This article was originally published in Sword & Spade magazine. by John Horvat II A  friend of mine works at a health clinic in a medium-sized town in the Midwest. He told me about a peculiar kind of patient that comes in for treatment. They are young and old, rich and poor. They are men and women. It is safe to say they represent a cro...

To the residents and staff of Joseph House, Tallahassee, Florida A lynching took place in Maysville, Kentucky in 1889. Over a thousand people traveled to witness the murder of a man condemned without a trial. Prior to burning him alive, men chained him to a tree and slashed his skin with knives. It was but one of eleven lynchings in Kentucky that ...

This article was published in Sword & Spade magazine. by Ben Broussard The Center for Bioethics and Culture has recently produced a documentary about sperm donation. “Anonymous Father’s Day” tells all the facts regarding the practice and highlights personal stories told by donor-conceived children. In the course of an hour, the scop...

This article was originally published in Hearth&Field magazine, and was adapted from Jimmy Mitchell's forthcoming book Let Beauty Speak. None of us will quickly forget what it felt like as churches closed, the economy shut down, and entire countries went into self-quarantine amidst the initial outbreak of the coronavirus...

How have you been feeling about the news lately? It seems like the majority of headlines this year have spelled out disaster in countless ways. On the Internet, there is no shortage of 2020-is-the-worst memes that, for many, might land just a little too close to home. Everywhere, there are reminders that things don’t seem so great nowadays. This ...

“Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.” – Jesus Most people would not smack books out the hands of a cripple at the library. Most people won’t cuss out the girl at McDonald's because they got an apple pie instead of a pumpkin pie. Most people quietly tolerate Facebook posts th...

Halloween has its roots in All-Hallow’s Eve and so is rooted in Christianity, at least in name. Despite this, a writer on liturgical traditions, Fr. Francis Weiser, has pointed out that many of the traditions of Halloween are not rooted in Christianity but in heathen practices from druid times. Whether Halloween was inspired by paganism of not, i...

Catholics have been accused of focusing on one issue for the election: abortion. Life, however, not only serves as the foundation of the common good, it also is completely interwoven with its other essential elements. Protecting life is bound up with justice as a whole and the securing of every other right and duty. On the eve of the election, look...

Psalm 55 speaks of crying out to God at morning, noon, and night and Catholics traditionally mark these three key periods of the day by praying the Angelus at six, noon, and six. Sanctifying the key periods of the day began in the early Church by reciting the Our Father three times a day (see the Catechism §2767), which expanded with the prayi...

Neil Postman aptly described our society as a Technopoly, or what we could also refer to as technocracy – a society fundamentally shaped and ruled by technology. Technology has played a central role civilization from the beginning, but a shift has occurred as technology has passed beyond normal human proportions. Rather than assisting us to p...