Guest post by Allison For the past few weeks, as the snow fell relentlessly in our corner of New Jersey, I’ve been hosting a private pity party, wondering what I am supposed to do with all the hours on my hands. My life has felt suspended in time. It’s not that I’m without purpose. I teach one class a week at a community college, and I am prepping to take a professional exam to launch a full-time career teaching English. I... Read more

Guest post by AllisonMy husband and I spent the past five years connected with peaceful, loving Quaker educators when our sons attended Princeton Friends School (left). The experience, which immersed us in Quaker values, also helped draw me deeper into my own faith tradition of Catholicism.Greg and I both are products of public school systems and public universities. Both of our mothers worked as public school teachers. So we  never considered private schools—religious or independent—as an option for our sons.... Read more

I need your help. Tomorrow afternoon at 3:30 pm, I begin teaching the Beatitudes to fifteen ten-year-olds, beginning with arguably the toughest one of all: “Blessed (or Happy) are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” How do you teach that to a fourth-grader? What does poor in spirit mean to you, and what can it possibly mean to a child? Our textbook is all about teaching the children that we should not be attached to... Read more

Guest post by Allison A few weeks ago, my friend Andy introduced me to Guido D’Arezzo, the Benedictine monk who invented modern musical notation by creating the four-line staff.Then Andy, who founded our parish’s Chant Club and has a master’s degree in medieval literature from the University of Notre Dame, read my post about Guido, including my dismissive remarks on the theologically suspect, “folksy religious songs of my Catholic childhood.” And Andy had another lesson for me.He and his wife are... Read more

To follow up on my post about Mass with Cardinal Seán O’Malley at the Cathedral in Boston last Monday— The Cardinal ran a piece about the Mass in his blog post for February 26. In it, our archbishop confirmed something I had only heard—and converts are the last to hear, you know, but like elephants, we never forget! In his post, Cardinal O’Malley lays out a close connection between Pope Benedict and the ecclesial movement Communion and Liberation (CL). It’s... Read more

There’s a wonderful settling-in process that occurs when you convert to the Catholic Church. For example, two years ago, at my first Easter Vigil I sat in the dark, literally and figuratively, wondering what all those long readings were for. Last year, I had a better idea that they were about Salvation History, and I was one of the readers. This year, my daughter will be received into the Catholic Church in North Carolina, and I will be a listener... Read more

A couple of male bloggers have to have some fun, even during Lent, right? And since the Jesuits, at least, say that the trick is to see God in everything, let’s see if you can spot God in these guys: Lenny Kravitz, Eric Clapton, J. J. Cale, Buddy Guy, and Mark Knopfler. Gentlemen, the YIMC stage is all yours— Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love? Hardly.  This past week, we’ve been writing about love here, here, here, and even here. Christianity—It’s a... Read more

When I was an child, I loved as child. Now that I am a man, I wish to love as a man. CS Lewis offers advice about this in his book Mere Christianity. Msgr. Luigi Giussani (left) does more than offer advice, he shows the way, in his three-volume work Is It Possible to Live This Way? The third volume, Charity, is currently the focus of Communion and Liberation’s Schools of Community worldwide.In Book III, chapter 9 of Mere Christianity,... Read more