File this one under, “Thinking Out Loud.” As years go 2011 has by all measures been a deeply challenging year for me. In the tragedy department, this year has been one that makes the law of averages work, making up for the many years of relatively smooth sailing. A recap and an analysis seem to [...]
Archive for December, 2011
Praising God Through Adversity
Posted in Uncategorized on December 31, 2011 | 9 Comments »
Coming Home’s Top Ten for 2011
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Top 10 on December 31, 2011 | 1 Comment »
To say that it’s been quite a year would be an understatement. Looking back over the year, I’ve looked at Coming Home’s statistics to see what the top ten blog posts were in terms of traffic. Almost all were articles dealing with priest’s travails: Father Corapi and Father Pavone. Rather than leaving it at that, [...]
From Pretty to Slavery
Posted in Dignity, tagged Death of Pretty, national catholic register, olivia newton john, Pat Archbold on December 30, 2011 | 12 Comments »
Pat Archbold at the National Catholic Register writes on the Death of Pretty: This post is intended as a lament of sorts, a lament for something in the culture that is dying and may never been seen again. Pretty, pretty is dying. People will define pretty differently. For the purposes of this piece, I define [...]
A Room at the Inn
Posted in Christmas, tagged Belmont Abbey College, Good Counsel Homes, Room at the Inn on December 24, 2011 | 5 Comments »
9:30 P.M. on Christmas Eve, and all is quiet in the house as the children are getting ready for bed. It’s the best part of Christmas for me, the quiet part of the Eve. Time to sit, and pray, and meditate. No room at the inn. That’s been gnawing at me for months. A young [...]
Major Conscience Protections Victory: UMDNJ Nurses Don’t Have to Perform Abortions
Posted in Dignity, tagged Alliance Defense Fund, Bioethics Defense Fund, Conscience Protections, Dorinda Bordlee, Matt Bowman, Natural Law, Nkolas Nikas, Nuremberg, Nurses, UMDNJ on December 23, 2011 | 3 Comments »
A major victory yesterday for conscience protections. From LifeSite News: Thu Dec 22 7:53 PM EST NEWARK, New Jersey, December 22, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In a triumph for conscience protections, a New Jersey hospital agreed that nurses will not have to assist with abortions if doing so would violate their moral or religious views. Twelve [...]
My Christmas Card to the Coming Home Family
Posted in Christmas on December 21, 2011 | 5 Comments »
“And when we give each other Christmas gifts in His name, let us remember that He has given us the sun and the moon and the stars, and the earth with its forests and mountains and oceans–and all that lives and move upon them. He has given us all green things and everything that blossoms [...]
Black Abortion and the NAACP: From Middle Passage to Endgame
Posted in Abortion, Black History Month on December 20, 2011 | 6 Comments »
Word today from LifeNews.com that the NAACP is opposed to the Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act of 2011, which criminalizes abortion on the grounds of race or sex. Incredible. With Planned Parenthood operating 78% of their “clinics” in inner-city neighborhoods, and African Americans constituting 12% of the nation but having 37% [...]
Incest Principal: ‘No Children Complained’
Posted in Dignity, tagged Incest, Pep Rally, Rosemount High, Wallersheim on December 18, 2011 | 13 Comments »
Further thoughts on the incest-as-entertainment at Rosemount High that I blogged on earlier. The AP has a report on the incident with some pretty disturbing quotes from Principal Wallersheim, whose staff planned the event: “This activity was intended to be fun, but some found it offensive,” he wrote. “We apologize to anyone who was offended [...]
Abortion, IVF, and School-Sponsored Incest
Posted in Biomedical Ethics, Dignity, tagged Incest, Pep Rally, Rosemount High School, Wollersheim on December 18, 2011 | 24 Comments »
Please bear with me on this one. It comes with a warning. This is gut-wrenching and nauseating, but needs to be aired. After having worked for seven years with teen prostitutes at Covenant House in the 1980′s, I honestly thought that I had seen it all. It’s tough to live with the memories of all [...]
Christopher Hitchens: Free At Last
Posted in Dignity, tagged anthropological perspectives, christian apologists, Christopher Hitchens, human civilization, navy commander, raid on dieppe, totalitarian belief on December 16, 2011 | 5 Comments »
Yesterday, Christopher Hitchens entered into eternity at age 62. The celebrated atheist succumbed to pneumonia, which was a complication associated with his esophageal cancer. If Hitchens did great harm by his atheism, it is also certainly true that his atheism was the rhetorical wet stone used by a generation of Christian apologists. Among the positions [...]
Coming Home is Two Years Old Today
Posted in Uncategorized on December 13, 2011 | 5 Comments »
It was two years ago today that I began this undertaking with great trepidation and an even greater assurance that nobody would ever discover the blog. Jill Stanek, who knew better, along with her moderators Bethany and Carla really encouraged me to step out of the boat. Jill gave Coming Home a beautiful write-up two [...]
Gaudete Sunday: Blessed Are the Brokenhearted
Posted in Advent on December 9, 2011 | 4 Comments »
There is a culture among the poorest of the poor, something I came to know almost thirty years ago working with homeless youth in Times Square, NY. There is a care and concern that many street people show for one another. So often we think of them as “other”. “They’re not like us,” so many [...]
Sebelius’ Sensible Decision
Posted in Abortion, Birth Control, Dignity, tagged Family Health International, FDA, NPR, Plan B, Sebelius on December 9, 2011 | 4 Comments »
The recent overruling of the FDA decision to sell Plan B over the counter (OTC) to children as young as eleven years of age has engendered no small amount of outrage by proponents of the FDA plan, and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has come in for severe criticism from women’s health and advocacy groups. Setting [...]
Newt Clears the Air
Posted in Abortion, Dignity on December 6, 2011 | 13 Comments »
This evening, I received the following communication from Newt Gingrich’s communications director, which I believe clears the air and provides Mr. Gingrich with a way forward: Hi Gerard, Dan forwarded me your email. To be clear, Newt believes that human life begins at conception, that is, at the moment of fertilization. Does this help clarify? [...]
The Gingrich Campaign’s Reply
Posted in Abortion, Dignity, tagged Life, Newt Gingrich on December 5, 2011 | 13 Comments »
Last week, presidential candidate Newt Gingrich made the following statement in an interview with Jake Tapper: “I think that if you take a position when a woman has fertilized egg and that’s been successfully implanted that now you’re dealing with life,” he added. “Because otherwise you’re going to open up an extraordinary range of very [...]
