The Roman galley cruised through the surf and flotsam into the harbor on the island of Patmos in the Aegean Sea. While the galley slaves slumped exhausted across their oars, the convicts disembarked and formed a long chain bound for the penal colony and marched up the road to the sound of the lash and […]
There are all kind of theories floating around about what life must have been like between Adam and Eve and the animals in the pre-fall Garden of Eden, but I wonder if it looked quite a bit like what I saw at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium last week. This impressive facility is the real-world setting […]
The medical committee behind the federal government’s impending mandate that insurers cover birth control without co-pay is populated by board members of NARAL and Planned Parenthood, as well as major donors to politicians favoring legal abortion. The pro-life organization HLI America says public records show the ideological roots of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) committee, […]
The Holy See condemned attempts to inject euthanasia into the right to health and Latin American and Caribbean delegations called for a new UN treaty at two recent UN meetings on the rights of the elderly. At the Human Rights Council in Geneva the Holy See representative said his delegation took “strong exception” to a […]
September 30, 420 saw the death of the Latin Church Father St. Jerome and hence September 30th is his feast day. Jerome spent the last half of his life rendering the Scriptures into the contemporary Latin of his day. Since Latin was at that time, the common or “vulgar” tongue, his translation was called the […]
Here’s an issue that has direct impact on the lives of women (and men!). I know so many people who are nurses, nurse practitioners, physician’s assistants, and physicians; you probably do too. Let’s stand with them in securing the conscience protections needed for Christian medical personnel to continue their good work in health care without […]
To the uninitiated, Vladimir Putin has seemingly just undertaken what President Obama might call a “reset” of the Russian political landscape. In fact, the prime minister’s announcement Saturday that he would swap offices with the current president, Dmitry Medvedev, just clarifies an abiding reality: There is not, and since at least 2000 never has been, […]
Set Us Free Do you not know That we are seeds in the desert Seeds in the desert Small enough That only stars can see us, Those great eyes? In this dreadful desert In this desiccation Rain may come in decades And more decades While we lie within the soil But then in years In […]
God is love, therefore we exist. The Divine Goodness is the pulsing root of all things. We are created for communion with Him, conjured from nothingness to behold the Beautiful One. Creation is a great romance: “For You love all the things that exist” (Wisdom 11:24). The God of Jacob is not merely the Craftsman, […]
Over the years, I have been asked many times to estimate how many lives have been lost in China as a result of the one-child policy. Given that the policy has been in place for 30 years, I respond, and given that each year the government aborts between 10 to 15 million women, the total […]
Envy is sadness or discontent at another’s good fortune or excellence. Dante defined it as a perversion of one’s own good; a “wish to deprive” others of their own good. Augustine deemed it “the diabolical sin.” Conservative columnist George Will quips that envy is the most miserable of the deadly sins because it brings not […]
In the tradition of Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, cross-cultural comparisons can sometimes provide insights to which we, as citizens, might be blind. A recent visitor to our parish in metropolitan Seattle, Father Kiiza Justus of Uganda, granted me an interview.[i] . Uganda — “the pearl of Africa” — has the youngest population in the […]
Souls I wish I were a river birch Above a living river, Leaning from above to watch The flowing of forever Have you seen how delicate The branches and the bark? How patient must it be to wait By sunrise and by dark But all the trees in heaven As Solomon are wise, They grow […]
The United States of America is about to witness a series of phenomena that are stark reminders of the ever-growing gap between the family unit as we knew it in the fifties and the broken home that we recognize as emblematic of the current milieu. While we are hopeful that the most effective destroyer of […]
Fr. Peter and I have been trying to get together for over a year. We’ve both been so busy, he as a pastor of a parish and Catholic school (an hour’s distance from me), and me as a wife, mother and author. But, just recently we finally succeeded on the day before St. Padre Pio’s […]
The dramatic story of Joseph Maraachli, popularly known as “Baby Joseph,” came to its final conclusion yesterday. Alex Schadenberg of the Canada-based Euthanasia Prevention Coalition said Wednesday morning that Baby Joseph, who burst into international headlines earlier this year when Canadian doctors scheduled to remove him from life support against his family’s wishes, died at […]
Barely enough time has passed for bologna sandwiches to begin rotting in school lockers, yet the 2011-2012 school year is shaping up to be one of the stinkiest ever, if we’re measuring in episodes of putrid political correctness and radicalism. Already: • A group in Brookline, Mass., is working to ban the Pledge of Allegiance […]
I confess that until now I have never read anything by Wendell Berry. In fact, I deliberately avoided reading anything by him, or indeed by any agrarian writer. There was a strategic reason for avoiding these writers. The bulk of my work is devoted to explicating Distributism in purely economic terms, and Distributism is often […]
“The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball.” —Terence Mann (played by James Earl Jones), Field of Dreams For over 100 years, baseball has been a cultural reference point for millions of Americans. Just as certain songs are associated with special times in our lives, so many of us remember our past […]
The Lord said to Moses, “Tell the Israelites: On the first day of the seventh month you shall keep a Sabbath rest, with a sacred assembly and with the trumpet blasts as a reminder; you shall then do no sort of work, and you shall offer the oblation to the Lord.” (Leviticus 23:23-25) I’m embarrassed […]
In his seminal work, After Virtue, philosopher Alisdair MacIntyre argues that the abandonment of Aristotelian ethics lies at the heart of modern society’s slide into moral decadence and decline. Having abandoned an ontological, “is-ought” conception of the world, MacIntyre maintains that society now lacks a foundational vision to guide and order itself. Individualism, reigns supreme. […]
The Widow’s Might She sat in the pew Her head bowed down The basket coming She made no sound. Oh how she wished To give so much But alas she had No Midas touch. The basket came She shook with fear And into the basket She dropped a tear. Now tears can’t touch Like Midas […]
U.S. law enforcement agencies have generally responded to 9/11 with a pretend counterterrorism policy. They insist that naming the enemy as Islamism causes terrorism, that Islamist violence is just one of many co-equal problems (along with neo-Nazis, racial supremacists, et al.), and that counterterrorism primarily involves feel-good steps such as improving civil rights, passing anti-discrimination […]
Like many of my generation, my knowledge of Kung Fu and Shaolin priests was formed almost entirely by David Carradine’s portrayal of Kwai Chang Caine in the iconic television series “Kung Fu,” which aired 1972-1975. Caine was so cool. He made self-control look attractive. As a biracial fugitive in the American West, Caine tried to […]
