Parents, please stop tormenting your kids for clicks!
"Bad times, hard times, ... We are the times: Such as we are, such are the times" (Sermon 30, St Augustine). In my youth I knew a mother who played cruel "jokes" on babies. With a little one seated ...
I brought a heart full of fury with me to Mass. I left it there.
Small sparks of feeling that become all-consuming conflagrations can happen at any time, even, sadly, as one is preparing for Mass. I write, of course, from experience. The details aren't important. ...
Bob Dylan makes me want to be 80. Or even 85.
"The best thing about being 80 is that you outlive the clocks that have been chasing you. It's freedom from that lie than anything was ever under control." -- Bob Dylan In anticipation of President ...
Dream and be encouraged! Your God-given gifts are still there!
In this season, we spend a lot of time congratulating others on their graduations, or their upcoming jobs or their new marriages. That's all lovely, but there are times when, while genuinely glad for ...
Old lines, new thoughts: Writing out a Gospel by hand
Because my Lent took a nosedive about two-thirds of the way through, I am still immersed in a project I undertook in order to get my spiritual groove back: Writing out the Gospel of Mark, in longhand. It ...
Odds on Peter: Trump vs the pope
Anyone who reads me regularly knows I am not the sort of Catholic who grabs the smelling salts for every seeming insult or ignorant remark made about the Church. Ever since Madonna danced before a ...
Why does the Annunciation loom so large in Catholicism?
Non-Catholic friends are often puzzled by our calendar of memorials and solemnities, particularly the solemnity of the Annunciation -- a moment that usually only hits their awareness in the days leading ...
St. Patrick's Breastplate and the terrors of mid-Lent
I arise today Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity, Through belief in the Threeness, Through confession of the Oneness of the Creator of creation. Well, here we are in mid-March ...
