Perpetual Adolescents in the Widening Gyre -UPDATED

I give you two rather different pieces, both sharing a common thread: the full-rein head we have given to all of our adolescent leanings. If the society has been dumbed-down — and it has been — it has also developed a case of arrested development, and both issues appear to stem from a generational and [...]

Challenges, Rewards of Teaching Deaf Children

Catechist extraordinaire Lisa Mladinich, whose weekly column “Be an Amazing Catechist” has become a first-stop resource for RCIA facilitators and CCD teachers, has for the last two weeks been focusing on the challenges and rewards of serving the Deaf community of faith. Last week, she looked at the great needs within the church – what [...]

The Boy Without a Cerebellum

Medical science is a wonderful thing, but it is not the only thing. And doctors understand many, many things, but not everything. Which is why we should not be too quick to give up on people. Chase was also born prematurely, and he was legally blind. When he was 1 year old, doctors did an [...]

Heather King; the Anti-Anne Rice – UPDATED

Last summer, when Anne Rice loudly announced that she was “quitting” Christianity but not Christ, I wrote a long point-by-point response that seems to have gone missing in my move over to Patheos. Hopefully it will be recovered, but thanks to Ed Driscoll, some of it can be read at his place, including this part: [...]

The Yin and Yang of Catholic Young

It is fascinating to ponder the Taoist idea of Yin and Yang – the notion of an eternal cycle that grows to a fullness that must then transition to something else. I wrote about it once, in a manner of speaking, when thinking about the bliss of the Divine Office: A beautiful depiction of the [...]

Catholic ComBoxes, Catholic Harumphs!

My friend Tony Rossi — who has a fun and thoughtful piece up over at Patheos, looking at the headline-reflecting themes on this seasons episodes of “V”, particularly as pertains to the ongoing battle between people of faith and the secularists (do read!) — sent along this cute piece from NCR, asking which personality are [...]

Anxious Parenting – UPDATED

I love this piece by David Mills: Once at a cookout, our youngest son and another boy, both seven or eight, were bouncing from opposite sides of the trampoline and bumping into each other in the middle, laughing hysterically as they fell down. Neither was a physically adventurous child, and they collided very gently. They [...]