I was eighteen years old and had just graduated from High School when I went to France on a mission trip with some other young Evangelicals. We were working with a mission called Slavic Gospel Association. Our mission was to transport Bibles into the communist countries. At the end of the mission we spent a few days in Paris. I remember being charmed by the city, visiting the Eiffel Tower, and visiting my first Gothic Cathedral–Notre Dame. I especially liked... Read more

Here’s an old post I wrote one Valentine’s Day about the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Read more

The Catholic diocese of Shrewsbury in England has banned a coven of witches from using church premises to hold a Halloween event. The witches are outraged and are blaming the Catholic Church of religious bias–persecution even. You can read about it here. The encouraging thing about these witches is that they actually look like witches. We are so used to witches being portrayed as the ladies on Bewitched, either the lovely Samantha or harmless eccentrics like Aunt Agatha or glamorous... Read more

I wanted to entitle the post ‘Tomatina and Thomism’ for the alliteration, but I couldn’t really think of the link…Anyway, La Tomatina is a festival of tomatoes in Columbia which seems to consist of a huge tomato food fight. More pictures here. There’s something very Catholic about a colossal food fight, but I’m not sure what. Maybe because I’m a convert and I think about these things too much, then again, maybe it is the thinking about it versus the... Read more

It’s easy to think that the pro life battle is being lost. It’s not. We’re winning. This article from Salon magazine (h/t CMR) provides some encouraging statistics. 87% of counties in the US do not have abortion providers. 98% of rural counties do not. Furthermore,the number of abortion providers has plummeted by 1/3 since 1985, and only 50 of 130 medical schools provide instruction on the procedure. An increasing number of young doctors and nurses refuse to participate in abortion and... Read more

Here is my latest for National Catholic Register. In which we discuss the need for loving God and loving people, but loving God first, and if you don’t love God, then you can’t really love people either, and so how do we really love God? Read it here. Read more

to little birds, who are the secrets of living.” Is a line by e.e.cummings, and I was reminded of it while chatting with a friend named Mike who is considering a call to the priesthood. He works part time in a store that sells bird seed and bird feeders and stuff to people and Mike said he didn’t really get the whole ‘bird thing.’ I said, “Birds. Birds. See, they’re angels incarnate.” He looked a little bit shocked, “But not... Read more

 In the summer of 1987 I made a pilgrimage from England to Jerusalem hitch-hiking and staying in monasteries and whatever hospitality the road gave me. By mid-June I was traveling through central France, and I was invited to stay with a friend of a friend. They were a well off Catholic family. They took me sight seeing, and as I got to know them I learned that their teen aged son had to leave school because he was suffering from mental illness.... Read more

One June day I went to Quarr Abbey on the Isle of Wight to celebrate Corpus Christi with the monks. The liturgy of the day was beautiful. The Abbey Church was full of Gregorian chant, incense and a radiance through the smoke that lifted one into the clouds of glory. We then processed out into the monastic garden where there was a special altar set up for Eucharistic adoration. Why do Catholics go to all this trouble? Because the whole... Read more