AN ETHICAL RUBICON was crossed when the first in-vitro fertilization (IVF)-conceived baby came into the world in 1978. With human reproduction no longer limited to the embrace of a man and a woman, people felt empowered to take their own sperm and eggs, or those of others, and create their much desired children bit-by-cellular-bit.
In late 2012, when we knew my wife, Monica, had only a short time to live because of uterine cancer, people began asking me if I planned on writing a book about widowhood and grief after she passed away.
What might we learn from John Henry Newman about the proper way to “read” Vatican II, as we anticipate the 50th anniversary of its conclusion on Dec. 8?
In her just-released book, “Be Safe, Love Mom,” Elaine Lowry Brye seeks to help mothers whose children are in uniform.
GALATIANS 1:15-18 is not your basic witness-to-the-Resurrection text. Yet St. Paul’s mini-spiritual autobiography helps us understand just how radically the experience of the Risen Lord changed the first disciples’ religious worldview, and why an evangelical imperative was built into that experience.
WHILE TAKING a walk on a beautiful spring Sunday, I ran into the neighbor girls digging in the dirt. “Hi, ladies,” I called cheerfully. They enthusiastically explained their activity. The skeletal remains of a baby rabbit had been discovered in the open window well by their basement. Funeral preparations were in progress.
Ten years after his death, Pope St. John Paul II looms even larger than he did a decade ago. What seems most memorable was that he refused to accommodate to the “tyranny of the possible.”
This year, the Governor has included Education Tax Credits in his proposed state budget. And so we have renewed hope. But in politics, it is not enough to propose.
Shortly after Cardinal George Pell was named Archbishop of Melbourne, he instituted several reforms at the archdiocesan seminary, including daily Mass and the daily celebration of the Liturgy of the Hours, both of which had fallen by the wayside in the preceding years.
The World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia this September should be more than a vast Catholic “gathering of the clans” around Pope Francis – and so should the months between now and then.
