Musings on Imperfect Christmases

  So, without sharing graphic details, let’s just say that the recently celebrated Christmas season did not unfold in my family circle like a Hallmark movie. This, despite not only my prayers but my rather beside-the-point “practical” attempts to incarnate in our midst the...
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Descending from Paganism

    In the fifty-plus years since the movement to legalize abortion in America began scoring successes, I have grappled with the mystery of how so many women in particular could politically support it with such consistent and sometimes ferocious conviction. Oh, it is...
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Peddling the Pro-Life Cause in the Post-Christian Age

  For those of us who are Christians, however much we embrace biology, logic, and the law as tools to convey to others the right to life of the unborn, a fundamental question looms large: How do we effectively communicate a sanctity of human life ethic developed over the...
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The Silmarillion in Silicon Valley

In light of our culture’s cantankerous disagreements about the extent to which our biological and social nature is fixed and therefore inaccessible to radical change, it is worth noting how greatly our Founding Fathers’ defense of independence from Great Britain was grounded on a...
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BOOKNOTES: FREIHEIT!: THE WHITE ROSE GRAPHIC NOVEL

  FREIHEIT!: THE WHITE ROSE GRAPHIC NOVEL Andrea Grosso Ciponte (Plough Publishing House, 2021, 111 pages, hardcover, $24) Reviewed by Ellen Wilson Fielding In this beautifully illustrated graphic novel, Italian artist and author Andrea Grosso Ciponte conveys the courage and...
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Perambulating in Mid-Air?

Many years ago, when I was pregnant with my first child, I ran into a fellow Sunday School teacher one day who congratulated me on my soon-tobe-born baby. As he turned to leave, he casually mentioned that he would pray it was a boy. Startled, I didn’t know what to reply. Of...
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What Happens Should Roe Go?

  The Supreme Court’s decision to take up in its next session Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the suit brought against the 2018 Mississippi law limiting abortions to the first 15 weeks of pregnancy, can’t help but raise heady hopes in prolifers eager for good...
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Waiting for Dobbs

  I have been reading The Mystery of the Charity of Joan of Arc, a play that French poet Charles Peguy wrote more than a century ago. For the French especially, Joan of Arc’s life and death are an inspiring patriotic touchstone to return to in times of national crisis or...
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When There Is No King

I have been doing a slow walk through J.R.R. Tolkien’s Silmarillion in concert with a Tolkien podcast; concurrently, I am moving through the Old Testament books of Joshua and Judges, accompanied by Fr. Mike Schmitz’s Bible in a Year podcast. The experiences are weirdly similar....
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Rights Talk and Abortion

I was in my teens when the move to legalize abortion in New York State stirred private and public debates on the topic and precipitated my own interest in defending the unborn’s right to life. Over time assisted suicide joined the list of pro-life issues, as state legislatures...
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