It started as the happiest day of Christopher Kaczor’s life. His wife was in the hospital, ready to give birth to their first child. The doctor had a fetal heart monitor hooked up so they could monitor the baby in the womb, and everything was going well. Suddenly, the baby’s heart rate started dropping and dropping and dropping. The monitor’s alarm went off and medical staff rushed into the room. Kaczor recalls being horrified. “My baby’s going to die and... Read more
This is part 2 of my interview with Peggy Noonan. To read part 1, click here. One of the recurring themes in Peggy Noonan’s book “The Time of Our Lives” is what she calls “old America,” the America in which she was raised with a sense of safety and hope for the future. During our “Christopher Closeup” interview, she recalled the era as one in which parents who were overwhelmed with jobs and housework could say to their kids, “Go... Read more
Peggy Noonan can be described in many ways: former speechwriter for President Reagan, best-selling author, Wall Street Journal columnist, and political commentator. But the “core of [her] identity,” she says, is being Catholic. To Noonan, that means she embraces the tenets of Catholicism and sometimes offers “tough love” to the Church’s leadership, as she did in the aftermath of the sexual abuse crisis. But at the heart of her words, even when they’re critical, there is a profound reverence for... Read more
(Photo via CBS) From last night: Read more
“Jesus, help me, please,” prayed a then-teenage Donna-Marie Cooper O’Boyle in a state of terror as her fiancé Matthew (not his real name) forced a gun into her hand and tried to get her to kill him. Matthew was an ex-Marine and Vietnam veteran who had been a leader in O’Boyle’s Catholic parish and she believed that he would make a good husband. But then something snapped inside him and he suffered a nervous breakdown. With several guns, including a... Read more
I choose to believe we’ll all get out. So says Mario Sepulveda (Antonio Banderas) to his fellow miners in the new movie “The 33,” which was inspired by the true story of the 33 Chileans who became trapped 2,300 feet underground when the mine in which they were working collapsed in 2010. The film takes viewers not only into the miners’ experiences, but also the uphill battle their families and loved ones had to fight to get the mining company... Read more
The following is the text of the Christopher News Note “Overcoming Envy and Jealousy” (which was written by a freelancer). If you’d like a pdf or hard copy, see the end of this post: There’s nothing wrong with desiring good things in life, but you need to make sure that those feelings don’t veer into envy and jealousy. Webster’s Dictionary defines jealousy as “an unhappy or angry feeling of wanting to have what someone else has.” Shakespeare called it a... Read more
The amount of catalogs and advertisements I get in the mail always increases the closer we get to the holiday season. However, one of the ads I received this past Saturday stood out because of its charitable focus. It was a mailing for Jockey underwear which mentioned that one percent of all purchases would go toward the company’s program Jockey Being Family, which supports post-adoptive services. I’d never heard of this so I went to their website and learned: Jockey... Read more
While campaigning at a tavern in New Hampshire recently, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie took part in a town hall event in conjunction with the Huffington Post series “’16 and President.” Christie’s comments about the way we approach drug addiction in the United States went viral and, after watching it myself, I can see why. Christie grounds his answer in his personal experiences, including his mother’s addiction to nicotine and a friend’s addiction to painkillers. In addition, Christie invoked his... Read more
In light of the fact that we celebrated All Saints Day on November 1st, Father Jonathan Morris offers a look at the role the saints can and should play in all our lives. Even though these holy figures are no longer physically with us because they are now “face-to-face with God in heaven,” the saints can still be a presence in our lives in a spiritual and supernatural sense. They can serve as role models and intercessors. Father Jonathan makes... Read more
Christopher Closeup
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