Fathers have a great deal to learn from this saint who was martyred when she was 11 years old.
Stairway to Heaven is a weekly feature exploring how to live our Catholic faith in our culture.
July 6th is the feast day of St. Maria Goretti. She is the patron saint of young women.
She grew up a farm girl in rural Italy at the turn of the 19th into the 20th Century. When she was 11, a 19-year old boy living in the same house as her family started making advances on her. She kept refusing him.
Finally, after six months, the boy cornered her and forced himself on her, brandishing a knife. She didn’t give in. He then stabbed her repeatedly.
Are we spending our time as we should? Where do our priorities lie? The news isn’t good.
Stairway to Heaven is a weekly feature exploring how to live our Catholic faith in our culture.
Occasionally, studies come along that just blow the socks off of our culture.
Recently, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (U.S. Department of Labor) released their 2011 America Time Use Survey, which measures how Americans spend their time (at least those over 15 years of age). The only press reports I saw on the study referenced the increased amount of leisure time that Americans seem to have (presumably because of the Great Recession and the high number of unemployed and underemployed workers).
But the story goes so much deeper and is an indictment on our culture.
How we dress is reflection of our spirtuality. We need to teach that to our teenage daughters.
Stairway to Heaven is a weekly feature exploring how to live our Catholic faith in our culture.
I was at our parish festival this weekend. On Saturday night, I worked one of the booths in the kids’ area.
About 9:00, the teenagers started gathering. At one point, I’m guessing we had at least a hundred milling around.
I have never been uptight about what others were wearing. But, I’m changing. I guess I’m a little more attuned, especially to teenage dress, because of my soon to be pre-teen daughter. I’m paying closer attention to the signals that the culture is sending her and the signals that she is sending the world.
As we celebrate Divine Mercy Sunday and the beatification of Pope John Paul II, we should reflect on why we need God’s Divine Mercy in our lives.
Stairway to Heaven is a weekly feature exploring how to live our Catholic faith in our culture.
This Sunday is Divine Mercy Sunday. It is also the beatification of Pope John Paul II. Both events are intentionally intertwined because the late Holy Father was the chief proponent of this important feast day.
The Holy Father spent his entire priesthood preaching about the beauty of man as a creature of God . . .
I was working away from home last week,staying in a hotel, with a TV in the room. I noticed both how much time it was easy to waste in front of the TV and also how corrosive some of the programming is. The reason I’m so sensitive to this is that Anna and I have [...]
Stairway to Heaven is a weekly feature exploring how to live our Catholic faith in our culture.
40 Days for Life is a national prayer campaign to end abortion. It works and is an excellent way for pro-lifers to do something. 
Are you pro-life?
Do you want to DO something?
Are there ethical concerns over artificial flavorings made from body parts?
For those of you who will remember, the iconic film Soylent Green depicted a dystopian future in which all the food supplies have been exhausted by overpopulation and people are dependent on protein bars handed out by the government in order to stay alive. The secret origins of Soylent Green are revealed at the climax to be made from the only remaining source: It’s people! — in a word, cannibalism.
Ever since then, Soylent Green has become a byword to describe the unthinkable thrust upon the unsuspecting.
One of the biggest driving forces behind the abortion business is money. Abortion is big business. Body parts can and are being sold to medical researchers, pharmaceutical companies, cosmetics companies, IVF labs, and a growing list of customers that may surprise you (there’s gotta be some kind of regulations, right?).
So when I became aware of the current controversy regarding a food flavoring biotech company called Senomyx using cells from aborted fetuses, I began to get that sinking feeling. Are they putting Soylent Green in our food as “artificial flavors” ?
Understanding gender in a confused culture.
Over the past eighteen years, I have had the privilege of catechizing young people and adults. As a catechist, you notice societal trends that require you to adjust your teaching style and content to make necessary corrections in cultural thinking. We are always forming students and informing our peers from a Catholic worldview.
None of us would find it surprising if I said that over the past 5 years or so, I have had to make a concerted effort to define for my students that marriage is a union between one man and one woman. Traditional marriage has been under attack for decades, but the battle has heated up over the past ten years. In fact, in the news today, DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) is under a passive attack by the Executive Branch of the government. The current administration has announced that it disagrees with DOMA and, thus, will no longer defend it in court. What an utter tragedy!
Anyway, two months ago I had to refine my definition of marriage for my students.[...]
On mental gymnastics and getting tied in moral knots, another look at Live Action.
For those who follow the wide breadth of the Catholic Blogosphere, you probably have picked up on the stirring debate going on among pro-life Catholic bloggers and commenters concerning the ethics of Lila Rose and Live Action in exposing the antics of Planned Parenthood.
To summarize, Ms. Rose and Live Action went in undercover and exposed PP of engaging in illegal behavior and actions victimizing the very women they claim to support.
This debate by pro-life Catholics really has me scratching my head. [...]
Life IS personal.
“Don’t take it personally.” How often are we told that?
But, we do take things personally. The news is filled with one story after another about someone taking offense to something or another, whether real or perceived. Our society needs a steady lesson on how to forgive and forget.
With this said, our society has done a pretty good job of making things impersonal when they concern other people. [...]
