Speaking of feeding things, today over at CatholicMom.com I tell the riveting tale of what happens when you put your cash on the table and trust your 14-year-old to feed the family. With great trepidation we began last month a project that seemed like a good idea when we thought it up it two years earlier: The Summer of Cooking. The theory was that by giving our rising 9th grader responsibility for cooking for the family all summer, he’d learn... Read more
Edited to add a head’s up: This is a post discussing adult topics. Par for the course on this blog. Parents preview first, thank you. When a baby is baptized at St. Suburban’s, the parents and godparents sit front and center during Mass. Because we have an unusually high ratio of transept seating, about 50% of the parish has a perfect view of that front row pew. Thus it heartened me one week during Mass to see that the mother... Read more
When I returned to the Catholic faith, I landed in the hands of the right priest. He heard my confession, and then pointed me in the direction I needed to go. “Does your marriage need to be convalidated? We can take care of that. Let’s see . . . I like to offer NFP instruction to all my marriage-prep couples, here’s this free intro session coming up, you might be interested in it.” Gracious, pastoral, and completely confident in the... Read more
Update: Pia de Solenni reports on the situation in Iraq, where the fruits of religious intolerance have blossomed in full force. And those fruits are death. Update #2: Here in the good ol’ USA, the reaction to an unfavorable court decision is . . . death threats. Keepin’ it classy. Permission hereby granted for my worthy opponents to link in the combox to anyone on your side of the debate who is publicly condemning this trash. *** Msgr. Pope sums... Read more
Of all the reactions to the Supreme Court’s decision in the Hobby Lobby Case, Sam Rocha’s is my favorite: The health care problem wouldn’t be solved either way. Go read his comments, then come back here, because that’s where I’m going. First a few more required reading links: Shameless Popery clears up the several most common misconceptions about this case: 4 Things You Probably Have Wrong About the Hobby Lobby Decision The Crescat reminds you that this was never about birth... Read more
Kathy Schiffer reminds you that if, “I’d like to be a writer someday” applies to you, consider attending the Catholic Writers Conference this summer. It’s in metro-Chicago this year, and the location varies from year to year, so if you’re in the upper-midwest or central Canada come July 30-August 1, this is your year. Promises to be an excellent event. From the press release: Speakers at this year’s conference include authors Lisa Hendey (BOOK OF SAINTS FOR CATHOLIC MOMS), award-winning... Read more
At New Evangelizers today, I take a look at how the way we manage our communal time affects our ability to evangelize. I wasn’t entirely satisfied with this post, for two reasons: Reason #1: I don’t get explicitly into evangelization. People are going to be upset about that. I start with the 101’s – if you can’t get to Mass, if confession times are impossible, if attending faith formation requires NASA-like devotion to getting the minivan launched . . .... Read more
“I just hate it when people tell me what to wear.” That’s the open admission of a number of women joining in the backlash against the clothing police this summer. Between my native hard-headedness and the reports of egregious abuses committed in the name of “modesty”, I’m sympathetic. As much as we try to patiently forebear and ignore when the control freaks circle, eventually one reaches a limit. One more comment about the evils of elbows and I’m going to... Read more
Please recall that prudential decisions involving firearms are a matter on which Catholics are free to disagree. If I write here, in this adult-swim corner of the Catholic internet that is Patheos, on the gunlandian cultural perspective, trust me I have no illusions that I’m proclaiming the indisputable truth on faith and morals. Speculation has its time and place, and that’s what any of us writing on these topics are doing: Speculating. Today, though, I speculate very firmly on the... Read more
I’ve been attending the St. Suburbans of the world for a lot of years, and one of the characteristics of sprawl-bound parishes is a lack of neighborhood in which to process. Our pastors have gamely processed around the parking lot, or around the aisles of the nave in the event of rain. This year I succumbed to temptation, having listened to the spouse practice Panis Angelicus all week, and forsook my own parish in order to do some more spiritual tourism... Read more
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