Could I ask a few prayers, please, for my Elder Son’s fiancee, Kitty, whose appendix burst over night. She was in the ER — had been there for six hours, and quite obviously had appendicitis; she presented with every classic symptom. But the hospital had to wait to schedule a CAT scan; she had to drink down the stuff; they had to take the CAT scan. This is when my son thinks her appendix burst, because Kitty (who is a... Read more
(Photo: APF/Getty) My piece today at First Things is a little odd, I think. In some spots it is deliberately to the fore, and in others, deliberately ambiguous, and it is talking about two seemingly very different things — the Occupy Wall Street folks who know that they want something, but are not quite able to articulate what that something might be, and impossibility of nurturing a sense of “calling” in our children when we over-manage their lives, from an... Read more
In our foyer is a small, beautiful icon of Our Lady of Good Counsel, and the icon has an interesting story behind it: Each year on April 25, the feast day of St. Mark Genazzano’s patron Saint, a fair took place near the church of the Mother of Good Counsel. On that day in 1467 towards the evening as the fair was beginning to end a white luminous cloud appeared over the village. The cloud descended on the church of... Read more
I wrote about this a few weeks ago at First Things, but here Russell Shaw says it better: It won’t be a repetition of the Spanish Civil War, just 75 years ago, when death squads of the anticlerical left executed the incredible total of 12 bishops, 283 religious women, 4,184 priests, 2,365 religious men, and an unknown number of laity whose only crime was to be faithful Catholics. No, the persecution of religion in the United States won’t be like... Read more
A really interesting and thought-provoking piece at the Black, White and Gray blog: Remembering Prophetic Faith in American Politics — a look at how secular interests ignore the Christian impact on social movements. Having taught the sociology of race, class, and gender at a faith-based university, I am continually confronted with the reality that education and awareness about racial inequality is remarkably weak at the secondary school level. I do not blame teachers who are already straddled with a million... Read more
If you remember this moment… …then you will appreciate this piece, today: For better or worse, no smashing occurred that night (though Norman Mailer would head-butt Vidal a mere three years later). But recalling the exchange made me wonder: What if writers were inclined to chastise one another physically? How would that affect today’s literary and journalistic landscape? The idea of writers with deadly weapons is less farfetched than it sounds. Read it all – a rather delightful piece on... Read more
I got an email from someone the other day asking me why I have not written about the Fr. Frank Pavone story since the day it broke. The short answer is, because we really don’t know anything more today than we did on September 13 — things are still pretty murky, but this week, the water got stirred a little…which means it’s even murkier. Pavone is still in Amarillo; contrary to hyper-dramatized internet reports that he is being held prisoner... Read more
The breaking news out of Kansas City: A Jackson County grand jury has indicted Bishop Robert Finn and the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph on misdemeanor charges of failure to report child abuse. The charges, announced at a news conference today, make Finn — leader of the 134,000-member diocese — the highest-ranking Catholic official in the nation to face criminal prosecution in a child sexual abuse case. The charges stemmed from the long-simmering controversy surrounding Father Shawn Ratigan, who... Read more
Marcia Morrissey has a really inspiring piece up at Patheos this week as she writes of volunteering with her granddaughter at Feed My Starving Children: This past week I brought my oldest granddaughter with me to volunteer as a food-packer at Feed My Starving Children (FMSC), an organization committed to feeding the hungry in places as disparate as Belarus, Mexico, Niger and North Korea. […]We heard the story of a 14-year-old girl who came to an orphanage and was first... Read more
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