I ended up back in that hospital chapel I found during my adventure with the stray cat last month. The bus in Steubenville comes about once every hour, and it takes a break from its usual route during the two o’clock hour so it can ferry students home from Big Red High School. If you’re stuck without a car, you shouldn’t make doctors’ appointments at two-thirty. But that was when they could see me. I was coming to the doctor… Read more
October 23, 2020
The Puzzle of Saint Francis and the Jack-O-Lantern
October 23, 2020 By Mary Pezzulo
0 Comments
October 21, 2020
Suppose You Thought You Were A Christian
October 21, 2020 By Mary Pezzulo
0 Comments
Suppose you thought you were a devout Christian, but your whole interpretation of the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ was “Those people are evil and going to hell. Everything about them is wrong. I measure my devotion to Jesus by how much revulsion I can work up toward those people.” Imagine you really worked at that. Imagine that the thought of those people made you ill, because that was an illness you cultivated and called it Christianity. Imagine… Read more
October 20, 2020
Rosie, the Hardy Boys, and the Mystery of the Orange Extension Cord
October 20, 2020 By Mary Pezzulo
0 Comments
We are homeschooling for another year. Every year I think we’re going to get out of Steubenville and find a nice pleasant city with a nice pleasant school in it for Rose to go to, but every year we’re stuck here, and we homeschool again. This year it’s lonely because COVID has made her beloved after-school lessons too dangerous, but we fill the time. We walk to the park and plan trips we’ll take when a vaccine is widely distributed… Read more
October 19, 2020
The True Effect of COVID and the Pro-Life Movement on Abortion
October 19, 2020 By Mary Pezzulo
0 Comments
Words cannot express how much I dislike writing about abortion. As a Catholic, I believe that the fetus has personhood from the moment of conception. That’s something that cannot be taken lightly. We ought to do everything we can to protect unborn children– and we have to do the same for their parents, and for children already born, for the disabled, for the poor, for people of color and anybody else who is vulnerable to violence in our society. That’s… Read more
October 18, 2020
To Yield a Hundredfold
October 18, 2020 By Mary Pezzulo
0 Comments
We’re still going to liturgy via video livestream right now. Now that I’m driving, if we can just get a car and get me used to driving on the freeway, we’ll go over to the diocese of Pittsburgh where they have parking lot Masses and indoor Masses enforcing masks and strict low numbers, which they don’t do around here. Here, the lax standards make Mass very dangerous for Michael with his asthma, and I don’t want to know what COVID-19… Read more
October 18, 2020
I Cast My Ballot For President
October 18, 2020 By Mary Pezzulo
0 Comments
I cast my ballot for president. It wasn’t nearly as satisfying as you might think. I have made no secret of the fact that I can’t stand President Trump, but I don’t like Biden either. I viewed myself as voting for the outcome with the lowest death toll– yes, including unborn deaths. Nobody gets an abortion on a whim because it’s legal, and Trump is not actually going to work to make it illegal anyway. Women get abortions for actual… Read more
October 16, 2020
A Trick-or-Treat for Mid-Autumn
October 16, 2020 By Mary Pezzulo
0 Comments
Hello everyone, This isn’t a real blog post, this is just my monthly reminder that Steel Magnificat, and my family, run almost entirely on gratuities. I get a very small paycheck from Patheos for clicks in the United States, and the rest of my family’s income is tips from readers who like my work and want to see more of it. With that money I can keep paying my rent so I have a place to write in and… Read more
October 15, 2020
A Most Enchanted Trip
October 15, 2020 By Mary Pezzulo
0 Comments
We went for a walk in the woods. I’ve been reading about how volunteers were cleaning up the hiking trails to and from Beatty Park here in Steubenville. When I’d moved here we were sternly warned not to hike on the hiking trails around town, because we’d surely be murdered by drug dealers. But I’ve hiked on a couple of trails around town with no trouble. I wanted to try a new one. I saw the sign for the entrance… Read more
October 13, 2020
When I was Brave
October 13, 2020 By Mary Pezzulo
0 Comments
I once wrote a story called “Mary the Brave.” It’s not much of a title, but to be fair, I was in the first grade. I knew how to spell all those words. I wrote them on a speckled black and white notebook and I colored in full-page illustrations, with a badly spelled caption under each. They concerned a stick figure in a skirt with shoulder-length yellow hair, having adventures. Mary went to space and traveled among the planets…. Read more
October 9, 2020
Every Night And All
October 9, 2020 By Mary Pezzulo
0 Comments
It got cold last week. It was going to frost, or get close to it. Time to bring in the garden. I have some vegetables that will keep in a light frost. Kale will live right up until a hard freeze, and it’s pleasant to eat if it’s frozen and then picked. My autumn peas haven’t even blossomed yet. The broccoli doesn’t seem to be bothered. But this was the end of peppers, the eggplant and the fresh herbs. This… Read more
get the latest from
Steel Magnificat
Sign up for our newsletter
Browse Our Archives
TRENDING AT PATHEOS Catholic
