Since retiring from my job, I have found myself afflicted by a mysterious ailment. Here is the main symptom, which my husband and I just had a fight about: He finds me irritating. We had a talk (after fighting), and he is right: I am mothering him. Smothering him. Treating him like he is incapable Read more
Dayna West knows how to throw a fabulous memorial shindig. She hired Los Angeles celebration-of-life planner Alison Bossert — yes, those now exist — to create what West dubbed “Memorialpalooza” for her father, Howard, in 2016 a few months after his death. “None of us is going to get out of this alive,” says Bossert, Read more
Until last year, online search results for the Rev. Gary Graf would include stories about his liver donation to a parishioner, his scaling a border wall so he could understand more intimately the experiences of his immigrant parishioners and a hunger strike he staged to draw attention to the plight of Dreamers. Today, however, the Read more
Nazi. White supremacist. Sexist. Canadian. These are just a few of the things that Jordan Peterson, author of the best-selling book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, has been called. He is a psychology professor at the University of Toronto who first became well-known for his opposition to the forced use of gender-neutral pronouns, Read more
A Boston Herald story announced, “Millennials making their way back to church,” and focused on Catholic parishes in Boston that are seeing more millennials at Mass. The report gave me an idea: Why not ask millennials that I know what attracts — or repels — them from parish life? If my focus group ruled the Read more
“Baby girl, no!” My 14-month-old daughter’s hand briefly paused in the air, dripping water back into the dog’s drinking bowl. Her hand went to her head, to her chest and completed a toddler’s awkward sign of the cross. My husband and I were horrified by the slobbery dog-water blessing. But we were also awestruck: We Read more
Pope Francis has been known to make off-color or politically incorrect jokes from time to time. For example, he has provoked sighs and raised eyebrows with stereotypical mother-in-law asides and occasional references to women as strawberries on the cake. Then there’s his constant harping about modern-day Pharisees, as he frequently labels those Catholic priests and Read more
If there is any truth to the leaks concerning the Vatican’s forthcoming proposal to reform the Curia, it is going to be a disappointment and a disaster. A draft of the proposal, expected to be published at the end of June, was obtained by a Spanish weekly, Vida Nueva, and as the Vatican has not Read more
The traditional separation of the three Abrahamic religions means Catholics can have some fuzzy ideas about Judaism and Islam. We are like a family that has cousins living in countries we have never visited. The events of Friday 15, March brought us home to our Islamic cousins, although there is still some fuzziness floating around. Read more
“The persecution of Christians is today worse than at any time in history,” says Aid to the Church in Need – a papal charity – in its report on oppressed Christians titled “Persecuted and Forgotten?”. The Easter Sunday coordinated bombings targeting Christians in Sri Lanka, which killed at least 290 people and wounded approximately 500 Read more