What will the future be like? Our inability to answer this question with certainty has never stopped us from wondering and guessing, both about our personal futures and the future of the world. During the past century, the speculations about the latter have grown more numerous, diverse and elaborate than ever. Stories set in some […]
A young child, who knows enough words to communicate, can describe their prenatal memories and their birth from their own unique perspective, not as an observer. Most of my nine children were able to verbalize their womb and birth experiences if my husband and I posed questions before they were three and a half or […]
Since the time of Hippocrates, physicians have grappled with the issue of futile care. Medical futility is an ethical judgment of the potential for a therapeutic treatment to positively affect a seriously ill patient. Two kinds of medical futility are often distinguished: Quantitative futility, where the likelihood that an intervention will benefit the patient is […]
Losing a pet can be difficult. My neighbor recently lost her pet kitten. Her eight-year-old daughter began crying inconsolably when she learned of this loss. She asked her mother what would happen to the kitten if she would go to heaven. Many animal lovers wonder whether or not their furry friends will join them in […]
If anyone reading has ever driven down Interstate 70 from Wichita, Kansas to Denver, Colorado, then you will know how completely uninteresting the drive can be. The fields of Kansas are beautiful but it is very challenging to drive in a straight line for hundreds of miles. During this drive, I obviously had some time […]
Like many, I do not always pay much attention to the many saint feast days unless it is a particular saint that has personal meaning for me. July 3rd this month was the feast day for such a saint – St. Thomas the Apostle. While I consider St. Michael the Archangel as my guardian angel […]
I was pleasantly surprised by the response that my previous article, entitled The Devil Preys on Idle Souls, received from viewers. As a result, I want to continue this theme and offer insight into one specific method when it comes to defending ourselves daily against the devil’s tactics. A strong defense is just as essential […]
It had been some time since the three of us, my two non-Catholic co-workers and I, had gone to coffee together. Josh and I had held several conversations about Catholicism, the Holy Eucharist and its similarity or not to a variety of Protestant denominations. Then, over the passage of time, we were joined by Steve […]
It has been said that prayer is communication with God, a spiritual give and take session, a holy interchange between Lover and Beloved. Often that experience appears more one-sided on our part. We are prone to speak more than we listen. We may spend more time in prayer asking for what we need than discerning […]
We have had a lot of rain here in my hometown this summer. It was a wet spring and it appears it is going to be a wet summer too. Last year, we were praying to St. James for rain, especially for our farmers. Western New York had suffered low lake levels and drought conditions […]
I found myself placed next to a high powered High Court Judge at a dinner party in one of the most exclusive clubs in London. What on earth was I going to talk to her about I was thinking, when, discovering that I was a Catholic writer, she made everything simple for me. She asked […]
As Roger Scruton says, “Sex is either consecration or desecration, with no neutral territory in between.” That’s essentially the thesis of Terrence Malick’s recent trilogy of films: To the Wonder, Knight of Cups, and now Song to Song. To the Wonder opens the trilogy by, in accordance with Pope Benedict XVI, emphasizing that the loves […]
Today there are many people who claim to be atheists. Some famous ones, like Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens, have even written books with the usual misapplication of scientific facts that somehow disprove the existence of God. The purpose of this article will be to take a rational look at the world we […]
I will never forget the trauma which my vision problems gave me growing up. I had myopia and astigmatism which made every eye test a humiliating experience. Nearly every kid in the class had better vision than I did. They would read off the letters like brushing their teeth while I stumbled and fumbled through […]
A road trip on a weekend and making sure you can still get to Mass can sometimes result in a very pleasant surprise and a holy experience. Quite recently Marjorie (my fiancée) and I were returning home over the weekend from a car trip to Ohio. Not wanting to miss Mass, we looked online at Mass […]
While staying in a remote rural hermitage in western Ireland, there happened to be one day and night that was totally clear — a rare event in Ireland. There had not been a cloud in the sky for 24 hours. Looking out of my window, after the sun had set, I was startled to see […]
“Who did you bring with you?” That, Dear Reader, is the question God will supposedly ask us Christians when we beg admittance to the Heavenly Kingdom. I don’t suppose the person who thought this gem up really thinks of Heaven as a dinner party to which we all are expected to escort a plus-one or […]
Edel Quinn was an unlikely missionary and servant of God. Young, single, female, and knowingly living out her last few years with an incurable case of tuberculosis, she set out from Ireland for Africa in 1936 to continue her evangelization work in the wilds of Africa. Incredibly, none of these were obstacles to Edel, who […]
My friend Harry has been around for some time, and over his life he has experienced many different kinds of physical pain. So I was surprised recently when he contacted me after two weeks silence, and told me he had been through the worst pain of his life: “When my knee was crushed, when I […]
Plato realized that the intelligible is immaterial by identifying a fundamental difference between the intelligible and the material. The intelligible is universal, while the material is particular. The concept of dog is universal: it applies to all dogs, whatever might be the medley of particular properties possessed by each material dog. Plato proposed that there […]
Prenatal Memories and Ancient Hebrew Wisdom
A young child, who knows enough words to communicate, can describe their prenatal memories and their birth from their own unique perspective, not as an observer. Most of my nine children were able to verbalize their womb and birth experiences if my husband and I posed questions before they were three and a half or […]
From Reversion to Reversion: How a Deist Became a Theist, Part I
If anyone reading has ever driven down Interstate 70 from Wichita, Kansas to Denver, Colorado, then you will know how completely uninteresting the drive can be. The fields of Kansas are beautiful but it is very challenging to drive in a straight line for hundreds of miles. During this drive, I obviously had some time […]
Tristan and Isolde and the Three in One
I found myself placed next to a high powered High Court Judge at a dinner party in one of the most exclusive clubs in London. What on earth was I going to talk to her about I was thinking, when, discovering that I was a Catholic writer, she made everything simple for me. She asked […]
Today there are many people who claim to be atheists. Some famous ones, like Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens, have even written books with the usual misapplication of scientific facts that somehow disprove the existence of God. The purpose of this article will be to take a rational look at the world we […]
Heaven, Evangelization, and Bumper Sticker Christianity
“Who did you bring with you?” That, Dear Reader, is the question God will supposedly ask us Christians when we beg admittance to the Heavenly Kingdom. I don’t suppose the person who thought this gem up really thinks of Heaven as a dinner party to which we all are expected to escort a plus-one or […]
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