Have you ever wondered how many people you’ll meet in your lifetime? I was on a road trip with my wife and kids last week and we stopped at the Worlds’ Loneliest McDonald’s. I’ve also been to what local urban legend reputes to be The World’s Busiest McDonalds. It stands all alone amid the never […]
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Televangelist Pat Robertson made another high-profile gaffe last week when he told a caller on “The 700 Club” show that a husband who is tempted to cheat on his Alzheimer’s-stricken wife ought to leave her for someone new. “I know it sounds cruel,” Robertson said, “but if he’s going to do something, he should divorce […]
Is America condemned to endless war? And if so, what implications does that have for the American psyche — the American soul? A friend of mine who is a practicing poet writing under the pen name Pavel Chichikov shares a poem composed after hearing the roar of F-16s — presumably engaged in protecting the citizenry […]
The family-friendly movie Dolphin Tale is one of the best films I have seen in a long time. I laughed, I cried, and I didn’t want it to end. The story centers on Winter (a real dolphin who plays herself), who was caught in a crab trap on the Florida coast and rescued by young […]
If you think “I Spy” is just a game for children, think again. Our federal government and the public school system have begun to play – but for real and they’re playing with our lives and the lives of our children. Team Obama has launched “Attack Watch,” (www.AttackWatch.com) an interactive website and subcategory of www.mybarackobama.com […]
Shortly after the first of many meetings between the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) in October of 2009, I wrote in my column: Regardless of whether or not the meetings result in the SSPX arriving at full communion – something each of us should […]
Here’s a pop quiz: What percentage of elementary school children in the District’s public schools is proficient in math? What about reading? What is the proficiency of D.C. high school students in these areas? The answer: less than half. Scores on the 2011 D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System exams showed only about 43 percent of elementary […]
Whether it’s an election year or not, I see to it that Priests for Life echoes loud and clear the duty of citizens to inform themselves about where the candidates stand on the issues. This evaluation starts, of course, with where they stand on violence against human beings, because if public servants cannot tell the […]
“But that’s not fair!” Most parents have heard this phrase umpteen times. The notion of fairness, also known as justice, is wired into us. It makes us aware that each of us has certain rights that need to be respected. But it also means that we each have duties. If others have the right to […]
Dear Reader, I have so many friends whose kids are either beginning or ending the orthodontia journey, I found myself revisiting the history of my own daughter’s mouth-capades. After 6 years of having some form of wire contraption glued in my daughter’s mouth (and us living off of mac & cheese, the clouds parted and […]
So plopping your preschooler in front of the television to gawk at “SpongeBob SquarePants” — a frenetic cartoon featuring scene changes every 11 seconds — impairs his attention span. Who could have guessed? This astonishing revelation comes courtesy of the Pediatrics journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics. The journal recently published a study showing […]
It’s the first day of school here at the Fenelon Clan Abode, and I made our high school sophomore a super-duper, extra-special, sunshine theme breakfast: Eggs in a basket with little mini-sun cutouts, sunshine drink (milk with vanilla, sweetener, and yellow food coloring), and yogurt parfait with bursting sun rays (peach slices arranged along the […]
Poor President Obama. All he wanted to do was deliver a jobs speech to Congress. How were he and his staff supposed to know that their chosen time and date happened to be exactly the same as that of a long-planned Republican presidential debate, where his aspiring rivals planned to highlight his failure to create […]
Commentary on the riots inLondon and other British cities has frequently made the point that what happened there could be a forerunner of something that might happen inAmerica. And why not? After all, it already has — think of Watts, think of the eruptions inWashingtonand other American cities after Dr. Martin Luther King was killed. […]
Backpack? Check. Transformers lunchbox? Check. Leftist political Kool-Aid? Check. Looks like the school year can begin. This week, millions of American children return to their classrooms. Unfortunately, the material some of them will be forced to study is controversial, to say the least. In keeping with their habit of using our educational system to impose […]
I recently renewed a friendship with a long-lost high school friend on Facebook and was surprised by her rather liberal views on politics and religion. After all, we had both attended a Catholic high school, although she is Episcopalian. At first, I thought that perhaps I should move on as our world views were so […]
Ten years ago this month, after a band of radical Islamists crashed airplanes into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field, religion surged to the forefront of our national conversation. The twisted, hateful beliefs of the terrorists came into sharp focus, of course. But so did the generous, life-affirming faith of their victims […]
Recently, I noticed some social networking posts by a Catholic woman friend about her enjoyment of FOX’s show, “Glee.” This is a woman I respect so I assumed that “Glee” was a wholesome show that any Catholic woman could watch without worry to her conscience. I was enthusiastic in hope that, finally, prime time television […]
I used to think that God’s law was like those dumb rules we had to put up with in grammar school, like “Thou shalt not chew gum in class.” They are arbitrary laws that bureaucrats came up with to keep them happy and the rest of us miserable. The goal of students is to break […]
The world’s longest ruling head of state, Mu’ammar al-Qadhdhafi (the correct transliteration of his name), would have been ruler of Libya for exactly 42 years on Sept. 1. As he leaves the scene, his wretched reign deserves an appraisal. Qaddafi took power at the age of 27 in the waning days of Gamal Abdel Nasser, […]
Ok, fess up. Are you a good parent or a bad one? Last week, bad parents were all over the news, so if you weren’t plastered throughout the media for pouring hot sauce down your son’s throat, shaving your daughter’s head for lying, or otherwise terrorizing the little ones in your care, you’re not as […]
Another World Youth Day has come and gone, and with it, all the usual speculation about what it means. Ever since the late Pope John Paul II launched the international faith festival in 1984 by welcoming 300,000 young Catholics to Rome, the chattering classes have struggled to account for its appeal. That struggle continued last […]
Truth in advertizing — after all the glowing reports of the benefits of a product, potential side effects need to be mentioned. Informed consent — before surgery, patients have to be told of all the things that could possibly go wrong. That way, they have the chance to opt out before it’s too late. As […]
