Here again, to help our kids absorb the virtues, it’s up to us as parents and mentors to teach them by our words and deeds that character counts. When they’re very young, we can fill their heads with fairy tales, Aesop’s Fables, and stories of heroes ranging from the ancients to our American ancestors. When they step from the right path, we can guide them back, and later, when they are older, we can hold them responsible for their actions. Household chores and summer jobs can also help make children into stronger adults, introducing them to positive character traits like hard work and responsibility.
It is increasingly necessary for us, in our culture, to recall this supernatural purpose of the family. The necessities and benefits the family once provided an individual (financial security, physical security, education, etc.) the state now provides (or promises, anyway). Rightly or wrongly, we don’t rely on the family for those things anymore. It’s now clearer that the family provides what no one else can: a place where Christ is learned, worshipped, and lived. In short, the domestic church.
"And so, out in the open, before the world’s very eyes, the Jews of Europe vanished. And now, today, in the middle of a prosperous nation, NFL commentators, nurses, doctors, pilots, police, are quietly vanishing. Law-abiding citizens. Loyal employees. The ones who came on time, and stayed late, and worked heroic hours during the crisis, and loved their profession. Gone."
In these waning days of Advent, we prepare ourselves for the coming of the Christ Child. Our preparation cannot sidestep Mary’s maternity for it is the utterly indispensable way for us to be saved from sin and death. The flesh and blood of the woman from Nazareth was the first resting place for Our Savior – before the manger in Bethlehem. Before we arrive at the Lord’s birth, let us honor the Ark of the Covenant for teaching us how to love the children we have – those of flesh and blood and those who are our children spiritually. A mother’s love brings us comfort and peace. May these gifts be ours abundantly unto the celebration of the Lord’s Nativity at the end of this week.
“Admittedly, I’ve often relied on my female sexual partners to protect me from unwanted pregnancy,” he wrote. He recalled “panicking” after sleeping with a girl he “met on Tinder” while he was studying for one of his advanced degrees. “Then I got her text. She had decided to take plan B as an extra precaution. I was relieved.”
“Why does the Christmas crèche arouse such wonder and move us so deeply?” Pope Francis asks. “First, because it shows God’s tender love: the Creator of the universe lowered himself to take up our littleness. The gift of life, in all its mystery, becomes all the more wondrous as we realize that the Son of Mary is the source and sustenance of all life. In Jesus, the Father has given us a brother who comes to seek us out whenever we are confused or lost, a loyal friend ever at our side. He gave us his Son who forgives us and frees us from our sins.”
Advent Season is upon us and families across the globe are marking the 4 weeks before Christmas by opening Advent calendars and lighting Advent wreaths every Sunday. Taken from the Latin adventus for 'coming,' the season is an opportunity for every Catholic to prepare one's heart and mind for the coming of the Christ-child and remember the promise that the Lord will come again. And to pray.
“It’s putting religious institutions in a position in which, if they want to get the money, or to accept money that goes to parents, they have to enter a Faustian bargain in which they agree to basically give up their faith. In the Catholic Church, we have 2,000 years of Church teaching. We’re not giving it up to get federal money for child care or pre-K,” Carroll said during a roundtable discussion in Washington on Wednesday, Dec. 1, sponsored by U.S. Senate Republicans.
Today, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a case that could upend Roe v. Wade. At the very least, Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is the most significant challenge to legalized abortion to date. In question in a Mississippi law known as the Gestational Age Act. If the court decides the law should stand, the power to determine and limit abortion rights would effectively be returned to the states.