Posts
No Pain, No Gain
“What are you doing to me!” my son yelled at the crucifix in his room. “I don’t think complaining about not eating between meals on a fast day to One who is nailed to a cross is a good tactic,” I replied. Yes, this conversation was about Ash Wednesday and the fast. I’d just reminded…
March 17 is Perfect for St. Patrick, don’t move this Feast!
Every year I wonder about the draw of so many to the green day. It used to be that you’d see shamrocks and the “Erin go braugh” or more recently, it seems that “luck of the Irish” is the bigger hit anymore, but I don’t see as many shamrocks, more leprechauns than anything else. I think that…
For your Phone: Annunciation Novena (March 17 to March 25)
I like to have prayers on my iPhone for the convenience. I will take a picture of the prayer in the prayer book, missal, whatever, and then save the picture into an album. It makes it easy to find the prayer later, and it is convenient because the prayer is right on the phone. Tomorrow, the Annunciation…
Vatican smacks down Medjugorje Ivan talk in St. Louis
In case you missed it earlier this week, there is a bunch of ruffled feathers in the land of major googoo. St. Louis archdiocese sent a reminder to the faithful this week that we should not be promoting the story fantasies of this alleged vision. Probably because they’ve read the lives of the visionaries as…
All Their Wars are Merry, And All Their Songs are Sad
For the great Gaels of Ireland Are the men that God made mad, For all their wars are merry, And all their songs are sad. –G.K. Chesterton There is a strange phenomenon on the east side of Cleveland, Ohio. It is probably the one place in the world where Irishmen have largely been raised on…
Mocking the Church, Modern Style
Political correctness be damned. This is absurd. At some point, you have to tell people, “Go home, girls, you’re drunk!” Even at the risk of sounding like the old guy yelling “Get off my lawn!” Fantasyland is rife with new players everyday. It doesn’t really need much explanation — for a church that no longer believes…
A Jesuit to the Core: Pope Francis Manifests Sincere Practice of Exercises
Too traditional to be understood today in American Catholicism, and despite the constant grind against him by the news, and the ill feelings generated by those within the Church, Francis is teaching well, thank God — A Jubilee of Mercy and why his thoughts of death produced it.
Oh, that Death Penalty Thing Again…
It has been a couple years since the last death penalty confusion amassed, so it seems that once again, people are kicking dust up trying to make it seem like the death penalty is immoral. Surely they jest, right? But, the Catholic newspapers, all of them it seems, have rallied around taking a stance against it this…
He Who Humbles Himself Will Be Exalted
He wanted to keep it simple, humble, down to the plain pine casket. After all, the Funeral Mass and graveside Commendation carry the last day’s importance, not the shine on the soon-to-be-buried casket. But it wasn’t to be. Hundreds of people showed up on March 2 at St. Joseph’s Church in Mishawaka, Indiana, to…
Faith, Family, and Football
I didn’t go to Notre Dame and I didn’t have Charlie Rice in a law class. I was just lucky enough to work with Professor Rice, first when he began giving annual talks at the National Wanderer Forums in the 1970s, and for the last 20 years as secretary of the Wanderer Forum Foundation/Bellarmine Forum,…
