UK Health Minister Orders End To The Use Of Aborted Fetus Remains As Fuel For Hospital Waste To Energy Plants

March 26, 2014 By 4 Comments

File photo, October 30, 2012.

What an awful headline. It’s like something that Charlton Heston was screaming in Soylent Green.

It sounds like something from a classic English fairy tale meant to terrify children to bed. A pair of British hospitals this month acknowledged burning the remains of aborted babies for energy to heat the building in a practice aping Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, by which the 18th century children of the Irish poor would be sold for food to the rich. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Culture, Learning, Living Tagged With: , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

Lent And Holy Week (A Primer)

March 25, 2013 By 2 Comments
 

First published on April 5, 2011, fast forward to the good parts. It’s Holy Week!

We are officially past the half-way point of the Lenten Season.  Before you know it, it will be Holy Week. As a convert who entered the Church on Holy Saturday in the Year of Our Lord 2008, I’ll never forget that experience. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Culture, Living, Prayer, Working Tagged With: , , , 2 Comments

From the Treasure Chest: “The Little Guide for Lent,” circa 1808

March 9, 2013 By Leave a Comment

I went to the annual used book sale fundraiser for our public library with my wife during lunch yesterday.  Some of you may recall that back in 2006, that is where I picked up the Harvard Classics Five Foot Shelf of Books. Today I picked up a few more selections too, including a 1996 Knopf hardcover copy of Kristin Lavrensdatter that my wife found for $2.00. Yay! There was no way I was going to be able to read 1047 pages as a library book.

But I wasn’t able to find the book that I’m writing about now. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Living Tagged With: , , Leave a Comment

Thoughts On Lenten Sacrifice (A Modest Proposal)

February 12, 2013 By 4 Comments

St. Anthony the Great tempted in the Desert

I may be a newbie Catholic, but I have an idea about Lenten fasting that might alarm you. Ordinarily, see, we “give up” something pleasant for Lent. Then, at the end of the season, we once again indulge in whatever it was that we “gave up” in fasting.

What if we just went “cold-turkey” and never took up again that which we gave up for the Lenten fast? [Read more...]

Filed Under: Culture, Living Tagged With: , , , 4 Comments

Behold! The Holy Week Treasure Map

April 1, 2012 By 11 Comments

I’m not saying it’s perfect, but it is worth sharing.

It would be neat, for example, if the Holy Thursday description noted that the Messiah, the new Moses, institutes the New Passover Feast, the Eucharist, so we can be led out of bondage (this world) by him into the new promised land (the new heaven and earth), but who am I to criticize? Besides, there’s no space for all of that.

I only wish I knew who came up with this, so I could tell them “Bravo Zulu.”

Filed Under: Culture, Living Tagged With: , , , , , 11 Comments

For Your Lenten Friday Night at the Movies V

March 30, 2012 By 2 Comments

This is the year of seeing films I have never seen before. Last week, we saw Richard Burton and Jean Simmons in The Robe. And in the weeks previously, we’ve watched St. Ralph, and The Mighty Macs too. So aside from The Musketeers double feature, every film this year has been a first time view for me.

Tonight is no exception. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Culture, Learning, Living Tagged With: , , 2 Comments

For Your Lenten Friday Night At The Movies IV

March 23, 2012 By 3 Comments

I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again. One of the best things I like about doing this Lenten movies series is seeing films that I’ve never seen before, but I should have. I never got around to it, as I was too busy conquering (ha!) the world, or maybe I was on deployment overseas. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Culture, Living Tagged With: , , 3 Comments

For Your Lenten Friday Night At the Movies, III

March 16, 2012 By Leave a Comment

One of the things I enjoy about sharing movies with you during Lent is…seeing movies that I missed when they came around the first time. This is one of those films, and it’s called Saint Ralph. Here’s the set up, which sounds like it’s perfect for my house full of teens (and one tween). [Read more...]

Filed Under: Culture, Living Tagged With: , , , , , Leave a Comment

For Your Lenten Friday Night at the Movies II UPDATED

March 9, 2012 By 2 Comments

Today, movie fans, we have a first for the YIMCatholic Lenten movie series: a double feature. That’s because the two movies presented here tonight were really meant to be one movie, but it was just way too long. I don’t know if Richard Lester just went wild, or if he couldn’t stand the idea of leaving Alexandre Dumas’ adapted story-line on the cutting room floor. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Culture, Living Tagged With: , , , , , , 2 Comments

For Catholic Thoughts on Life and Death Brought About By Tragedy UPDATED

March 7, 2012 By Leave a Comment

By the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread,
Until you return to the ground,
from which you were taken;
For you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.—Genesis 3:19

We’re almost a third of the way through Lent, and reckon I needed to cry today. Perhaps you need to cry too? As such, I’ll share the following tragic story of a hero’s death that sent me running for the tissues this morning, and forced me to yet again examine my own life. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Culture, Living, Prayer, Working Tagged With: , , , , , , Leave a Comment

CLOSE | X

HIDE | X