Author: Sean McClinch

The Homeschooling Father
In many police departments across the country, the four-to-midnight shift is known colloquially as the “four-to-four.” Get it? You work the first eight and then imbibe until the wee hours of the morning at your (quite often divey) establishment of …

The Liturgy of My Father’s Death
I never did get my father to see his two grandsons serve the old Mass – I’d harbored a vague notion that seeing them up there amidst the “smells and bells” might help bring him back into the fold. When …

It’s Time to Occupy the Churches
This past summer, just before the God of Surprises ordained it be revealed that Grindr users’ location data is accessible to the public, Pope Francis issued something unsurprising to traditional Catholics who didn’t have their heads in the sand – …

2020 Resolution for Church Leaders: Don’t Creep Out Normal People
A mechanically inclined friend of mine once commented that a church in his city looks like an enormous Harley Davidson that was disassembled and dropped in a heap of parts. I’ve seen the place from the outside, and my friend’s …

When Will Catholic TV Characters Embrace Tradition?
Because their ranks are filled with men and women of at least nominal Catholic backgrounds, the police and mob worlds that have supplied Hollywood with so much fodder for its cultural products have also given the industry cause for depicting …

The Fourth Commandment as Applied to Liturgical Abuses
While my parents are well within the Baby Boomer age range, they were not hippies. But if they had been, and if there were extant film footage that depicted them frolicking in mud pits at Woodstock, or holding up “Drop …

Wedding Poinsettias: Beauty, Cancer, & The Cross
“Amen, Amen, I say to you, that you shall lament and weep, but the world shall rejoice; and you shall be made sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy. A woman, when she is in labour, hath sorrow, …