I’ve gotten really bad about updating this, though I was never that good. But I still am writing! Here are some more recent pieces that have been published elsewhere:

Truth and Charity Forum:

Mozilla’s CEO Resigns; Catholics Should Be Worried

The media storm swirls around Brendan Eich’s April 3 resignation as CEO from Mozilla, the maker of the Firefox browser. Eich is a talented programmer who invented the JavaScript programming language for the internet and who co-founded the Mozilla company. After fewer than two weeks as the company’s head, he was forced to resign over Silicon Valley furor regarding a $1,000 donation he made back in 2008 to California’s Proposition 8 law, which defined marriage as the union of one man and one woman. To repeat, he was fired for holding unpopular— now socially forbidden—views….

The labels “bigot” and “homophobe” are so effective today that most people support gay marriage out of passion and a genuine desire to be moral and on the “right side of history.” Supporting traditional marriage is lumped in with racism and sexism, though unfairly so.

The Pre-Persons” Saw The Horrors Of Abortion in 1974

So often the prevailing cultural message is that abortion is unanimously supported by cultural leaders, politicians, and the well-educated in general. But don’t include Philip K. Dick on that list. His name may be unfamiliar, but he is the acclaimed science fiction writer whose stories inspired the movies: “Blade Runner,” “Total Recall,” “Minority Report,” “A Scanner Darkly,” “The Adjustment Bureau” and many others…..

Moving into cultural commentary, Dick points to a freezing and hardening of women that abortion brings about. One day, Cynthia Best, the central wife and mother of the story, walks in and declares to her husband Ian: “Let’s have an abortion!…Wouldn’t that be neat?….it’s the in thing now, to have an abortion. Look, what do we have? A kid. We have Walter. Every time someone comes over to visit and sees him, I know they’re wondering, ‘Where did you screw up?’

Pope Francis, Classically Catholic on Abortion

And much to the chagrin of some who hoped or feared otherwise, he hasn’t changed anything that can not change, and he never will. Francis’s statements regarding abortion present a clear picture of the importance and unchanging character of its qualification as a mortal sin, while in the process leaving plenty of space for lay and clerical activists to take up the charge against abortion.

This defence of unborn life is closely linked to the defence of each and every other human right. It involves the conviction that a human being is always sacred and inviolable, in any situation and at every stage of development (EG 213).

Francis beautifully expresses sanctity and value of human life at its most vulnerable stage: in utero. There is no more classically Catholic stance than this.

Four Bad Reasons Not to Have Children

from the Encourage and Teach Blog of the Diocese of Arlington

Bad Reason#4: It’s selfish to have children (at all) because of the sacrifices that one’s colleagues will have to make for moms (and sometimes dads) when they don’t hold their own in the office if a child’s needs come up or when one is born.

Saddest of all, this comment belies a real lack of thought about the end or purpose of work as such. As Catholic Social Teaching instructs us, the end of business and economics is to serve the flourishing of man, not the other way around.

“Businesses should be characterized by their capacity to serve the common good of society [which is the development of individuals to attain their highest end, holiness] through the production of goods and services” (Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, para. 338).