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I consider myself a level-headed person. I try not to judge people because I don’t think I have a right to judge. I am not the one at the gates of heaven deciding who gains entrance. But in this day and age, being nonjudgmental isn’t easy. In fact, it’s a daily struggle. Our... Read More →

The Tokyo March for Life is held every year on “Marine Day,” the third Monday in July. A public holiday in Japan, Marine Day was inaugurated just before the beginning of the Pacific War to commemorate a 19th-century sea voyage by the Meiji Emperor; today the three-day weekend it... Read More →

  It was the twenty-third of May, and I found myself face to face with a small, sticky-sweet-looking red velvet cake. I may have considered the purchase for a few moments; cake isn’t healthy after all. In the end, though, I brought it home, and we had it for dessert. My... Read More →

In the beginning was the idea of a community of Christian believers who would hold and share all goods in common. Biblically described in Acts 2:44-45, this community (in Greek, a koinonia and pronounced “coy-no-knee-ah”) harnessed both the fecund imagination and the fiery zeal... Read More →

One aspect to pro-choice thinking is that it’s not automatically about actual aborting but simply about the concept of choice, and, intellectually, that’s hard to argue with. Indeed, my own feeling is this: Do I want the practice of abortion to cease? Absolutely yes. Do I want... Read More →

Some readers of the Human Life Review might not want to hear what I’m about to say. If you’re a single-issue voter, be able to defend your reasons for taking that approach. If you can’t, think harder about your political philosophy. First, though, acknowledge that a single-issue... Read More →

Time was growing short. Prom was past, finals and graduation would soon be upon us. But when the students had finished A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I threw at them a chapter from George Weigel’s Letters to a Young Catholic. “Meet me at the Cheese,” I said to the girls, and this is... Read More →

It turned out to be open mic comedy night. I’d met a priest I know at a new microbrewery in his parish, and after an enjoyable time and enough beers he went home, while I finished my last one. The comics started after my friend (who had come dressed as a priest) had left, which... Read More →

  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 →