I recently received an e-mail from a reader of My Peace I Give You, my book on healing from childhood sexual abuse, requesting guidance beyond what my book could give. My response was to refer the reader to a local religious order that could in turn recommend a spiritual director and a therapist. I added, “if they suggest for a therapist Philip Mango or one of the other therapists from the St. Michael’s Institute, ask them for an alternate suggestion.... Read more
Holy Saturday is particularly meaningful for me because it was on Holy Saturday in 2006 that I received the Sacrament of Confirmation, after being received into the Catholic Church on Holy Thursday. In the following excerpt from My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints, I write about how, in the liturgy of Holy Saturday, the meaning of Passover is revealed in Christ: A Catholic friend recently asked me to pray for a Muslim woman... Read more
Catholic World Report today features an interview with me by John Burger in which I talk about why the Catholic Church, and all society, needs to reach out to victims of childhood sexual abuse, a need that is particularly visible in this week’s news stories on Dylan Farrow and Ryan Loskarn. I also speak about the healing witness of saints who suffered childhood sexual abuse, which is the topic of my book My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with... Read more
There is a scene in C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia novel The Magician’s Nephew in which Aslan, the lion who represents Christ, sings Narnia and all the universe around it into existence. His voice seems to thunder from every direction, shaking the very air. Perhaps that is an apt allegory for the creation of the universe. Yet the universe is also re-created at every moment, in that its continued existence depends upon God’s continuing to sustain it. What impresses me... Read more
I wrote to you earlier about the beautiful experience I had last month at the annual Courage Apostolate conference, and am now delighted to share with you a video of the talk I gave there. An audio podcast is also available, courtesy of AirMaria.com. The video is long. If you are pressed for time, I am told that the last two minutes are the best part. Courage is a Catholic apostolate that assists men and women with same-sex attractions in... Read more
For context, see here (and comment there too). Read more
I wrote to you last week to tell you about my “press agent” St. Dominic Savio. Today I am writing, as I promised, to tell you about why the saint, who died a few weeks short of his fifteenth birthday (making him the youngest canonized saint whose death was not by martyrdom), is also a dear friend, patron, and model of life for me. The best source we have on Dominic Savio is the story of his life written by... Read more
Meet my press agent, St. Dominic Savio. He is in a glass by himself–a great glass urn, that is, where his relics are housed. His office is in a high-rise, so to speak (so high you can’t get over it), but he is easily reachable via knee-mail. This is the honest truth: in April 2012, I was wondering how victims of childhood sexual abuse were ever going to find out that I had written a book on healing sexual wounds... Read more
UPDATE, 8/9/13: The story is online and it is wonderful! Deo gratias! Will write more later. Original post follows [cross-posted on my personal-life blog, The Dawn Patrol:] I’ve been told that the online edition of the New York Times Magazine is set to publish an article in its Riff column that looks at my past life writing about obscure rock musicians as well as my present life writing about obscure saints. (The print version will appear in this Sunday’s issue.)... Read more
On this day the day the Church honors St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, better known as Edith Stein, check out the post I wrote last year about her spirituality of wounds, “Everywhere the need exists for maternal sympathy and help, and thus we are able to recapitulate in the one word motherliness that which we have developed as the characteristic value of woman. Only, the motherliness must be that which does not remain within the narrow circle of blood relations or... Read more
Feast of Eden
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