Maybe he was too young to know better.  He had no military training and was so underestimated by his own family that his own father forgot him when a prophet came to visit.  His brothers’ army was outmatched.  The…

I was watching the “10th Anniversary Special” of the popular kids’ show “Blues’ Clues” with my daughter and I started to admire the simplicity involved in the show.  Mostly because it seemed to speak right to my level.

I was interested…

I’ve seen it time and time again.  Someone decides to seek a better paying job, or pursue and investment strategy, or launch a new business.  Invariably some pious person in the parish objects that maybe this is too worldly, that…

Is God unjust? Does He treat us unequally? We have been trained to expect fairness and equality. “God shows no partiality,” both Sts. Peter and Paul tell us (Acts 10:34; Rom 2:11). We Americans have the phrase “All men are…

Days after the 2008 election many pro-life Christians felt deflated and disappointed.  It is hard to look at the positive and to forge ahead when the world is so full of evil.  After a day or so of pity parties,…

I have always had a soft-spot in my heart for the Dominican Nuns. My mother is a third-order Dominican. As a result, as a little girl I spent a great deal of time at the local Mother of God Monastery.…

Trixie was the quintessential gerbil.  She acted like a mouse in a Cinderella story book.  “Don’t stick your fingers near the air holes of the box” the pet store manager cautioned our daughter after we purchased Trixie for her.  “She…

The past two years have proven to be more than challenging for our little family.  Right after Thanksgiving of ‘06, the plague of cancer made its rounds through our extended family.  Last year offered a surgery, cancer treatments, and three…

As a rebellious teenager, I thought that Catholics should stop wasting their money on expensive churches.  We ought to sell them all and buy food for the poor, I argued.  Funny thing.  Jesus, who cared much for the poor, did…

The feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica came about because the Church went without something that it wanted and needed for a very long time. For the first 300 years of its existence, Christianity was an illegal religion…