Amid the Fray

The fleeing nones

I grew up in a family of seven kids, which I considered a midsized Catholic brood. I knew families that could field entire baseball and even football teams. As a kid, I kept score of such matters and felt that Mom and Dad were lagging.

The sin of anti-Semitism resurfaces

The world reacted with horror and outrage earlier this year when a town in Poland marked Good Friday with a ritual beating of a Judas effigy.

Do we really believe in the Real Presence?

When Pope Francis recently said that every time we receive Communion, it should be like our first time, it reminded me of a friend’s story.

What if every life were precious?

When Alabama’s governor, Kay Ivey, signed the nation’s most restrictive abortion bill into law, she gave this simple explanation.

Scary prayers that are good for you

I have a short list of scary prayers. Scary prayers are prayers where even the very words you say seem to convict you.

What has been done and what we still need to do

Josh Shapiro, the attorney general for the state of Pennsylvania, has used the burning of the Notre Dame Cathedral as an opportunity to write a column upbraiding U.S. bishops.

What everybody didn’t know

When the Pennsylvania grand jury issued its report last August chronicling the sexual abuse cases in six Pennsylvania dioceses, everybody thought they knew the whole story. After all, this was a grand jury, and the attorney general of Pennsylvania was presenting its 1,356-page report to the world as evidence of a grand conspiracy by the leaders of the Catholic Church in his state to cover up abuse allegations and ignore victims.

Recovering intimacy in a lonely world

In the early 1990s, the famed mystery author P.D. James published "The Children of Men." Set in the year 2021, it describes a dystopian world where the human race had become incapable of reproducing itself.

The truth that set him free

"I believe the Lord has put me here for this very moment. Throughout all of the pain, the Lord has never left me alone. He has continued to love me, heal me and still calls me to serve him."

Our hope remains in the Lord

People ask how I can do my job as a Catholic editor and journalist these days without being depressed.

Celebrating our technicolor glory

My wife and I moved from the Midwest to the East Coast a few years ago. There was a predictable amount of culture shock for both of us in leaving the manifest blessings of the Midwest: Housing prices (you can buy a palace for what a garage might cost elsewhere). Traffic (four drivers politely waving each other through at a four-way stop). Endless expanses of corn and soybeans (OK, those do get boring after a while, but they make current talk of tariffs affecting crop prices much more real).
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