Medical science is learning more and more about pregnancy and fetal development. We now know that there is a "radical mutuality" in the relationship between the mother and her child in the womb. Both work together to build the placenta. And just as cells from the mother's body become part of the baby, cells from the baby become part of the mother.
The custom on this blog on New Year's Day is for readers to predict what they think will happen over the course of the year ahead. Then, once the year is over, on or around the next New Year’s Eve, we will revisit those predictions and see who made the best one. So what do you think will happen in 2020?
We celebrate New Years' Eve by staying up past midnight, singing Auld Lang Syne, and checking our predictions for 2019! This year we had an unusually high number of correct predictions, which is a tribute to you readers of this blog. But we also had a clear winner, a prediction with uncanny specificity.
A look at the Associated Press top stories of 2019 and NBC's top stories of the decade. But what do these lists tell us about those who compiled them? And what did they leave out?
My list of religious developments, focusing on Christianity, that took place in 2019 and that strike me as significant. They raise the question, is secularism bottoming out? To be sure, things are still falling to the bottom and secularism is still increasing. But some of these developments, even those that are not positive for the faith, seem to contain the seeds of potential renewal.
The Julius Caesar's calendar began the year with January, named after Janus, the god of thresholds. He had two faces, one looking back and the other looking ahead. Which is what we will do on this blog, culminating in our New Year's Eve custom of looking back at our predictions for last year. On New Year's Day, we will make new predictions for the year to come. Be thinking about what you predict for 2020!
Winter is a time of darkness, cold, and lifelessness. And yet, Christmas, unlike other winter festivals, is a time of joy. Christmas carols, imagery, and customs play with this paradox. It speaks of the Cross, the Gospel, and Jesus as the light that comes into the darkness.
I wanted to give all of you readers of this blog, whom I appreciate very much, a Christmas present. I'd buy you something online, but I don't know your size. So I am giving you (1) highly comical cartoons from a new website; (2) a highly comical television show that you can stream for free; (3) a highly non-comical Christian literary masterpiece that you can download for $0.00.
A fixture of Christmas decor is the nativity scene, the depictions of Mary, Joseph, and the Baby Jesus, plus shepherds, Wise Men, and a small menagerie of animals. This popular devotional art, which exists in many different forms, was invented in 1223 by St. Francis of Assisi.
Some economists, policy-makers, and politicians are calling for the revival of the Biblical principle of the Jubilee, which offered a mechanism for cancelling everyone's financial debts. Is that a valid application of Scripture?
Select your answer to see how you score.
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