The first 15 minutes of “Saving Private Ryan” and the jump sequence in the second episode of “Band of Brothers” are vivid reminders of the extraordinary courage displayed on D-Day, 70 years ago.
Guest Columnists
The Permanent Diaconate: A Call to Service
The renewal of the permanent diaconate is one of the greatest legacies of the Second Vatican Council.
Should CCHD Be Used for Schools?
It’s commencement season, and tens of thousands of students are graduating from inner-city Catholic elementary schools. As decades of empirical research have shown, these kids have a better chance of successfully completing high school and college.
Editing Our Own Genes?
A number of serious diseases are known to occur because of defects or mutations in our DNA. Curing such diseases could in principle be carried out by rewriting the DNA to fix the mutated base pairs. Yet until recently, scientists have remained largely stymied in their attempts to directly modify genes in a living animal. Findings described in the March 30, 2014 issue of Nature Biotechnology, however, reveal that a novel gene-editing technique, known as CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats), can be used successfully in mice to reverse disease symptoms for a liver defect known as type I tyrosinemia.
An Archbishop of Destiny
When we first met in April, 2011, what initially impressed me about Major-Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk was his almost preternatural calm, which was striking in that less than a month before and still a few weeks shy of his 41st birthday, Shevchuk had been elected Major-Archbishop of Kyiv-Halych and head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church – the largest of the Eastern Catholic Churches, Byzantine in liturgy and governance while in full communion with the Bishop of Rome.
Mindfulness Doesn’t Replace God’s Help
I’m teaching a slightly unusual college freshman course this spring called “The Virtues.” It’s not quite philosophy or theology, at least not after the typical academic fashion. It’s an attempt to present the virtues as something students might want to practice and not just study.
Humanae Vitae: What If?
Cardinal Carlo Caffarra of Bologna has long been a vocal supporter of the teaching on the morally appropriate means of family planning set forth in “Humanae Vitae” (“Of Human Life”).
Does Modesty Count Anymore?
Off-the-shoulder tops. Short skirts. Sheer, glittery dresses. Clothing for women? Nope. These items were in the girls department of a store I passed by one wintry day. I couldn’t help but wonder: Does modesty matter anymore? And, if not, what does this mean?
Universal Rules to Guide Us on The Path to a Good Life
Life is about rules. We learn that lesson young when a parent says, “Don’t put that in your mouth.” As we age, the list of rules grows. Some rules, such as “Don’t put that in your mouth,” are obvious, and compliance comes without a second thought. Others are more complicated.
Carrying a Tin Cup Full of Grace
Author Annie Dillard has a popular quote: “We catch grace like a person filling a tin cup at a waterfall.” That quote intrigued and troubled me. I stuck it on my bulletin board, next to pictures of my kids, prayers for the canonization of Boys’ Town founder Father Edward Flanagan and a picture of me with Sister Helen Prejean, C.S.J. My bulletin board, in other words, holds for me a variety of reminders of grace.