Category: The Catholic Family

Rejecting Abortion, Affirming Life
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Rejecting Abortion, Affirming Life

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by on Jan 28, 2016 in Contraception & Abortion, Disability, Sickness & Suffering, Featured, Marriage, Those in Need
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Thousands braved severe weather last week to attend the March for Life in Washington, D.C., giving a vital public witness to the sanctity of life. In this column, however, I will reflect on a very personal situation with my wife’s first pregnancy six years ago, when abortion was presented to us as an option. Our […]

Your 2016 Handy-Dandy List of Lenten Resources
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Your 2016 Handy-Dandy List of Lenten Resources

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by on Jan 26, 2016 in Cooking & Food, Evangelization, Featured, Men, On Media, Parenting, Women
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Lent comes early this year. February 10th is Ash Wednesday! That’s just three weeks away, folks. So instead of waiting until the last minute and grasping at your old standbys (giving up chocolate or God forbid, coffee), why not plan ahead using our convenient list of resources below? Make this your most spiritually fruitful Lent ever! Reprinted with […]

Family Ties that Lift Us Up
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Family Ties that Lift Us Up

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by on Jan 18, 2016 in Evangelization, Featured, Live in Christ, Marriage, Men, Parenting
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Jesus’ invitation to discipleship comes with a warning: “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me” (Mk 8:34). He made this statement shortly after Peter confessed him to be the Messiah, and he told his disciples what that role entails. The suffering involved in denying oneself and […]

The Holy Family: The Reason for Christmas
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The Holy Family: The Reason for Christmas

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by on Dec 23, 2015 in Featured, Marriage
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Do you love Christmas? Before you answer, I don’t mean the nearly 4 weeks of frantic shopping or the crazy parties or the frenzied family gatherings or the warm, gushy feelings we get from receiving presents. I mean the real reason why we do those things in the first place. Do you love the real […]

Christmas Time Out of Time
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Christmas Time Out of Time

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by on Dec 20, 2015 in Columnists, Featured, Parenting
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My five year old daughter and I were playing a guitar duet together. On just one guitar: I fingered the chords, she strummed the strings. While she strummed, she made-up her own lyrics. This is a regular activity for us, and even without guitar accompaniment she loves to “write her own songs.” On the day […]

Learning from the Moms
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Learning from the Moms

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by on Dec 15, 2015 in Featured, On Books, Parenting, Women
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I’m a new priest and I have a lot to learn. Of course, working in a parish affords me many opportunities to work with different and diverse groups of people. A group of mothers approached me a few months ago and asked if I would be willing to lead a book discussion for them. I […]

Mary's Salvation and Ours
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Mary’s Salvation and Ours

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by on Dec 08, 2015 in Columnists, Featured, Health & Fitness
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“Have you been saved?” Maybe you have been asked that by one of our Protestant brothers or sisters. If our Blessed Mother had been asked, she could have given the loudest “Yes!” the world had ever heard. Her personal salvation from the stain of Original Sin is celebrated today. Mary praised God’s salvation in her Magnificat and […]

Family in Full: Blending Backgrounds for New Family Traditions
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Family in Full: Blending Backgrounds for New Family Traditions

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by on Dec 04, 2015 in Featured, Humor, Marriage, Men, Women
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It was Thanksgiving and my then-girlfriend was meeting my family for the first time. Much to my surprise, all five of my siblings were able to be there, and we enjoyed – or so I thought – our usual holiday dinner with the typical excited-aggressive talking that Italians tend to do. Later that evening, I […]

dating, marriage, love
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In Defense Of “Soul Mates”

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by on Nov 24, 2015 in Dating & Singles, Featured, Marriage
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It has been said that: Real love is not all feelings. Real love takes work. Real love requires choosing your beloved on a daily basis.  These are all statements that I believe to be true. But, can I let you in on a little secret? I believe in soul mates. And [thankfully], I believe that I […]

Theology of the Body Revolutionized My Marriage
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Theology of the Body Revolutionized My Marriage

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by on Nov 23, 2015 in Evangelization, Featured, Marriage, Women
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I can’t fully explain it, because it wasn’t what my parents tried to teach me. But this is what I learned as a child: sex is dirty. I knew, in my head, that this wasn’t true, and that sex, in its proper context, was a blessed, holy thing. But even for good Catholic girls who […]

How to Discern Whether Adoption is Right for You
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How to Discern Whether Adoption is Right for You

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by on Nov 17, 2015 in Featured, On Books, Parenting
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In honor of National Adoption Month, here’s my review of Jaymie Stuart Wolfe’s excellent discernment guide, Adoption: Room for One More?, from Pauline Books & Media. A few years ago, between babies #3 and #4 (or #4 and #5), my husband and I contemplated adopting a baby girl from China. We were moved by stories […]

Expanding Acronyms Threaten Maternal and Child Health
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Expanding Acronyms Threaten Maternal and Child Health

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by on Nov 13, 2015 in Contraception & Abortion, Featured, Health & Fitness
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In recent decades, the relatively simple and appealing concept of maternal and child health (MCH) has ballooned into a far broader and more convoluted agenda: sexual, reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health, with an unwieldy acronym to match: SRMNCAH. The addition of new letters and target areas have brought a wide range of new […]

Why are the Middle-Aged Dying?
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Why are the Middle-Aged Dying?

