So yes, I am divorced. Its been over for about a year now. I tried everything I could, prayed for my marriage day after day, and yet in the end Hephzibah still left and divorced me. We went to counseling together and the whole nine yards. Unfortunately, we live in a fallen world and these [...]

Head over to The Integrated Catholic Life for a The Challenges of Modern Fatherhood by Randy Hain. Here is a short excerpt:

Sometimes I can almost imagine myself as a great father to my children…then I do something to mess it up. A week ago the boys and I welcomed my wife home from a five-day trip to California where she had been visiting her sister. What started out as my great adventure with the kids at the beginning of her trip turned into exhaustion at the end and I guiltily looked forward to my wife coming home so I could escape to my work and other activities. I had just experienced a great time with my sons (we really did have fun) and now I was looking to flee the scene and go back to activities which aren’t nearly as important. What was my problem?

Our children have been going to Mass since the week they were born. Though we were told by the Catholic nurse teaching our birth classes that it was OK to not take our newborn to Church with us, we did not agree. I think I can count on one hand the number of times our [...]

A must watch video…

This week, Bernie got her A Level results, and achieved 3 A*s (the highest grade). So she will be off to university in a few weeks. A while back, we also celebrated her 18th birthday. All of which put me in a reflective mood. When she was born, her older sister, Antonia was two and [...]

Having finished her A Levels, and being now between School and University, Bernie has just taken off with a friend for a trip to Barcelona.  Naturally as a parent, I have some slight anxieties about this, her first unsupervised trip abroad. My mind rehearses all the things that could possibly go wrong, physically (health, robbery, [...]

Adventures in parenting with a toddler who thinks he’s Spider-Man.

This is where all you Catholic Dads (and others) get to help a brother out. You’ll recall the heart wrenching story of Nub, my Down Syndrome child. He’s the fourth out of six Nodlings and now a healthy and scrappy six year-old. He is progressing in ability and knowledge, and we are making good strides in our communication, both by sign and some words.

However, this does not seem to extend into staying in the bed at night. With any other kid, that’s simply annoying; with Nub it can be dangerous.

What’s a father to do?

Stairway to Heaven is a weekly feature exploring how to live our Catholic faith in our culture.

The relationship between Pope John Paul II and his father was one for the ages. There is so much for us to learn from them.

When Pope John Paul II was nine years old, his mother succumbed to a weak heart and damaged kidneys, leaving the future pontiff alone with his father and 23-year old brother who was in medical school.

I’ve been reading a book entitled “John Paul II: A Life of Grace” by Renzo Allegri, which tries to tie together all of the remarkable and providential occurrences in the Holy Father’s life. In the chapter describing the family’s life after Emilia Wojtyla’s death, Allegri paints a beautiful and stirring portrait of Pope John Paul II’s father, Captain Karol Wojtyla, Sr.

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.

Help your boys become Battle Ready by having them put on the Armor of God each day, literally.

We must see our life as Catholics to be something of great importance, and not simply something that we do on Sundays. The Devil doesn’t take days off, and he strikes when we least expect it. His hope is that we approach each day thinking about him less and less, because it is then that he can most easily get to us – when we least expect it. “Putting on the Armor of God” in a very literal sense will help our boys develop the mindset and understanding that each day is a Battle and that we must enter each day – BATTLE READY!