Association Of Catholic Bloggers

There are a lot of things I appreciate and I am thankful for in this modern age, and my iPhone is one of them.  I've heard complaint that the new instagram pictures popping up on Facebook are "depressing" or "too hipster" or "grainy"~ read: just not clear and clean enough for the well-trained eye.  Honestly, though, when I see perfect pictures of seemingly perfect people, it stresses me out. The "Keep it Real" motto that I held onto when feeling threatened by the beast of perfectionism was like a dolphin swimming at me in a sea full of sharks. I'll instagram to that. ;) It makes me think about the late nineties. Sometime in the late nineties, I started seeing brightly colored bumper stickers with the logo “Life is Good.”  Nothing against the makers of these fine logos, but I remember thinking that in comparison with most of the world's suffering, and even my own small teenage version of strife, the way they struck me was glib: vac...

I remember when my first son was in need of his first haircut.  I took him to a professional stylist and, with 35mm camera in hand, clicked away, literally walking around and around his seat, so that, once developed, the pictures would immortalize that very special day in my life, in his life, in the world, I was sure. By the time my third son was in need of his first haircut, I let my mom have at it and, as it turned out, time did not improve her hair-cutting skills.  My youngest son ended up with the same bangs that I had worn some 30 years earlier — a wavy line of hair jutting out all over the place somewhere between eyebrows and the hairline. Things really do change from the first born to the second and then to the third.  And as that is all the children we were blessed with, I can go no further with my experience but my assumptions would be that by the fifth or sixth child, he or she may very well be performing his or her own first haircut. Now, my oldest is ...

I hesitate to give any more oxygen to Rush Limbaugh and his mean-spirited "entertainment." His three-days-worth of on-air name calling a 30-year-old Georgetown University law student ("slut" "prostitute") is only the latest incarnation of his penchant for making money spouting vulgarities. His remarks are gross and I am delighted he has lost 33 and counting sponsors. Perhaps inadvertently, he has managed to undermine real concerns about the lack of conscience protections for religious institutions in President Obama's health-care mandate. Still, while politicians are taking to the airwaves to condemn Mr. Limbaugh's remarks,  in places as humble and as important as high school cafeterias, the name-calling of women continues. During lunch duty in a suburban high school cafeteria, I regularly hear words like "slut" "bitch" and "whore" flow from the mouths of seemingly sweet adolescent girls. And I wonder...