Our son, Anthony Jacob, was born April 30 at our house at 3:45 a.m. He and my wife, Jocelyn, are both doing well. I’ve posted some pictures on my blog. This heathen child of ours will be cleansed from the filth of original sin in the waters of baptism this Sunday. Close Bookmark and Share This [...]

I mentioned in passing in a post on this here weblog last month that my wife and I are expecting our fifth child. Today, in fact, is the “official” due date, but with each passing minute, it seems less and less likely our child will be making his? her? debut today, so it appears we’re [...]

…it’s, like, *so* not surprising to see articles with headlines that declare: Kids Curb Marital Satisfaction Mark Shea, in his usually incisive way, comments thusly: For our culture terminal narcissism, this is a big deal, since it conceives of marriage, like everything else, as a tool for self-fulfillment and instant gratification. That’s why it bothers [...]

For the past few years during Lent, our family has prayed the Stations of the Cross on Friday nights. Ideally, I suppose, it would be better to go to our parish to participate in the Stations liturgy there, but our family situation being what it is (four kids ages almost 2 to 6, and my [...]

I just posted the following entry on my personal blog, Lunch Break, and since its content deals with both Church teaching and parenting issues, I thought it might be worth cross-posting here. Seven weeks ago, the now famous Duggar family welcomed the birth of their 18th child. The next day, a college friend of mine [...]

Ben Trovato’s passing reference to altar girls in a post earlier last week prompted me to recall a conversation that came up a few weeks ago, just after Christmas, while our family was having dinner with some relatives. The conversation was about our kids (we have three girls, ages 3, 4, and almost 6; one [...]

A few years ago, my wife and I started making a conscious effort during Advent to celebrate it in such a way as to distinguish it from Christmas. (We had always had an Advent wreath, but we were looking for more.) While I admit we have a long way to go in making this distinction [...]

Some of you fellow inhabitants of Catholic Dads-Land may be familiar with Maureen Wittmann, who is well known in the Catholic homeschooling world for her contributions as an author, blogger, and speaker. I first got to know Maureen via e-mail after the 2007 March for Life, when she contacted Generations for Life, the pro-life youth [...]

For several years now, my backpack has been something of a Linus-like security blanket; rare is the day I leave the house without it. It’s also become a repository of items various and sundry: a tin of Altoids, more pens than I could hope to use in ten years, a rosary, an 11-week fetal model, [...]

A conference called “Reclaiming Fatherhood: A Multifaceted Examination of Men Dealing with Abortion” will be held in Chicago on September 8th and 9th. This is only the second ever international conference of its kind (the first was held last year in San Francisco), and next month’s conference promises to be equally good. Among other topics, [...]