In Pacific Palisades, paradise lost
I have trouble talking about the loss without tearing up, as if the smoke and ash from Los Angeles traveled across country to find me. My in-laws were French immigrants to California, proud Americans, ...
Getting adult children to Christmas Mass
There are two kinds of families that I notice at Christmas Mass. The first are those with young children dressed up in their best Christmas finery, excited about the whole day. The kids sing the songs ...
Men behaving beastly
"Why do men become beasts?" The question was asked by South African Archbishop Buti Joseph Tlhagale. In a speech last August, he was warning men that they will be held accountable for the treatment ...
The challenges of being a Catholic voter
Every four years, for as long as I've been in the Catholic press, editors get two types of phone calls come election time. The first is to complain about the perceived bias of the editor or her reporters. Once, ...
Dealing with pandemic PTSD
I'd like a show of hands for how many of you tested positive for COVID this summer. Or felt like heck but didn't have any tests on-hand. Or self-diagnosed your distress as summer flu, even though this ...
Is every Sunday a wasted opportunity?
It's not every day that The New York Times runs a story about Catholics and Eucharistic Adoration. Yet the National Eucharistic Congress held in July in Indianapolis caught the attention of the Gray ...
Let's celebrate Easter for a while
This year, I'm glad to see Lent come to an end, and not just because of Easter Alleluias and Cadbury dark chocolate eggs. It was a tough Lent. Part of it, of course, had nothing explicitly to do with ...
'Ted Lasso' and 'Succession': What makes a good dad?
Judging from media coverage, the press has been gaga over the HBO series "Succession." It chronicled the Roy family, a dysfunctional media brood with an oppressive, manipulative patriarch and an endless ...
