Victor Lee Austin

So when we are talking about the prolife “message” breaking through in our culture, what we are talking about is reality breaking through in various cultural products. Read More →

  One is not likely to think of Barbie as a pro-life film. Its premise is that there is a “Barbieland” ruled by women, an excessively pink world of upbeat and positive people who never age, perfect in skin and attitude. It is not a world of sin and hardship, where people age... Read More →

    March 25 is the feast of the Annunciation, the annual celebration of the angel’s announcement to the Virgin Mary that she would conceive and give birth to Jesus. Since March 25 falls in Holy Week this year, its celebration has been postponed to the second week of Easter.... Read More →

    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... Read More →

    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... Read More →

  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... Read More →

  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... Read More →

  “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),... Read More →

    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... Read More →

  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.... Read More →