Every morning, my six month old baby boy looks up out of his crib with wide blue eyes and smiles around his pacifier as I pick him up. I’m his Mama, you see, and he loves me. But I’m not the only mother he has known. For nine months, he grew and was lovingly cared […]
Sports are often said to be a microcosm of life. But for kids playing on their first team, sports can provide valuable life lessons and opportunities for developing virtues. Coaches, then, can be influential mentors who start youngsters on the right road. Yet it’s not as simple as it looks. I had been thinking about […]
It’s that time of year again in New England – the days are getting shorter, the nights are getting cooler and the kids are getting ready to go back to school. College kids are packing boxes, suitcases and car trunks to move their necessities anywhere from 25 miles to 2,500 miles away. But this is […]
It is now well-recognized that boys are not reading. What is the problem? Most commentators want to say that boys have an aversion to books. But the problem is quite the opposite: books—modern books, that is—have an aversion to boys. A recent edition of The New York Times Sunday Book Review featured a Robert Lipsyte article that […]
We have been teaching NFP for nearly 28 years. We have volunteered much of our time preparing and teaching classes of many couples over the years, as well as lecturing to marriage preparation courses and youth group meetings, but let me share with you what we have gotten out of it. Admittedly, when we first […]
I remember one night, not too long ago, when our 8-year-old’s homework assignment was to read a chapter from his religion book. As Quinn and I finished the section about patron saints, we chatted about the patron of ‘this and that’ and he mentioned St. Benedict—his favorite since learning about him in first grade. Quinn: What’s […]
My husband Mark and I used to make a trip to the maternity ward every couple of years. Given our track record, it was a good idea to have an extra home pregnancy kit tucked away on a bathroom shelf. One month, I did not really think I was pregnant but since I was late, […]
As someone who has suffered from a chronic health condition most of her adult life, it was with great interest that I began researching health and fitness many years ago. I wanted to understand what I was going through but also wanted to see it all in the light of my faith. The mainstream medical […]
Would the type of person you are praying to meet and fall in love with find you attractive? When and if it should happen that you meet someone special, fall in love, and get married, the process starts with you. This is the premise of my first book, Would You Date You? I appeared on […]
I’ve been a parent for a long time now, and I have heard many, many parents — in real life, in print, and on television — talk about their ultimate hopes for their children: “I just want my child to be happy.” “I want my child to be successful.” “I want my child to have […]
Students at Boston College who learn solid proofs for the existence of God have an atheist professor to thank. A little over 20 years ago, a history professor at the Jesuit college was advocating atheism in one of his classes. When Jesuit Father Ronald Tacelli, a professor of philosophy, learned of the class, he thought […]
“Mom, can I count your grey hairs?” my nine-year-old asked me the other day as he started to poke at my head. He eventually abandoned the task, deciding that there were too many. Last week, I walked into my parents’ house and my mom declared, “Wow! I love your new haircut. It makes you look […]
It must be said: What NBC newswoman Andrea Mitchell knows about suburban moms would fit on the back of a postage stamp. Ms. Mitchell, reporting from Virginia at the Saturday rally where Mitt Romney introduced Rep. Paul Ryan as his vice-presidential running mate, announced with authority that Mr. Ryan was “not a pick for suburban […]
Long ago, our first house had a growth chart on the inside of a bedroom door. Now and again, we’d line up our three little children and place a ruler atop their heads. Then we’d pencil a line alongside their respective heights, along with the date, and their initials – marking growth over time. Something […]
The world of academia during the Seventies opened our minds so wide that our brains seemed to fall out. False teachings often undermined faith and morals. Yet, we came away believing we were more highly evolved than when we went in. I recall one professor warning a class of seniors: “You will be surprised that […]
“From the beginning therefore he [man] is called to work. Work is one of the characteristics that distinguish man from the rest of creatures, whose activity for sustaining their lives cannot be called work. Only man is capable of work, and only man works, at the same time by work occupying his existence on earth. Thus work […]
I recently read an article written by a Protestant about modern worship. The author explored all the new ways, through technology and media, to keep the members interested in the worship service. The article was about how to keep the attendees feeling like they had a good God experience, new songs, new music, new films, […]
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 […]
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.” […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
