On the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, Jan. 22, Catholics and Christians around this nation said a prayer for the unborn. Each year, thousands flood to Capitol Hill for the March for Life, where many believers make a public pledge against abortions. I reflect on this infamous law and all the victims it has taken, and ask myself as a new mother, what is the value of life?
Leading up to the passage of New York’s 2019 abortion expansion legislation, lawmakers and advocates dismissed Catholic concerns as hysterical fear-mongering, devoid of facts. The new law merely updated New York’s outdated statute, they insisted. It simply codified the protections of Roe vs. Wade at the state level.
A recent Associated Press story accused diocesan review boards around the country of failing in their mission to investigate claims of clergy sexual abuse.
As we trudge into 2020, a year that promises to be just as rancorous politically as the year we recently ended, I find myself thinking about forgiveness.
“Isn’t it sad,” someone once told me, “that on New Year’s Eve, you’re counting down to the end of your birthday?” I was born on the last day of the year, so countdowns to the start of the new year always meant the end of my birthday. That never bothered me; the celebration always continued. The music still played. The party wasn’t over.
Two days before Christmas in 1973, it was cold and beginning to snow when I set out from Great Lakes, Ill., at 6 a.m. to get home to my boys on Long Island. I was in the U.S. Navy then.
As I carefully unwrapped and hung the ornaments on the tree this year, I was struck by how many of them were made by hand, crafted expressly for me and my family. How had I never noticed this before?
My wife and I are expecting our fifth child in February. It’s been six years since we had a newborn in the house, so there are some things we need to relearn about life with a baby. Most pressing perhaps is the role that technology will play in our family life when the new baby arrives.
Back in October, on a sunny Sunday morning, I had a very moving and beautiful experience of grace. I was in Chicago with one of my brothers-in-law, running in the marathon.
Years ago, a child in my family asked, “If a Church is God’s house, is a cemetery God’s garden?” I lack the theologically correct answer. Yet, that question recognized what I know is true: there is something profoundly sacred about the land where we lay our loved ones to rest.
