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Word on Fire |
Excerpted from Brandon Vogt’s book, RETURN: How to Draw Your Child Back to the Church
In our daily prayers, let us call out to one of the greatest pastors in the history of the Church, St. John Vianney, the patron saint of parish priests. The Curé d’Ars had one all-consuming desire: to help his parishioners become holy.
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When I was going through school, the devil was presented to us as a myth, a literary device, a symbolic manner of signaling the presence of evil in the world. I will admit to internalizing this view and largely losing my sense of the devil as a real spiritual person.
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Often we envision donating our organs after we are dead, but we can also choose to become an organ donor while we are alive if we share part of our liver or donate one of our kidneys.
The proposal to give one of our two kidneys away, though, does raise some ethical and safety concerns. There can be long-term risks for the donor. Donating a kidney, moreover, would not be therapeutic for us —only for someone else — and in fact, might slightly increase our own risk for experiencing renal failure in the future.
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Often we envision donating our organs after we are dead, but we can also choose to become an organ donor while we are alive if we share part of our liver or donate one of our kidneys.
The proposal to give one of our two kidneys away, though, does raise some ethical and safety concerns. There can be long-term risks for the donor. Donating a kidney, moreover, would not be therapeutic for us —only for someone else — and in fact, might slightly increase our own risk for experiencing renal failure in the future.
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On July 25, 1968 — in the midst of the “sexual revolution” which aggressively promoted premarital sex, pornography, homosexual activity, and artificial contraception — Pope Paul VI with the courage of a prophet gave the Catholic Church and world an entirely different message.
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On July 25, 1968 — in the midst of the “sexual revolution” which aggressively promoted premarital sex, pornography, homosexual activity, and artificial contraception — Pope Paul VI with the courage of a prophet gave the Catholic Church and world an entirely different message.
My wife and I recently celebrated our 25-year wedding anniversary and wanted to plan a special vacation. After talking about a variety of options, we landed on visiting a few national parks.
We thought that a trip out west to Yellowstone and the Tetons would be the perfect get-away. We spent a lot of time laying out a two-week itinerary to include rest stops, B&Bs, tourist attractions, and peaceful hiking in the mountains. Everything was going as planned, but on the morning of day two, that all changed.
We hit a deer on the road. Unfortunately, I didn’t respond fast enough when that deer jumped onto the highway. It was a sad ending for the deer and my vehicle.
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I recently granted an interview to the National Catholic Reporter concerning the upcoming Synod on Young People, the Faith, and Vocational Discernment, to which I was elected a delegate.
We discussed a number of topics, including the rise of the “nones,” the purpose of the Synod, and creative ways of listening to the concerns of young people.
This is the third and last article in a series leading up to Catholic School Informational Sunday on August 9.
Why do Catholic schools exist? When you look at this from a student’s view, there are two clear goals: 1) College and 2) Heaven. While we hope that students realize these goals in this order, Heaven is clearly the more important of the two.
“Daddy’s home!” my 10-year-old son sang out as he heard the garage door open.
His siblings cheered and danced toward the door as it opened to reveal their very tired, but smiling, daddy after a hard day’s work.
“Give him time to rest,” I whispered into my son’s ear. He nodded but simply could not contain the excitement of sharing with his daddy the events of the day and what he still wanted to do.
