Go here for an introduction to the rosary. The Mysteries The Joyful Mysteries revolve around the Incarnation. They are as follows (with Scriptural sources linked): 1. The Annunciation to the Virgin by Gabriel This covers Gabriel’s appearance to Mary, his prophecy of Christ’s mission, and her final assent to the Incarnation. 2. The Visitation of the Virgin to Elizabeth This covers Mary’s joining Elizabeth and Zacharias (the parents of John the Baptist) at their home in Judea, the unborn Baptist... Read more

Some years ago, I adopted the practice of using Scripture passages as meditations on each mystery of the rosary. Lent being a devotional season, I thought I’d share some of those meditations with you all. Before I do, though: The Rosary: A Crash Course The rosary is of course one of the most popular Catholic devotions, but it isn’t equally familiar to everyone. Here’s how it works. A rosary is a chain of prayer beads, shaped kind of like a... Read more

Go here for Parts One, Two, Three, Four, and Five. Last time, we closed on a question: what do the official documents of the Church on trans issues say? Well—there aren’t any. How Long? Oh, Lord Okay, it is a little more complicated than that. But not by much, and certainly not by as much as I would’ve expected. First, at least as far as my (amateur) research shows, there has never been a document from a synod, an encyclical, or... Read more

Go here for Parts One, Two, Three, and Four. It’s been a mere month since the last time I wrote on this! Sorry there. Anyway. An Exhaustive History of All Trans People and Issues Obviously I’m not really offering that! No one could, and I’m less educated about trans issues than a lot of people I know. But I do want to make the point that, like intersex people, trans people actually have a long history—whatever self-appointed Christian culture warriors... Read more

Most years, I chose a book to go through as part of my Lenten discipline. This year, I decided to reread Lady Julian’s Revelations of Divine Love. If you’d like to join me, I’ve put together a reading schedule below. I’m using the John Skinner translation, which has a nice, short glossary in the back; the translation I’ve linked is by Grace Warrack. I’ve made notes of where each of Lady Julian’s visions, or “shewings,” begins. There are a total... Read more

I Came Here to Chew Bubblegum and Yell at People A few days ago, there was some Twitter drama about some of the details of Side B theology. I gather it was prompted, at least in part, by some tweets by Grant Hartley (a man who is unfailingly kind and sweet to literally everyone). The backlash was predictably bad. Image from Twitter user @freezydorito I was so frustrated—and, to my surprise, so hurt—by the way people were talking that I... Read more

Go here for Parts One, Two, and Three. Enter the Implications Okay. So most people are straightforwardly one sex or the other, but there’s a tiny minority who have a mixture of characteristics from both. Big deal. What does this have to do with transgender ideology? Simone de Beauvoir famously wrote that “One is not born but becomes a woman” in The Second Sex, but you don’t become intersex—in its own way, it’s as “objective” as male and female are.... Read more

Go here for the first and second installments. As Long As We’re Listening to the Science … As mentioned, Dr. John Money didn’t get his start with convincing parents to change their child’s sex due to a botched circumcision. Before that, he was a proponent of “correcting” the bodies of intersex infants. And what is intersexuality? Well, strap in, because this will take some explaining. Most of us learn a fairly basic model of sex development in high school biology.... Read more