We must accept the reality that our spouse is God’s gift—all of our spouse. We can’t merely “put up with” our spouse’s splinters in long-suffering frustration. If we take seriously God’s providence in giving us this husband or this wife, their vices are what we’ve needed, and what we should love. We’re seeing a New [...]
People sell the family silver today because they no longer have the traditions and uses that gave it meaning. They sense no need to uphold a family name or adhere to past standards set from time immemorial. In these individualistic times, the welfare of individuals trumps that of the family. The expression “family silver” used [...]
The debt Wendell Berry described is owed by everyone who has inherited something – a faith, a family, a school, a country – from people who are now gone and who are now responsible for handing it, intact and loved, to people yet to be born. That is the whole of the cultural cycle Berry described. [...]
The planting of trees in the orchard—the passing down of tradition, of the moral wisdom of the past, of the torch of life, and of the beauty of life’s simplest but richest and pleasures—produces the great harvest of joy that culminates in the final chapters of the "Odyssey." Editor’s Note: This is the final essay [...]
Catholic culture is, first and foremost, a society built upon a family whose identity draws from the Holy Family. In a culture where every contour of the public life assists in communicating the message of Jesus Christ, the first citizen of the realm will be the Church, she who is both Bride and Body of Christ, [...]
Mary and Joseph spent every day gazing on the face of God incarnate—their own son. These two, no doubt, were profoundly aware of the privilege of every second with their child, the God of the universe. Let us take their example, then, to ask God for the grace to make each moment in his presence [...]
We of this generation give too much time to news about the transient present, too little to the living past. We are choked with news, and starved of history. But how, without history, can we understand these events? “History” said Henry Ford, “is bunk.” As one who has written history for twenty-five years, and studied [...]
Baseball was in my father’s bones before he knew he had bones. And so it is for me because it was for him. Like a treasured family heirloom, baseball has been passed down in our family from one generation to the next. Cal Ripken, Sr., and Cal Ripken, Jr. Moments before the opening [...]
Wayne Braudrick spares no punches in calling men to live up to a biblical ideal: one which expects them to be focused servant leaders who are true to their word, who fight for the right, who commit themselves to life-long learning, and who form strong, lasting friendships. Whatever Happened to Manhood? A Return to Biblical [...]
Saying that government cannot educate is not a partisan political position, but a simple statement of fact: government cannot educate, because government cannot love. Even more bluntly, government should not even try to run institutions of love, because, slowly but surely, its administrators inevitably pervert them in their desire for security or lust for power. [...]
The very excess of our present paganism may warrant some hope that it will not long endure; for usually excess generates its opposite. One of the most regular sequences in history is that a period of pagan license is followed by an age of puritan restraint and moral discipline. So the moral decay of ancient [...]
The right music can have a calming effect on babies. Thus, some have claimed that serene passages of classical music should be played to babies as part of their formation. However, it is not Mozart who affects infants the most. The soothing tone of a loving mother is much more effective. A recent study by [...]
What is needed in understanding childhood is a profound reflection on the nature of man, one that begins with the notion that being is a gift, and so one able to interpret the special qualities of the child—wonder, dependence, receptivity, naive assent, and so forth—as genuinely positive, even if they do not come as easily [...]
The bonds among the Church, the Holy Family, and the “domestic church” founded on the sacrament of marriage are intimate and profound. In a host of formal and informal pronouncements and teachings, Pope John Paul II consistently underlined the central importance of the family as the basic cell of human society, and sacramental marriage as the sole foundation [...]