Anonymous

This month marks the 40^th anniversary of the publication of Humanae Vitae (On Human Life), the landmark encyclical of Pope Paul VI reaffirming the Church’s position against artificial contraception.

The so-called sexual revolution, now well into its 40s, has given us a lousy…

Last Friday, July 11th, the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) “celebrated” World Population Day — not that the UNFPA finds anything to celebrate about populating the world, you understand. To them it was World (Over) Population Day with the usual spate…

To CE Editors:

I am a long-time Catholic, and it saddens me to see Catholic organizations embracing a party that stands for everything traditional Catholics do not, such as bigotry, oppression of the poor and disabled, a war on human rights,…

As we know, Chesterton famously observed that the mark of madness is not the loss of reason, but the loss of everything except the reason. Periodically, something in our culture will show me the brilliance of that insight with great…

About eight years ago, my husband and I decided to relegate the use of the television to a very minor part of the family’s entertainment — mostly for sports or for use with the VCR to watch a movie, about…

Jane St Clare

Suicide is, by definition, an act you perform by yourself.

By the time you are ready to commit suicide, you have come to certain philosophical conclusions. You believe that your life is no longer worth living, and that there…

Like many women, body angst has been a stubborn companion of mine. When I was younger, I suffered from both bulimia and anorexia and received counseling for over a year. Even when my clinical eating disorder was reigned in, the…

Two weeks ago my friend Sarah and I loaded our four kids into the van and drove twelve hours to Atlanta to attend the Catholic New Media Celebration… and to meet an extraordinary group of writers face-to-face for the first…

On November 20, 1839, John Williams, my ancestor and one of the early pioneering missionaries to Polynesia, crawled down the side of the London Missionary Society’s sailing ship Camden, and with two colleagues rowed a skiff toward the beach at…

I just got back from Mass. Nobody followed me home in a mysterious black car.

Yesterday, my wife went swimming with her head uncovered and her legs and arms exposed. Nobody tried to beat her to death as a harlot.

Not one…

This morning, as I write this, I am eating biscotti in bed. Close at hand is my warm mug of hazelnut-crème-flavored coffee. Hubby is already at work and summer’s pace still has the teenagers sleeping in. I am hiding out…

It is a foregone conclusion in some corners of Western society that men and virtue are mutually exclusive things. Especially in our own American popular culture, men are more often presented as hapless perpetual adolescents or dimwitted loons who stumble…

The Earth has become an enormous refuse heap. Toiling tirelessly amid the rubble is a little anthropomorphic trash compactor named WALL-E. With a cockroach as his only companion, WALL-E has been humming along for hundreds of years, cubing and stacking…

On the fourth of July, most Americans have their minds on picnics, fireworks, and other ways of celebrating American independence. But on the calendar of the universal Church, the day has a different meaning, and it’s one worth recalling this…

In a movie landscape dotted with such heavy-on-the-boy themes as Iron Man and Speed Racer, the first American Girl feature film looms as a breath of fresh girl-powered fun. The first feature film based upon the popular American Girls book series…

A couple of weeks ago, I made the case that the biblical warnings against confusing the traditions of men with the Tradition of God still apply in our day. A few days later, as if divinely ordained to illustrate my…

I don’t like to fail. I don’t like to fall. I’m embarrassed when I stumble and blush when I put my foot in my mouth (which happens more than I like to admit). As much as I don’t like to…

On June 28, 2008, the Catholic Church will begin its celebration of the Year of St. Paul, the single most important evangelist in the history of the Church. Question: If St. Paul was here spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ today, would he use the Internet?

Summer is just such a wonderful time of year. The weather is warm and inviting, the birds are chirping and the flowers are blooming. Unfortunately with this lovely warm weather comes a barrage of skin both attractive and unattractive. In…

Pixar Animation Studio was founded in the 1980s by media moguls George Lucas and Steve Jobs, but whether they knew it or not, the guys who made their latest film release WALL*E (in theatres tomorrow) were working for God. So says…

It is an old truism that there is Tradition and there are traditions. Catholic apologist types typically illustrate this by showing clear examples of Big-T Tradition (the Creed or the canon of Scripture) vs. small-t traditions such as, say, birthday…

“This is an extraordinary moment in history,” Gavin Newsom, mayor of San Francisco told a cheering, standing-room-only crowd at City Hall. “I think today, marriage as an institution has been strengthened.”

These were the words that rang out from the news…

Do you find it challenging to live a balanced Christian life that unites faith, family and work? Does your Christ-inspired faith sometimes get deflated throughout the course of everyday life? Many of us feel overwhelmed by the obstacles we face…

When in doubt, You are there in Your word
When in fear, You are there in Your strength
When abandoned, You are there as love
When tempted to the darkness of despair, You are there as light
When in confusion, You are there as…

There’s something wrong with the world today,
I don’t know what it is
Something’s wrong with our eyes.
We’re seeing things in a different way and God knows it ain’t his
Sure ain’t no surprise — “Livin’ on the Edge,” Steven Tyler of Aerosmith.

