I used to spend a lot more time in my car each day than I do now. When we lived further from my office, I would spend an hour in the morning and as much as two hours in the afternoon commuting back and forth to work, but now we’re just 15 minutes from work [...]
Catholic in Boston after the Marathon
This is a piece I was asked to submit to the Catholic Herald newspaper in London after the Marathon bombings from the perspective of a Catholic in Boston. This is the original I submitted. It was published in print in the April 26, 2013, edition. The events of the past week in Boston are both [...]
Through Bella’s eyes
I love seeing the world through Isabella’s eyes. I try to take a walk each morning and occasionally one of the kids gets up with me and wants to go. This morning it was Isabella’s turn and finally she’s old enough and tall enough that she doesn’t slow me down too much and has the [...]
Catholics: You need to use your words
Pope Francis celebrated Mass in Rome last week for the employees of the Institute for Religious Works. Following his pattern, he didn’t focus directly on issues related to the “Vatican Bank” that have been in the news, but instead approached broader themes of Catholic discipleship. In particular, he preached, in his very direct manner, that [...]
Don’t mess with Boston
Dennis Lehane, author of gritty Boston-based novels-made-into-movies like “Gone Baby Gone” and “Mystic River”, writes in the New York Times today that whoever perpetrated the Marathon bombing on Monday has messed with the wrong city. Now, Lehane points out that this isn’t puffed-up bravado, but an acknowledgement that Boston, as a city, doesn’t get pushed [...]
Lottery and Cigarettes
I’m amazed every time I go into the convenience store for milk how much people spend on lottery tickets and cigarettes. In Massachusetts, a pack of cigarettes is somewhere around $9 and people are smoking a pack a day. (Or more by the smell of some of the people I encounter in those stores. Back [...]
Boston Marathon bombing
As far as I know, everyone I know is safe and accounted for following the Boston Marathon bombings. It’s surreal, but it’s also too familiar, this show following what is undoubtedly a terrorist attack. Not just 9/11 but Oklahoma City too. I can’t stop watching (or as is the case these days, reading, because I [...]
Why I don’t like comic books
I have to come clean. I don’t like comic books. I tried. I really did, but I had to give up. Let’s start at the beginning. When I was a kid, I loved comic books. What boy didn’t? I liked Superman and Archie and Richie Rich. I wasn’t a superhero-snob. I loved all kinds of [...]
Why not to take 5 small children to Easter Vigil, or How to reaffirm priests in their celibacy
Happy Easter! We ventured out last night to the Easter Vigil with all five kids and while it wasn’t a complete disaster, it wasn’t exactly smooth sailing. We’ve made it a habit in the past few years to go to both Christmas Midnight Mass and Easter Vigil with the kids. I was dubious the first [...]
A Mother Who Weeps: Our Lady in Bouguereau’s Pieta
At the start of this Holy Week, I’ve been contemplating two different pieces of religious art by the same artist, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, a 19th-century neo-classicist that some associate mainly with portraiture and paintings of naked ladies, but he’s also painted some fairly well-known religious art. He was a devout Catholic, who especially in his latter [...]
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