Regular Contributions

Back to School Challenge: Find these 5 ideas in your child’s catechism!

Ahh, back to school time…  I remember having to make book covers out of old grocery bags, and then needing to promptly doodle, draw, and/or write on the covers to immediately identify them.  Then, I’d scan the book for pictures and see just what was in this new thing. It’s the time of year and…

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5 Things to Consider on the Beheading of John the Baptist Compared to Today

Today is the feast of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist. All great eras have to come to a head — a pinnacle where all the threads of plot swirl in wild tempest to resolution. Of all the stories in the old testament, I think the end of John the Baptist is a lot like Our…

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Why Do They Hate Us? Part II

This is Part II of “Why Do They Hate Us?” 6 Reasons Explain The Essence of Islam As you recall, CNN host Fareed Zakaria ran a segment “Why They Hate Us.” This article briefly explains why Muslims hate us, according to radical-Islamists and the Quran, and how Muslims in Islamic countries treat others, contrasted to…

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Act Like You Know the Queen: Fr. Hardon Explains The Queenship of Mary

When I read about the variety of things Pope Pius V did in bringing Mary to a higher place of honor in the Roman Church, I’m often amazed that he wasn’t able, or perhaps, it was not yet time, for the apparent conclusions.  Just consider this short list of changes he made: He added the…

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What Hamish Fraser Saw About Your Children Thirty Years Ago

I’ve been going back and listening to some old cassettes lately. I ran across one quote that is harrowing. I mean it. The insight some of these people had peering into the state of the day reaches across decades to today and is fresh, if not terrible. I can’t help it — anyone who has listened to Fr….

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The Church in 10 Years: Guitars, Speaking in Tongues, Women Priests?

I was listening to a sales person the other day and one thing they kept telling me to do is imagine my life down the road with this product. How much easier it would be to do this, and how fast I’d see results down, and just how great life would be. Infomercials do this a lot,…

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Parental Guide to Couch Potatoes

Sofa happiness is one of the new cultural drugs.  In Poland during World Youth Day Pope Francis urged the youth to make a mark in the world and to not to be couch potatoes. Said Pope Francis: Sofa happiness is “probably the most harmful and insidious form of paralysis, since little by little, without even realizing it,…

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Numbstruck over Fatima: If you are blaming the Pope, you’re doing it wrong

Yesterday was First Saturday and the Feast of the Transfiguration. I tend to have a post on First Saturday, and I missed it yesterday, but it gave me a chance to consider something. Things are awful today — in the Church and without. Just look at politics and the shenanigans of the candidates. Worse, look at the inane things…

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Continued Abuse of Extraordinary Ministers Proves Cardinal Sarah’s Ad Orientem would be No Different Even Had the Pope Signed off

Subtitle for the Liturgically impaired:  Ad Orientem means “towards the east” or in ICEL dynamic equivalence “facing the east”. I love listening to the radio, and many programs I like are available on podcast. Sometimes I listen to a podcast again, even though I heard the live show, because I pick up things I didn’t hear…

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Guarding Our Shrines as An Act of Political Realism

Ours is an era of both functional atheism as well as spiritual immaturity. When recent attacks occurred in France and Germany, it was amazing to read on my Twitter feed how many people shunned the notion of praying for the victims or for the countries involved. Perhaps most Twitter users are more of the secular…

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