She is beautiful—and her parents adore her. But she almost didn’t get a chance at life. Her young mother, suffering from a medical condition, had been advised to have an abortion. Twenty-two year-old Ariel Knights believed that her life would be in danger if she continued her pregnancy; and she had a fiance and a toddler to consider. So it was that in March 2012, Ariel scheduled an abortion through the Akron Women’s Medical Group. The Daily Mail tells the... Read more
Uh-oh. Has Dr. Reginald Sharpe injured another abortion-minded woman? On Saturday, March 23, an ambulance was called to the Summit Abortion Clinic in Detroit and transported a woman who had, according to reports, been scheduled for a second-trimester abortion. The pro-life action group Citizens for a Pro-Life Society posted a video of the ambulance leaving the clinic. I don’t know whether the woman who left the clinic in the back of an ambulance had, in fact, been Sharpe’s patient—but I... Read more
Armed robbers with power tools broke into St. Therese of Lisieux Catholic Church overnight, taking an estimated $40,000 plus some of the church’s gold Mass vessels. In neighboring Clinton Township, the same thieves apparently broke into Saint Luke Lutheran Church after the Easter service, stealing an undisclosed amount of cash. At Saint Therese of Lisieux, a spokesperson told me that the break-in occurred sometime between 9:00 p.m. on Easter and 6:00 a.m. Monday morning. The thieves gained access to the... Read more
He who lives without folly isn’t so wise as he thinks. –François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld When I was a kid, I remember poring over the April Fool’s Day illustrations by Norman Rockwell, which graced the cover of the Saturday Evening Post. You know the ones: They’re full of “mistakes” which the reader must identify. On April 1st, for some reason, people think it’s fun to do goofy things and to fool one another. I had a friend who served... Read more
I’ve seen many images of the Resurrected Christ, in oils and tempura and marble. This year, though, I was struck by this image—of the empty tomb? No, look again: The stone is rolled back, but inside the sepulcher something wondrous is happening. The blinding light, like an eclipse of the sun! Why, the artist is gazing into the tomb at the moment that Christ’s body is reinfused with life. In 2011, after five years of scientific experiments using different methods... Read more
He is in the tomb. Holy Saturday is such a quiet day—a day of reflection and prayer, of introspection, of acute awareness of God’s abiding love. Tomorrow He rises, and we celebrate with colored eggs and chocolate and a sumptuous glazed ham dinner with the people we love. But for now, we think of this: of Christ lying still, grey, in the cool gloom of the sepulcher. This painting is titled Lamentation of the Dead Christ, and portrays the body... Read more
Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, on which also you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. – 1 Corinthians 15:1-2 Stop and think about this. No, really! Read it twice. Think about it. It sounds pretty important, doesn’t it? I bring this up because a poll published by The Barna Group... Read more
In 1990, cultural analyst George Barna penned a book titled The Frog in the Kettle. It was a parable about churches and how they have capitulated to the culture; but the title metaphor is about how to boil a frog. If you drop a live frog into a kettle of boiling water, Barna explains, he’ll quickly hop out. Instead, you drop him into a pot of cold water, where he’ll be perfectly comfortable. When you light a fire under the... Read more
In a departure from tradition which has drawn both acclaim and criticism, Pope Francis celebrated the Holy Thursday Mass not at the Basilica of St. John Lateran, as was expected, but at a Roman juvenile prison, Casal del Marmo—where he washed the feet of twelve detainees including two girls and two Muslims. It was not as the world expected; but then, Francis has daily shown himself to be a pope of surprises. In his humble liturgy, he reminded us that... Read more
No surprise here: The BBC has chosen the noon hour on Christianity’s most reverent of days, Good Friday, to air a documentary suggesting that Jesus had a sexual relationship with Mary Magdalene. In the program, author and broadcaster Melvyn Bragg relies on accounts from the Gnostic Gospel of Mary, in which Jesus kisses his friend and disciple Mary Magdalene on the mouth and may, in fact, have taken her as his wife. Bragg, who calls himself a Christian, believes that... Read more
Seasons of Grace
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