Thanksgiving to Advent

The term intersectionality has been popularized in the past few decades. It refers to the effect the confluence or intersection of various traits such as sex, age, race, ethnicity, and education has on an individual or group of individuals. It is especially applicable in sociology…

Doxy and Praxy: An Allegory

Doxy and Praxy were great friends. They had grown up together and each would feel lost without the other. Praxy was the more practical of the pair. She was resourceful and managed to accomplish what needed to be done. A ball of boundless energy, she…

Ninevites

According to the commentary in the Catholic New American Bible, the Book of Jonah in the Old Testament is a parable written sometime after the return of the Jewish people from exile. It is principally a story about the recalcitrance of a curmudgeonly prophet who…

Blurred Vision

When his grandmother asked him if he was ever going to settle down and establish roots, the thirty-something millennial offered as an excuse for not doing so: “Commitment is the enemy of choice”. With  irrefutable candor unique to grandmothers, she admonished him and said: “Commitment…

Edifying Ambiguity

Sometimes ambiguity is instructive.  The expression “for the love of God” was popular generations ago. More often than not it was an exclamation: “Oh, for the love of God, get over it!”. At times it was a genuine religious explanation: “I do it for the…

TOBET

Since the so-called sexual revolution in the 1960s confusion about human sexuality has proliferated, especially in the United States.  What traditionally was recognized as an immutable part of the essential core of our being became, in the eyes of many, an extraneous factor that could…

X-ian

Some readers may remember when the cheerful greeting “Happy Holidays” became a popular and convenient replacement for the traditional “Merry Christmas”. The intent was seemingly harmless as the former was indefinite enough to include reference to Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and New Year celebrations. The same principle…

 Trado, tradere, tradidi….

“Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another”.  Contemplating this quotation, readers who remember their high school Latin might recall having to conjugate the verb  ‘tradere’, the translation of which is ‘to hand over’ or ‘to hand…

Not by Bread Alone

Since its inception twenty-six years ago the donors of the National Catholic Community Foundation have requested thousands of grants be made with an aggregate value exceeding $30 million. To appreciate the geographic dispersion of these grants and the wide variety of recipients Readers might visit…

American Federation Pueri Cantores

Mid-Atlantic Pueri Cantores Youth Choral Festival and Mass celebrated by Cardinal Gregory. An exciting and promising development is underway in this country. Growing numbers of parents, grandparents and choir directors throughout the nation are being touched by the ineffable power of children and young adults…