According to this report in the New York Times, Martha-Ann Alito, wife of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, wants to fight a culture war with a Catholic flag: “I want a Sacred Heart of Jesus flag,” she is heard to say in a recording, “because I have to look across the lagoon at the Pride flag for the next month.” But Ms. Alito said that after she suggested the Sacred Heart of Jesus flag as Read more…
In my latest column for OSV News, I look at May’s four loudest days on Catholic social media and declare with absolute certainty that — all the hysteria and huffpuffing aside — the growing division within the Catholic Church will continue, and the rifts will widen. Polarization in the church will expand (no matter who is pope or what layperson shakes the cherry trees for picking or how daintily the bishops turn good Christian advice Read more…
In this Year of Prayer I’m trying to write a bit more about different ways of prayer. This column came about after I’d seen a brief video on social media, about a priest who’d created a “drive up Adoration window” in his rectory window during the Covid lockdowns. It still serves the Body of Christ in those wee small hours, when we need consolation. We all have them — those desperate times, particularly in the Read more…
My latest piece at OSV, wherein I presume to solve — or at least offer one sort of solution toward — the ongoing social chaos situation in the world — yes, the whole world — by talking about the formation of the human conscience. So far, the responses have been kind. No one has yet called me a loon. But the week is young: If, whether we are religious or deeply secular, we can agree Read more…
A little something worth keeping in mind: Mostly, we are powerless over the vagaries of life. Rather than disturbing us, that reality should help Christians embrace a daily mindset of pragmatic surrender. Yes, we are responsible for ourselves, for our families, our bodies, our neighbors. We are spirit and matter and so, to a point, material considerations do matter. But our lives are brief (“our years are 70, 80 if we are strong” says Psalm Read more…
Did you know there is within the Catholic Church, a blessing offered to parents who are grieving the loss of a child through miscarriage or stillbirth? It’s one of those things I think I may have known but forgotten — and I wish I’d known it when my husband and I were experiencing the horror of miscarrying. Our daughter would be 29, now, and no, you never forget the birthdays and school plays and Christmases Read more…
It feels like those of us who knew it was coming have waited forever for Margaret Rose Realy’s Garden Catechism to finally be published and become available. Boasting the loveliest illustrations you can imagine from the immensely gifted Mary Sprague (and with a foreword by Sherry Weddell) and full of Realy’s commingled (and extensive) knowledge of plants and Christian history, planting times and Catholic myths and legends, seasons and scripture, this book is not merely Read more…
October 2 being a Sunday, the day takes precedence over the memorial on the calendar of the Catholic Church, but as we look at images left by the devastation of Hurricane Ian (and, at this writing, its continued threat), it would not be uncommon to hear some ask, “Well, where were the Guardian Angels? Why weren’t they protecting lives and homes?” Such questions always extrapolates into, “Why do bad things happen at all, if the Read more…
I’ve left the idea that “better catechesis” will end disaffiliation w/the church, or with Christianity in general. I have too many well-catechized pals who KNOW their faith but have still walked away. This piece does a good job of addressing why, and do read it to the end. What people know of the church is simply not jibing with what, and how, it is being taught. Maya Angelou once said something like “People will forget what Read more…
We’ve seen nothing like this since the funeral of John Paul II, but in England, an uncountable crowd is queueing up and patiently waiting to quietly file past Queen Elizabeth’s flag-draped coffin. People are being warned that this may involve standing and creeping along for as much as thirty hours in the autumn dampness and chill. On one hand, it’s not surprising. Aside from authentic grief, there is always a “be here, now” sort of Read more…