When COVID-19 became a worldwide phenomenon, many states, like my native Virginia, closed schools for the remainder of the year and are deliberating on whether or not they will reopen in the fall. This means that parents across the country …
Category: Family
For the Love of Tradition, Don’t Fetishize It
I let out an audible groan when I came across an opinion piece in The New York Times a few weeks ago titled “Christianity Gets Weird.” The accompanying grainy graphic of a pair of praying hands and the label-maker tags …
Families Seek a New Monasticism in the Latin Mass
It wasn’t long after I became a Catholic at the age of eighteen, during my freshman year of college, that I began to discern religious life. I figured that if I was going “in,” I was going all in, and …
Silent Suffering: The Pain of Miscarriage
With all the myriad problems afflicting the Bride of Christ in her human element today, it can be tempting to be caught up with problems about which we can do precious little. It is easy to be consumed with the …
Responding to the Call for the Church to Bless Same-Sex Relationships
This is a question many Catholics (including clergy) are asking, and this topic has contributed to the revealing of an obvious divide among the people of the Church (which is different from the Church as the Spotless Bride of Christ …
The Fifth Prophecy of Humanae Vitae
In his 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI prophesied four serious consequences if contraception became embraced by the culture and the family: infidelity/moral decadence, lost respect for and use of women by their husbands, government’s abuse of power, and …
How to Talk to Children about Liturgical Evils
Recently I received the following email, and since it brought up a topic that I am sure an increasing number of parents have to deal with, I would like to share it and my response. Dear Dr. Kwasniewski, My family …
Today’s Catholic ‘Hard Sayings’: Women Should Work Primarily in the Home
“Women,” writes Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum, “are not suited for certain occupations,” for “a woman is by nature fitted for home-work, and it is that which is best adapted at once to preserve her modesty and to promote the …
‘Have You Thought about Adopting?’ Reflections on Infertility
My wife and I took a cooking class once. We made pasta with two unmarried couples we had never met. I decided not to ask the twenty-something couple if it was their first date. Why put them on the spot? …
‘Children Change Everything’: Prioritizing Family Worship
Children change everything. This is a truth we ponder many times in our lives. First, if we are believing Christians, we celebrate each year the coming of a child – the Child, Emmanuel, God with us, the Word made flesh …