Death and AI and Resurrection

    A teenager was murdered in a mass shooting at his school in 2018. By 2020, his parents had founded a nonprofit which, among other things, produced a political commercial. The ad opens with an introduction by the parents. Then these words appear on the screen: “We...
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The Christ Child in Carols—and in Us

    The traditional Nine Lessons and Carols opens with the carol “Once in Royal David’s City.” The words were written by Cecil Frances Alexander in 1848; they first appeared in the U.S. in Cantica Sacra, Hymns for the Children of the Catholic Church, in 1865. In the lessons...
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Pro-life Is Not Anti-death

  Caring for the sick: It’s what Christians do and have done since the beginning. Jesus healed the sick. Insofar as they could, his followers did the same. And whenever they could not heal, they stayed with the sick and did not abandon them. Caring for the sick leads to...
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Against Usefulness

  Some things are good because they are useful in relation to something else, but other things are good simply in themselves. A friend of mine makes this point about children. You don’t have to give a reason for having children. Children—like all people—are ends and not...
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Children Are Not the Future (They Are the Present)

  “We need to take care of the children; after all, they are the future.” Lots of people say this—you may have said it yourself. It’s a common sentiment in the church, I’ve found. When talking about Sunday school or catechism (or whatever a particular church calls it),...
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A Paradox of Death

    Death is our ancient enemy, and yet in many lives there comes a time when we should not resist death but accept it. This is a paradox, and it poses a basic question: how to accept death while continuing to affirm the sanctity of human life. An elderly woman was...
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The Child Is Real

  He came to a midweek theology class I offered but not to Sunday church. He was drinking the truths about God like the young adult he was, totally innocent of Christianity. Creation, the cross, the resurrection, the importance of the body: All of this was news to him....
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The Foolishness of the Cross

    In the first chapter of his first epistle to the Corinthians, Saint Paul writes: “The preaching of the cross is to them that [are] perish[ing], foolishness; but unto us which are [being] saved, it is the power of God.” Recently preaching on this passage, I first...
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“There’s Nothing Wrong with This Child!”

  A brilliant novel from 2021 that is mostly about life lived in “the portal,” that is, on social media, makes, mid-course, a dramatic turn and engages the world of the flesh. The sister of the unnamed female narrator conceives a child who is prenatally diagnosed with a...
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Against Sudden Death

  In the Great Litany one finds the following petition: “From lightning and tempest; from plague, pestilence, and famine; from battle and murder, and from sudden death, Good Lord deliver us.” Why is “sudden death” in this list? What is wrong with sudden death? Most people...
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