In looking…

Go Green! It’s a recurrent theme now, especially as we enter the summer months. I read in the paper that our local park district has adapted this theme for all of this summer’s classes. We can learn how to fertilize…

In 1998, I was asked to give a talk at my parish on my conversion to the Catholic Faith. The local Catholic bookstore set up a table of various materials on the Catholic faith and as I perused them, I…

In the domestic church, children learn a variety of things. Sharing a bathroom with siblings can be frustrating but essential to the give-and-take necessary to communal living. Finding the box of a favourite cereal emptied and trashed is familiar terrain,…

QUEBEC,QC,CA — Yesterday, at the opening of the 49^th International Eucharistic Congress (IEC), Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Archbishop of Quebec and Primate of Canada, and Papal Legate Cardinal Jozef Tomko, welcomed what may become an enduring symbol of the IEC for decades…

I happened across a quote the other day that captures perfectly my experiences of fatherhood. The quote is from a small book titled, Radical Hospitality: Benedict’s Way of Love, by Fr. Daniel Homan and Lonni Collins Pratt. In describing a friend…

“Women have the right to behave every bit as badly as men” is not a claim made by the big-screen version of the television hit Sex and the City — it is the film’s presupposition. In the world of Carrie,…

“But Dad! You’re not listening,” my teenage daughter wailed. A crying woman has never been something I can understand or deal with easily. If I tell her to stop crying and think rationally about the question, I’m being “insensitive.” If…

The great blueprint for preserving the unity and catholicity of the Church is found in the epistle to the Romans. Many moderns have this rosy view of the New Testament Church as “all in one accord”. All those Bible characters…

If May is for mothers, June is the month we think of our fathers. Fathers who gave us life, and who later taught us to ride a two-wheeler and a stick-shift. Fathers who tested the mettle of boyfriends (and steered…

I find this to be a difficult and complex topic: Being good stewards of God’s blessings and truly helping those in need.

Donating money to good causes is very important, but actually lifting the burdens of the Lazarus in your life…

A dear Christian friend recently asked me, “Why do Catholics bury statues of St. Joseph?”  Apparently my friend’s Catholic neighbor was putting his house up for sale and along with pounding in a “For Sale” sign in the front lawn,…

On May 21st, many of us were deeply saddened to hear of the accidental death of seven-year-old Maria Chapman, daughter of well-known Christian singer Steven Curtis Chapman. My wife and I live just outside of Nashville and it seems that…

Recent crises have reenergized the population control movement. Worried about food shortages?  Reduce the number of babies born, its advocates argue.  Concerned about global warming?  Contracept or sterilize more women.  Want to bring down gas prices?  Promote abortion around the…

One often hears about the supposedly monolithic or totalitarian character of the Catholic Church.  You know the drill.  The Pope tells everybody what to think.  Catholics all have to believe exactly the same thing.  Freedom of thought is anathema for…

I’m grateful that C.S. Lewis, in the preface to his book The Great Divorce, makes this disclaimer: “I beg readers to remember that this is a fantasy. It has of course — or I intended it to have — a…

Beginning on July 25, 2007, Priests for Life launched a year-long 40^th anniversary celebration of Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae, promulgated in 1968 just a few years after the Second Vatican Council.  Many people around the world believed that Paul VI’s…

As the month of May — Mary’s month — comes to a close, our awareness of the Blessed Virgin’s significance in our own lives shouldn’t end with a time of the year. She is an example par excellence of living Christ’s…

About a year ago I received an email from a Catholic author with a request to participate in a novena.  Essentially, the request was for blessings upon the works of Catholic authors in the form of sales, recognitions, and other…

One of the most amazing works of the Holy Spirit over the past couple of decades or so has been the wave of Protestant converts coming into the Catholic Church.  Notable among them have been the Protestant ministers — the…

The unity of the Church is one of the great misunderstood notions of history. This is understandable because the unity of the Church is not a human idea but a mystery of revelation—one almost as profound as the mystery of…

In the early 1960’s in America change was brewing and would explode onto the culture scene shortly. Amid all this chaos there were certain groups of people who saw a need for abortion to be legal in the US. What did…

The pavement can be brutal outside an abortion clinic. It can be controversial, even dangerous, but most of the time it’s quietly tense with little to encourage those who stand and speak for pre-born babies and their right to live.…

During a recent family gathering, my husband, my brother-in-law, and my uncle regaled the gathered group with tales of childhood games.  In particular, one that all three of these men, now in their late 40’s through mid 50’s, played was…

The great desire of sin is to kill you. It begins by trying to kill you spiritually, and once it does so, it will try to physically kill you as well. This law applies to Christians and non-Christians alike. Depending…

My parents were visiting with us this week. Dad put in the dog fence (thanks, Dad!) … and Mom roped me into one of “those” conversations. You know the kind: high in drama, low in resolution.

This time, the subject was…