Earendel is Here… éala éarendel engla beorhtast / ofer middangeard monnum sended – Cynewulf Earendel is here, But not where you might find him In Tolkien’s Silmarillion Nor in a barque or nao A jewel in the prow But in another sphere Earendel is here In orbit overhead Like meteors that streak their trails And […]
O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker! (Psalm 95: 6) To kneel before God is a blessed thing. We are the only creatures who roam the earth with a free will, and the only ones with the freedom to give homage by kneeling to the One […]
Boldly Speak our Bishops Inspired by Eph 6:10-17 Boldly speak our Bishops With unified conviction. Battling society’s illness Of secular affliction. Armed with Truth and Faith, Spirit-filled and Spirit-led Bishops guiding flocks through Rough waters lying ahead. Dare to stand for your faith! Catholic? Then let them know Your prayers and support are theirs And […]
The Catholic Church teaches that in the Eucharist, the communion wafer and the altar wine are transformed and really become the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Have you ever met anyone who has found this Catholic doctrine to be a bit hard to take? If so, you shouldn’t be surprised. When Jesus spoke about […]
Ruach by Sylvia Dorham Dark ran it’s finger around the outskirts of the city like a child licking the last of the brownie batter from a wide bowl. Dusk settled first around skyscrapers and funneled down to the brownstones and nondescript buildings which housed businesses below upper-storey homes. The stars flew open and shone from […]
This week the Sundance Channel premiered Push Girls, a new reality series about four women in wheelchairs. All of them have spinal cord injuries at various levels. Like me, three of them were paralyzed from car accidents, one from a ruptured blood clot in her spinal cord. After watching the first episode, I can’t say […]
Sequels are hard. “Men in Black 3” is no exception. After an attention-grabbing, keeping-in-the-MIB-mode (and a once-only-ultra-risqué scene) opening, “MIB3” strives in a ho-hum way to maintain the MIB quirky vibe and “odd couple” relationship between Agent J (Will Smith) and Agent K (a wan-looking Tommy Lee Jones). Each actor does their best with mediocre, […]
Poor Planned Parenthood. Even with unflagging support from the White House, lapdog allegiance from congressional Democrats and fawning coverage from most mainstream media outlets, America’s largest abortion provider cannot help looking ridiculous. The organization’s latest public relations debacle began on May 29, when the youth-led, pro-life activist group Live Action released a video showing a […]
Rest O Earth, lie heavily upon her eyes; Seal her sweet eyes weary of watching, Earth; Lie close around her; leave no room for mirth With its harsh laughter, nor for sound of sighs. She hath no questions, she hath no replies, Hush’d in and curtain’d with a blessèd dearth Of all that irk’d her […]
It was time to make another dreaded phone call telling my wife that problems had come up and I wouldn’t be coming home the next day as scheduled. I was thousands of miles away, yet I could hear the disappointment in her voice as she tried to be understanding. She was used to this happening, […]
Cap and gown? Check. Camera, videocamera and cellphone for instantly uploading photos to Facebook? Check. Umbrella to keep grandma from getting wet or overheating in the sun inside the football stadium? Check. Air horn, confetti, posters, noisemakers, beach balls, rubber snakes? Check. Let the commencement exercises commence. Earlier this month, graduating senior Chuck Shriner of […]
Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi is fighting for the mandate in Obamacare designed force all health care plans to provide free (that is without a co-pay) contraception, morning after pills, and sterilization. She insists that this is a battle for women’s health. Those who see this as a question of religious freedom have let this claim pass […]
When historians one day look back on the rise and fall of the American republic, it won’t only be our habitual deficit spending and lack of financial discipline they blame for our demise, but the deficit of faith and lack of religion in our children’s generation. The beliefs and values that once served as the […]
Those who are up-to-date on the television series MadMen have an interesting episode to chew on as they await the season finale, but in the limited discussions I’ve followed since it aired, I have yet to see any reference to what I found the most profound point: the reverence due to the human body. […]
“Do you know any songs?” I asked my nearly 3-year-old granddaughter as the two us walked hand-in-hand to a nearby store. “Uh huh,” she answered. So I started “Itsy Bitsy Spider” and she joined in, shouting out the next word whenever I paused. Hmmm . . . “Father, Son, Holy Spirit,” I said, and she […]
A draft of new guidelines titled “Personal beliefs and medical practice” issued by the UK’s General Medical Council warns doctors that exercising their conscience rights to not prescribe contraceptives, including the abortifacient morning after pill, as well as not referring for abortion or performing “gender reassignment surgery,” could endanger their license to practice. “Serious or […]
University Fees The learned men came to see What could be done about that tree Stout and strong and big and tall, Faith inside that garden’s wall. Machines and steel their only hope Sturdy chains and heavy rope, Wrap around that solid tree And yanked it for a student’s fee… One lone seed is lost […]
For part one, please click here. Overview of Normae S. Congregationis: The original copy of NC comprised a total of four pages in Latin. It was signed by Francis Cardinal Seper, then Prefect of the CDF. It was undersigned by Fr. Jerome Hamer, O.P., then Secretary of the CDF. The document as a whole provides […]
You would think that any piece of legislation that wins a 246-168 majority of the votes of the House of Representatives would be on a fast track to become law. Passing pro-life legislation though, whether it be the earlier ban on partial-birth abortion, or the Prenatal Non-Discrimination Act (PreNDA)–a bill to make it unlawful to […]
No matter how many times I attend Mass, I still rarely attend with the presence of mind to realize I am attending a marriage ceremony. This is the most central and important aspect of my Christian life, and it just doesn’t occur to me that this is a wedding taking place. More specifically, the Mass […]
At 0227 hours on the morning of June 6, 1944, Lieutenant Robert Mathias saw the red light flash above the door of his C47 “Dakota” aircraft, signaling his men to get ready to parachute into a terrifying blackness that was streaked with machine-gun tracers and punctuated by exploding rounds from four-barrel 20-millimeter Flakvierling-38 anti-aircraft guns. […]
“If we wish to discover in all its richness the profound relationship between the Church and the Eucharist, we cannot neglect Mary, Mother and model of the Church…Mary can guide us toward this most holy sacrament because she herself has a profound relationship with it.” (Blessed Pope John Paul II, Ecclesia de Eucharistia) At the […]
Somewhere, in the recesses of my consciousness, I was aware that it was morning. But the drug of sleep was heavy upon me… and I didn’t much care. My head was lead on my pillow and my face turned away from the alarm clock. Even if I had seen the time… even if it had […]
A writer who practices his art at home does not want to turn his place of residence into a library warehouse. And so, every so often, in order to maintain a dynamic equilibrium between acquisitions and dispersals, he must sift through his material and separate the transitory from the enduring. It is a practice akin […]
