On What Day of the Week Were You Born?

Oh dear...I am Wednesday's child, "full of woe." That description is actually pretty accurate for me since, in the traditional personality description, I tend toward the melancholic. 

Do Our Bishops Welcome "Undocumented Houseguests" in their Own Homes?

My friend and colleague, Janet Baker, has an interesting article on her D.C. blog about the bishops shilling for illegal immigrants. One particularly apt sentence about the illegal aliens was this:

[T]hese people are border-crashers who come and/or stay in this country while disregarding our laws and procedures. They are no more "immigrants" than a burglar is an "undocumented house guest".

Let Thanks Be Always on Our Lips!

Sometimes I get a tremendous surprise when I open a book. Tucked inside will be a letter from the past from a family member or friend. This week, I looked in my calendar book to see whose birthdays and anniversaries are coming up in the month of September. But what I found in the front was a little treasure from one of my granddaughters -- a letter she wrote on January 11, 2019 when she was still in high school. It captured a moment from the past to thrill a grandparent's heart.

When Fact and Fiction Meet to Tell the Truth!

I'm re-reading one of my favorite novels, The Masterful Monk by Owen Francis Dudley, a Catholic priest who converted from Anglicanism. He wrote a series of connected novels about human happiness. I've read them all. The Masterful Monk is the third in the series which is recommended in Fr. John Hardon's Catholic Lifetime Reading Plan. 

Hell on Earth is the Default Position in Massacusetts (and Elsewhere)

While I was at the beach, my grandkids were feeding goldfish to the seagulls. We were at Assateague Island National Seashore and it turns out that it's illegal to feed seagulls at national parks. Gosh, who knew? My two year old grandbaby could face a $5,000 fine and spend up to a year in jail. 

Meanwhile, Maura Healey, the faux Catholic governor of Massachusetts, where it's also illegal to feed seagulls, recently signed a bill allowing babies to be killed in the birth canal. Just slit that unwanted little parasite's neck so he comes out dead. But don't feed the sea gulls; it can send you to jail.

That, friends, is the definition of hell. We all know that baby seals and eagles' eggs are protected. And now we know that seagulls have rights too. Although the seagulls love goldfish. They might not appreciate their right not to be fed by the tourists.

Sunday Meditation: Got Gratitude?

This morning at the chapel we celebrated yesterday's Marian feast for the Immaculate Heart of Mary. What a debt of gratitude we owe to the mother of God for her fiat. Take her hand and she will lead you straight to Jesus! 

Frankly I can never understand the Protestant contempt for Mary. Do Protestants love their own mothers? How can they when they expect Jesus to see His mother as a rival? She isn't and never has been. She loves Jesus more completely than any other human who has ever lived or will live. 

In What State Do You Live?

There's a story about a little boy who goes to his dad and asks, "Daddy, where do we come from?" Dad takes a deep breath and begins to give the birds and the bees explanation. He pauses and, looking puzzled, little Johnny asks, "My friend Pete says they come from Ohio. Where do we come from?"

It's a good question? Where do we come from and what state do we live in? And the follow up question is obviously, where are we going?

My readers come from all over the map according to Google. Some come from my home state, Virginia. Others come from just about every other state in the country. Readers come from other countries and continents as well. I welcome them all as we explore life from a Catholic point of view.

The Lies Parents Tell

Parents want to rear their children to be truth-tellers. At least they should. But many parents today lie regularly to their children. Why? Mostly out of human respect. I’ll give an example from my own experience. 

The Catholic Clowns' Three Ring Circus

There seem to be a lot of circus acts in the Church these days. My dad would be shaking his head and talking about the clowns, especially those in Roman collars. We certainly see them on a daily basis. Some clown around during the Mass dressing up as Barney or blessing the congregation with a guitar or singing silly songs (like Larry from Veggie Tales) or warming up the congregational audience before every homily with a joke.

What Women Have Lost! And Men Too.

So much has been lost in the Church and in our culture, much of it since Vatican II. The sixties was a particularly disastrous decade both within and outside the Church. The sexual revolution with the invention of "the pill" made eliminating babies as easy as popping a pill every day - at least when it worked as it was meant to work. Originally intended for married couples, its use quickly devolved into recreational sex and one night stands: no responsibility, no complications, no babies. 

And the Church was silent. It was about fifteen years after Humanae Vitae, the encyclical that condemned contraception that I first heard a sermon on the papal document. I went out of church and congratulated and thanked the priest. Today, polls show that most Catholic women, about 87%, use a form of artificial birth control to avoid pregnancy.