One Man’s Resolution for This New Year
My resolution for the New Year: neither to forget nor to fail in any way to remind others of the truth that we are made for God.
New Year’s Resolutions for Catholics
During and after the grim martial law period in the early 1980s, many freedom-minded Poles would greet each other on January 1 with a sardonic wish: “May the new year be better than you know it’s going to be!” As 2020 opens, that salutation might well be adopted by Catholics concerned about the future of … Read more
A New Heart for a New Year, Always!
As Time cries, “Advance!”, we look back on a year that might fill the mouth of Time with lamentation. The Syrian civil war, the Christchurch mosque massacre, economic collapse in Venezuela, Hong Kong protests, the El Paso Walmart shooting, the Sri Lanka Easter terror attack, the Notre-Dame fire, and political upheaval in America. What is … Read more
My New Year’s Resolution: Kill More Stink Bugs
You have your New Year’s Resolutions, I have mine. If you do not have the blight of Stink Bugs in your home, count your blessings. These walking shield-shaped sons of guns may not be poisonous biters, nor home destroyers, but they swarm our Midwest homes, and fill me with hatred. Christianity tells us not to … Read more
Making New Year’s Day a Holyday of Worship
January 1, 2018, the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, falls on a Monday. Because it falls on a Monday it ceases, according to norms the American bishops adopted in 1992, to be a holy day of obligation. The Code of Canon Law contains ten holydays of obligation but allows local conferences of bishops to … Read more
Why Catholics Celebrate the New Year
We are beginning the Year of the Lord 2016. The marking of the dawn of a new year is no secular holiday, because time and history have been drawn into the coming of God into the world. We keep track of our time as either BC (Before Christ) or AD (Anno Domini) to demonstrate that … Read more
Why Catholics Needn’t Celebrate New Year’s Day
On Friday, January 1, the secular world will observe “New Year’s Day.” The Catholic world will not, for two reasons. One is that we have a genuine religious feast day to observe, in celebration of Mary, the Mother of God. The second is that Catholics don’t find much use in celebrating the chronological movement from … Read more
Thirteen Bold Resolutions for 2013
We Americans love to upgrade ourselves—or at least give improvement a lick and a promise as we turn the page on a given milestone. Jonathan Edwards famously wrote out 70 resolutions (yes, 70!); one assumes North America’s greatest thinker and theologian also sought to live each of them out. Somewhat later, Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography included … Read more
The Annunciation
Human imagination cannot conceive the power and pressure that held all the essential elements of the universe together in a piece of matter about the size of a pinhead when the world began. Physicists tend now to date the explosion of that particle to about sixteen billion years ago. Their job is to consider how … Read more
The government doesn’t know how to raise kids
“You’re nuts.” That’s what a man with 11 children, 15 grandchildren, and a successful legal practice told me after the middle sister of my two foster children was welcomed into our home on Christmas Eve. Of course, he said it in jest (I think). His comment wasn’t about accepting children that weren’t mine into my … Read more
Making lemonade out of…. carp?
A group of chefs, businessmen, and civil servants in Louisiana have devised a clever plan for dealing with an invasive fish: Rename it and stick it on retail shelves and restaurant menus. Asian carp was brought to the U.S. from east Asia in the 1970s to be used to help manage ponds and lagoons. As … Read more
Haydn’s Baryton Trios
When I was in DC this past September for InsideCatholic’s 14th Annual Partnership dinner, Deal introduced me to a truly extraordinary collection of music: Haydn’s Baryton Trios. (The baryton, a large viol-like bowed instrument, seems to have fallen out of favor in recent years — a fact attributed by some to the “immense difficult” required in playing it … Read more
My Non-Binding Resolutions for the New Year
I’m not a libertarian, but I play one on the PC. As I’ve written before (blatant plugs for other rants I’ve written on this subject follow here and here), there’s nothing wrong with the State using its power to foster the Common Good, when the dignity of individuals is respected and the Common Good is … Read more