As a teacher, I have mixed feelings about graduations. While commencements launch new beginnings for graduates, they are also bittersweet farewells.

I worked for The Tablet for 50 years, and for 33 of those years I was the Editor. Week after week, I guided the make-up and content of our diocesan weekly newspaper. So, I think I know something about putting together the news of the week.

As people of God, we are continuing to fight for the protection of these defenseless lives. We will not tire of praying our Rosary to our Blessed Mother, a peaceful, powerful weapon to overcome this evil.

I never thought that as a funeral director I would become a combatant in a cultural war.

Thirty years ago, my wife was 16 weeks pregnant with our third child. At a routine prenatal checkup, our doctor suddenly looked very concerned and said she couldn’t hear our baby’s heartbeat.

When you’re an eighth-grader with just about all of your life ahead of you, wringing all the enjoyment you can out of grammar school life, you perhaps attempt to excel at sports, fantasize or theorize about what may await you once you transition to high school, and, of course, you make friends.

I was born into a non-practicing Jewish family. However, throughout my life, I always knew, and believed in, one God.

Mornings in my country are no longer good and peaceful, as they used to be. Now, every morning in Ukraine is full of the death of our innocent children, full of the death of peaceful people, full of destroyed families.