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  One day after Pentecost Sunday, the Vatican Congregation for Catholic Education released “Male and Female He Created Them, Towards a Path of Dialogue on the Question of Gender Theory in Education.” From the very first sentence, it rightly describes “. . . an educational... Read More →

Assisi is a small hill town in central Italy surrounded by a very green countryside that has little industry except for olive cultivation and other farming activities. Known for centuries as a pilgrimage site, Assisi is full of convents, monasteries and churches, the most famous... Read More →

The “Shout Your Abortion” online media campaign, dedicated to “putting an end to shame” regarding abortion, is the latest expression of the belief that people not only have the right to have one but they also have the “right” to not feel bad about it. Notice I said “people,” not... Read More →

This year has seen a flurry of state-level legislative action on abortion, initiated by both pro-life and pro-abortion advocates. The catalyst for much of this action has been hope (or fear) that the U.S. Supreme Court might modify, if not reverse, the unrestricted abortion... Read More →

  On April 3, our local newspaper, The Waterloo Region Record, carried a front-page feature about the travelling Anne Frank Exhibit, an international project of the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. The exhibit had recently arrived at Cameron Heights Collegiate high school in... Read More →

They came in baby carriages, strollers, and wheel chairs, but mostly they came on foot to the rallying point at Piazza della Repubblica, one of Rome’s largest squares. Despite an overcast sky and unseasonably chilly weather, thousands—more than in prior years—gathered in the late... Read More →

  The charm of the toy kaleidoscope from ancient childhood was seeing order come out of chaos. Holding the cylinder to our eye, we would give it a twist; then free-floating pieces, falling randomly, would be reflected by a series of mirrors, transforming randomness into... Read More →

  Every Thursday morning I have a little cross-cultural experience. The rituals of greeting—taking off my shoes before entering a home, warm exchanges, inquiring about one another’s families—come fairly naturally to me. More difficult is a solicitous style of text messaging, in... Read More →

  A curious path now leads us away from hell and punishment. It skirts nimbly heaven and reward, then ends in the ephemeral cloud of heaven on earth. Its achievements are stupefying. They are nothing less than a repudiation of the afterlife’s heaven and hell plus the... Read More →

  Abortion remains at the center of the pro-life movement, which began as a reaction against efforts to legalize the practice in one country after another across the Western world in the middle of the last century. Those efforts largely succeeded, in the United States and... Read More →