Way back in August 2009 I wrote concerning the in partu inviolability of Our Lady (i.e, that her hymen was unbroken by the birth of Christ) that “Rome acknowledges this opinion but does not commit us to it“. Turns out I was wrong. This is more than a pious opinion. A reader writes: I’m not an expert on anatomy but I take it that there are significant physical changes that take place in a virgin’s body after she marries and engages in... Read more

Expendable BabiesROME, DEC. 19, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Abortion advocates have long argued for a woman’s right to control her body and to be able to dispose of the unborn child if she wishes. In a bizarre decision, a Belgian court has extended that reasoning to say that a child has a right to be aborted. A Belgian journal, “Revue Générale des Assurances et Responsabilités,” has just published the decision handed down by the Brussels Court of Appeal on Sept. 21 regarding... Read more

He once observed that “The Catholic Church is the only ‘the Church'”. When you want to know what “the Church” thinks about something, you don’t turn to the Nebraska Missionary Alliance or the Seventh Seed in the Spirit Peculiar Baptists. So today, the bishop of Phoenix told a Catholic hospital that was not practicing medicine according to Catholic principles that it could not call itself Catholic anymore. Bully for him! Lovely to see this display of episcopal vertebrae. What’s fascinating... Read more

…loves Fr. Robert Barron.Me too! Read more

You can meet him here! Read more

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So did folks stay up and watch the lunar eclipse last night? Miraculously and providentially, the skies cleared over Seattle just as it reached totality (11:40 last night). Extremely cool. Especially since the last time there was a lunar eclipse at the winter solstice it was 1638. The next time it happens will be in 2094. So maybe my 99 and 97 year old kids will see it. Read more

Go here. Read more

A reader writes: I’ve never written with a prayer request before but I’m desperately worried for my sister, A. She’s 3,000 miles away in an area with freezing conditions; living alone in a friend’s house that currently has no power and no heat or companionship (her friend is currently out of town); suffering from serious, chronic depression; separated from her husband and prevented by him from access to her home, cars, belongings, fair share of the marital finances, and (most... Read more

On December 20, 1987, Sherry Weddell and I were received into the Catholic Church at Sacred Heart parish, in the shadow of Seattle’s Space Needle.  I’m grateful for all God has done in my life and in the lives of my friends and family through his great gift of the Catholic Church, the Body of Christ. Also, cheers to my friend Marcus Grodi, who astonished me by telling me some years ago that *he* was recieved into the Church five... Read more