that it would be a date marked on calendars for another reason. As we gathered to begin the 11:00 a.m. Liturgy, an ambulance raced down the street past the park. I’m sure most of the parishioners offered a Hail […]

Eliminating People to Help People?

Eliminating People to Help People?

Aug 7 12 • 0 comments

Can a “human-centered approach” to issues include policies with the express purpose of eliminating people? This argument is cropping up, particularly in debates over climate change and now health care. Hard-core believers of climate change have argued that a key way to reduce greenhouse gases is to reduce people. This was rejected most recently at Rio+20 when UNFPA and […]

Special Ops Sergeant on Starvation

Special Ops Sergeant on Starvation

Aug 7 12 • 4 comments

In March of 2007, less than a month after I had turned twenty-two years old, I was deployed to Afghanistan with my engineer unit. I would remain in Afghanistan, with the exception of twenty day’s vacation in January of 2008, for the next fifteen months. At that point in my life my faith was quietly […]

Our Crosses Aren't Forever

Our Crosses Aren’t Forever

The other day I had some precious free time which I was going to spend working on the computer. I set up my laptop on the kitchen table, went to grab something to drink, turned around and found my older son sitting at the computer settling himself in. “What are you doing?” I asked. “Working […]

Obama's Progress

Obama’s Progress

Aug 6 12 • 2 comments

Try to define progressivism. In fact, ask progressives to try to define progressivism. All we really know is that they’re, well, progressing. They and their ideas and their politics are always changing, evolving. This means that what they believe and hold fast and dear today may not be what they believe and hold fast and […]

Liberal Tyranny and the Cluck Heard ‘Round the World

Liberal Tyranny and the Cluck Heard ‘Round the World

Aug 6 12 • 1 comment

Writer Sinclair Lewis is credited with saying, “When fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag and waving a cross.” Close, but not quite. Truth is, fascism has come to America; but it’s wrapped in a rainbow flag and waving, well, let’s just say it sure ain’t waving a cross. With its […]

Our Lady of All Nations: Approved?

Our Lady of All Nations: Approved?

Aug 6 12 • 8 comments

From 1945-1959, Mrs. Ida Peerdeman of the Diocese of van Haarlem (Amsterdam) claimed to receive private revelations.  The claims became known popularly as “Our Lady of All Nations” or simply “Amsterdam.”[i] The case was examined by the local Ordinary of van Haarlem, Bishop Johannes Huibers, who decided the claims were not supernatural in origin.  His […]