You have probably heard the saying "Don't burn your bridges." This small snippet of wisdom is meant to teach us to keep all of our options open in case we need to retreat back to a place of safety. For example we may want to return to an old career after a new career doesn't work out, so we depart from our current job keeping everything intact in c...

It seems that in the mind of many Christian men today, the ideas of humility and heroism are mutually exclusive. Meekness and humility are praised highly, as indeed they should be, but magnanimity and the virtues of soldiers are more or less swept under the rug. This is a great tragedy of our time. For, as Longfellow puts it in A Psalm of Life, ...

If you clicked on this article because you thought you had stumbled onto a list of “silver bullet” ideas for easily evangelizing your friends, co-workers, and family members, I am sorry to say you are going to be disappointed. When it comes to living and sharing our Catholic faith, there is no “easy” way to do it. The martyrs who died for t...

Unless you have been hidden away in a cave for the last year, you probably do not need me to tell you that our body politic is facing a serious crisis. The political events of the last year have been, in large part, disheartening. The reasons for this are many and varied; notable among them is a decline in religious faith. Of great concern also is ...

These are tough days to be a voting Catholic. It was easier when we could pull the “intrinsically evil” card, and feel morally justified because we had avoided voting for anyone who supported an action which -- as the American Bishops put it in their document Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship -- is "always opposed to the authentic go...

Most often when an American thinks of the Founding Fathers names such as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, or George Washington are the first to be considered. And indeed, they are the true Founders of the American Republic in which the Constitution and ideals of endowed rights of the individual coming from God were written into law. However, in...

This article has been submitted by guest contributor, Mr. Sean Mitchell. John Adams famously said that “our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”  If we wish to to have any substantial hope for our nation’s future, we must believe these words with deep convict...

Mr. Sean Mitchell “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it” (Prov 22:6).  These words from the Holy Scriptures are especially meaningful to me, as mine and my wife’s first child, Elijah John Mitchell, was born in January of this year.  I thus find it appropriate that I should reflect on the...

In the late spring of 1924, George Mallory ascended the North Face of Mount Everest, attempting to be the first man to stand at the top of the world.  Whether he reached the summit is not known, because he never returned to tell us. Before departing on the expedition, a reporter asked Mallory a rather elementary question:  “Why do you want t...

There are few things more difficult for the climber than attempting to answer the question of why he climbs. Yet there are few things more intuitive for him than the need to do so. He remains a paradox to himself. What follows is an attempt to resolve the seeming contradiction of his existence. A climb is a response. It is an action in response...