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by on Nov 11, 2015 in Education, Featured, Health & Fitness, On the Job, Those in Need
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By now there’s a good chance you’ve heard of the disturbing study from Princeton economists showing that middle-aged white Americans are the only demographic showing increasing death rates. Only the 45-54 age segment, and only in the United States. Worse yet, the rise in deaths is due to suicide and substance abuse. One of the […]

Book Review: <em>Intimate Graces</em>
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Book Review: Intimate Graces

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by on Nov 10, 2015 in Featured, Marriage, On Books
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The Jubilee Year of Mercy is right around the corner. Why not take advantage of that year to work on your marriage? In Intimate Graces (Ave Maria Press, 2015), Catholic media maven Teresa Tomeo (Pastore) and her husband Deacon Dominick Pastore examine how practicing the works of mercy can bring out the best in marriage. […]

The Meaning of Human Sexuality
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The Meaning of Human Sexuality

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by on Nov 06, 2015 in Contraception & Abortion, Evangelization, Featured, Marriage, Men, Women
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As the concept of gender grows ever more fluid (you can pick any one of 58 gender options on Facebook), it’s worth asking why God created humans as male and female. Bacteria have no gender and reproduce mostly by dividing their cells. Some species of fish are sequentially hermaphroditic, changing genders throughout their lifetime. Angels, […]

dating, marriage, love
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Let Your Spousal Love Grow

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by on Nov 06, 2015 in Evangelization, Featured, Marriage, Parenting
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This past summer, after nearly 16 years of marriage, my husband and I took our first bona-fide, airline-ticket “weekend away.” As you might imagine, it was quite a logistical undertaking for a family with four children. More than once I questioned whether we were being selfish for doing it at all. But something happened that […]

Feathers in the Wind: Scandal and Sharing Online
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Feathers in the Wind: Scandal and Sharing Online

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by on Nov 02, 2015 in Evangelization, Featured, Live in Christ, Marriage
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St. Philip Neri once told a woman that as penance for her gossiping, she should scatter a pillowful of feathers into the wind and then walk about the town collecting every feather. The task was impossible, of course, and it emphasized that we can’t take back our words once they’ve been uttered. That’s especially true […]

Jesus's Door
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Jesus’s Door

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by on Oct 29, 2015 in Disability, Sickness & Suffering, Evangelization, Featured, Parenting
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I have always been pro-life, and so when we were faced with an unexpected prenatal diagnosis with our 5th daughter at her 19 week scan, there was no question we would bring her in to this world and face her challenges along side of her.  Immediate thoughts included just keeping her alive, getting her through […]

Talkin’ Marriage Online: The Trouble with TMI
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Talkin’ Marriage Online: The Trouble with TMI

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by on Oct 28, 2015 in Featured, Marriage, On Media
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It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as […]

Faith in Suffering: Kristi's Gift to All of Us
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Faith in Suffering: Kristi’s Gift to All of Us

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by on Oct 28, 2015 in Disability, Sickness & Suffering, Euthanasia & Assisted Suicide, Featured, The Feminine Genius, Women
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I crawled into the bed with Kristi and we lay together all afternoon talking and laughing. We talked about everything under the sun: our childhoods, our hopes and dreams, our disappointments, homeschooling, our faith, our husbands, our children, and her cancer. It’s been a year ago already and I can remember everything about that day. […]

Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, The Joy of the Gospel
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Front Row With Francis: Family and Fidelity

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by on Oct 26, 2015 in Catechesis, Featured, Learn & Live the Faith, The Catholic Family, The Shepherd's Voice
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Pope Francis’s Wednesday General Audience, on October 21, focused on the promise of love and fidelity made between husbands and wives.  The resulting fidelity in turn sets the couple and their family free. A couple’s fidelity to their promise to love is a blessing for the whole world because “no other school can teach the […]

Active Parenting and Grandparenting With a Wheelchair
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Active Parenting and Grandparenting With a Wheelchair

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by on Oct 23, 2015 in Disability, Sickness & Suffering, Featured, Parenting
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Parenting can be daunting, but it becomes more complicated for a wheelchair user. But it can be done with great success. No obstacle is insurmountable with innovative thinking. And there are many agencies in most communities to teach techniques for parenting to wheelchair users. My children were seven and five years old when I was […]

A Strong and Faithful Love: From God the Father to Our Own Fathers
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A Strong and Faithful Love: From God the Father to Our Own Fathers

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by on Oct 23, 2015 in Featured, Marriage, Men, Parenting
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I once heard a story about a missionary who was working in an impoverished area where fathers were not a part of the everyday lives of the children. When she taught them the “Our Father,” they couldn’t understand what the love of a father was like. So, with the best of intentions, she taught them […]

The Wisdom of the Church’s Teaching on Marriage
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The Wisdom of the Church’s Teaching on Marriage

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by on Oct 20, 2015 in Featured, Marriage
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From individuals, to families, to the general population at-large, marriage is essential to society. A committed marriage provides the best arrangement for the well-being of both spouses and children. Marriage provides a more stable environment for personal growth and development than any other living arrangement. Yet many families in today’s culture are rent apart by […]