I typically wake up on January 1 with a fresh zeal for life. The previous year is gone, leaving a blank canvas in its place. It’s delightful and thrilling to hope for transformation! I have to admit, though, that I’m not anticipating the same New Year’s Day thrill this year.

Five years ago my husband, and I began to make concerted efforts toward celebrating Advent and waiting for the liturgical Christmas season to deck the halls and hang stockings with care. Truly waiting cultivated my sense of liturgical seasons, and on a superficial level, I found I wasn’t done by

by Mary Farrow Denver Newsroom, Nov 28, 2020 / 04:35 pm MT (CNA).- Wry jokes and memes about the decided awfulness of the year 2020 – with the pandemic, ensuing lockdowns and economic distress, as well as civil unrest in a turbulent election year – are well known to just

We go around the table every year: “I’m grateful for my family and friends,” somebody says. “I’m grateful for pie,” one child pipes up. Thinking ahead to my turn, I want to voice something that’s heartfelt and unique, but, most years, I realize that I’ve done little reflection on the

I went to church and grade school across the street from a third-trimester abortion center. Back then, the pro-life movement was more angry than merciful, and, as a small child, I saw protesters on the sidewalk holding up graphic posters of aborted babies. I heard them yelling horrible accusations at

by Matt Hadro Washington D.C., Sep 11, 2020 / 12:00 pm MT (CNA).- Catholic teenagers mirror American teenagers overall on many religious trends, a report by the Pew Research Center says. A Pew report published Sept. 10 examined the religious identities and beliefs and American teenagers and their parents. “U.S.

My husband and I had a disagreement a few weeks ago. We were both tense, defensive and in utter disbelief that the other held an opposing perspective. Andrew and I typically see eye to eye, or at the very least we understand one another, so coming to a stalemate made

With August comes a new school year, and, with that, a sense of starting fresh and the expectation that something will be different. Never, perhaps, has that been more the case than in 2020. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the actions taken to mitigate its spread, the 2019-2020 school

“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is older he will not depart from it.” Proverbs 22:6 My husband Andrew and I have five kids this side of heaven. Five kids from age 10 down to 3, and every single one does an on-point

by Jessica Rinaudo I’ll never forget the day Governor DeWine announced that schools across the state of Ohio would be closing in response to the coronavirus pandemic. As a full-time working mother of four children in Catholic schools, my feelings were a mix of shock, anxiety and incredulity. How, I