Columnist.
The gratitude of a mother will leave you speechless.
"They taught me what it really means to be a human person, to love and let the barriers down," director Randall Wright explains about his experience making "Summer in the Forest," his new documentary.
"Somehow, I didn't think preparing for motherhood would entail looking for used RVs online," Emily Stimpson Chapman recently wrote in a Facebook post. "When do I get to the shopping for diaper bags and strollers part?"
An unforced error from a Vatican communications office the other day drove me a little something like crazy. The nature of the unforced error is that it is wholly unnecessary and ridiculously distracting. And so it was.
"It may be hard to imagine, but when the Pill debuted in 1960, it was bigger than God," a millennial writes in the April issue of Cosmopolitan, in a piece titled "Totally Over the Pill."
Do you want to see what gratitude looks like? Then David Scotton's your man.
Just days before Billy Graham died, I found myself at Mass at the tomb of Pope John XXIII, in St. Peter's Basilica.
There was a woman who came up to me while I was about to caffeinate at the McDonald's here on Borgo Pio. I had seen her before, from a block or two away. She wears duct-taped garbage bags either as her shoes or over her shoes.
I left the country the other day, and the talk on Facebook ever since I logged on across the pond seems to be the new algorithms that limit the number of people you see on your newsfeed. But, in all due respect to all the people I am missing, I can handle what I've been seeing most: nonstop images, videos and commentaries on the new Gerber baby, Lucas Warren. He has Down syndrome, and with his smiling face, he says more about life and love and hope than any words ever put together.
"Until birth, you guys. Until BIRTH. Where's the 'science' supporting that??" That's how one young commentator responded to an NBC news "health" piece highlighting the tweets of an abortion provider at the University of California San Francisco.
Cain and Abel and the Tower of Babel — far from the most inspiring of Biblical stories. And so, they are the ones that jump out at you upon reading Pope Francis' recent message on "fake news" and our communications today.
"We shall overcome," Cardinal Timothy Michael Dolan said, invoking not only the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. but the Gospel for which he lived and died.
By the time you read this column, there will no doubt be some new President Donald Trump tweet or utterance — on record or leaked — that will have the media and country aghast at the demons exposed by it.
A family member — I think one of James Joseph Hanson's sisters — held up six-month old baby Lucas for all the packed church to see. They were standing right in front of the baby Jesus in the creche scene on the altar, still out during Christmas season. The church, St. Anthony of Padua, a bulwark of this small community about 100 miles from New York City, was filled with poinsettias. Baby Lucas was a physical testimony to faith, endurance and love.
Why are we so focused on the executive, the national, the celebrity? Our national politics is important, but it's not everything.
Upon news of a Christmas variety show benefiting Planned Parenthood, my National Review colleague Kevin Williamson tweeted: "You're getting the story all wrong ... It was the grave that was empty, not the manger."
Jen Gann describes herself as "a mother whose biggest mistake was becoming one." She describes her son who has "blue eyes, curly blond hair, slightly crooked teeth. He's daring, most of the time. He's afraid of doctors and anyone in a flapping coat." He also has cystic fibrosis, and Gann writes movingly of her conflicted feelings for her son in the cover story of a recent New York magazine.
It was Thursday morning at St. Patrick's Cathedral, on the feast day of St. Andrew the Apostle. Cardinal Dolan was preaching at the 7 a.m. Mass about how once Andrew encountered Jesus, he knew he had found what he was looking for and had to bring others to Him.
"It seems undeniable at this point that Hugh Hefner's death broke open some sort of seal." My former colleague at National Review magazine, Ian Tuttle, tweeted this the other day, referring to the avalanche of accusations and confessions of men behaving badly in some of the highest echelons of power that has occurred since the death of the Playboy founder.
The first thing I noticed when I recently flew into Texas is the flags at half-staff. The second thing I noticed is churches with open doors.
