“Be praised, my Lord, through our Sister Bodily Death, from whose embrace no living person can escape. Woe to those who die in mortal sin! Happy those she finds doing your most holy will. The second death can do no harm to them.” Autumn begins, officially, in September. But here in the ugly neighborhood of LaBelle, in the derelict steel mill town of Steubenville, in the place where the Rust Belt collides with Northern Appalachia, in a country they tell... Read more
My veteran readers know that I’ve been expressing concern concern what Father Frank Pavone and his organization, Priests for Life, does with the corpses of aborted fetuses in his possession for many years now. I’m not a journalist or an investigative reporter; I’m just a Catholic who has always been told that people are worthy of reverence from conception until natural death. My heart is broken for what looks to be gross mistreatment of those bodies with no consequences.... Read more
On Monday, I expressed my horror at Abby Johnson’s unprovoked attack on the Protestant bishop and civil rights activist Talbert Swan. Abby attacked him by saying he didn’t understand “the real racism,” and then she called him “Tyrone,” a “thug” and a “stain.” This isn’t the first time Abby has been called out for racism, but it’s the most obvious and horrendous I can remember. She can’t claim ignorance this time. People from all across the political spectrum... Read more
Just once, I want to see a pro-life leader behaving themselves ethically. I have been going through all this grief and nonsense for three years now, calling out the celebrities of the pro-life movement when they act like bullies, because I believe they ought to be the good guys. People who believe in personhood from conception to natural death should have reverence for human persons from conception until natural death. No one is perfect at this and I’m particularly... Read more
A Reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke: Jesus said to the Pharisees: “There was a rich man who dressed in purple garments and fine linen and dined sumptuously each day. And lying at his door was a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who would gladly have eaten his fill of the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table. Dogs even used to come and lick his sores. When the poor man died, he was carried... Read more
Rose’s godparents bought me a new round of driving lessons. I’m going to learn to drive for real this time; they can buy me more, if this isn’t enough. Lord knows how I’ll ever afford a car, but first things first. I will be a licensed driver in the state of Ohio by the end of the year. There really aren’t words for how grateful I am. My instructor is an elderly gentleman who grew up in the Ohio Valley.... Read more
In the mess of the impeachment news, I was forced to overlook a story that’s gotten on my nerves. As you no doubt know, the teenage climate change activist Greta Thunberg gave an impassioned speech at the United Nations, shaming the grown-ups for not acting decisively to curb climate emissions. And a lot of people didn’t like it, and there were a lot of aspersions cast on Ms. Thunberg, her age, her asperger’s syndrome, her mental health, and why... Read more
Hell friends, I’ve got a post worth reading open in a tab. This is just my all-time least favorite part of blogging, my monthly busk for tips. I am supporting my family here at Patheos writing three to seven literary art projects per week. Sometimes I write about the news, sometimes I write about the Ohio Valley, sometimes I write about Catholic devotions, and I do an awful lot of writing about spiritual abuse. I get a very small paycheck per... Read more
Last night I came home from running errands, to watch history being made. An impeachment inquiry has been opened for Donald Trump. I have memories of the Clinton impeachment– we were homeschooling then, and we didn’t have the internet in our house, but my parents watched the evening news. They usually shooed me out of the room when they watched the news that year, because there was too much talk of sex. But I did get to hear bits of... Read more
I never thought I’d hear from the infamous Frank Pavone. He has me blocked on Facebook. He hasn’t offered any answers or corrections on anything I’ve written in the three years I’ve been writing about him. But to my great surprise, today, when I was talking about him on Twitter, he– or at least his Twitter account– showed up. I had mentioned something about an aborted baby that Pavone “refuses to bury” in conversation, and he set me straight, claiming... Read more
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