According to the Swiss painter Paul Klee, the artist is like the trunk of a tree, drawing up through its roots in the unknown soil below what will bring life to the branches above: leaves, flowers and fruit, a life of which he or she knows nothing. That strikes me as a pretty apt description of the

In my previous column (11/26), I recommended Francis Beckwiths book Defending Life for serious arguments in defense of human life at its earliest stage. Another powerful defense, more accessible and less technical, is forthcoming in Embryo, by Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen, to be publis

Did you know that when I hug you, Mama, its not just me whos hugging you? God is hugging you too. In a sentence, our four-year-old theologian summed up the mystery of the Incarnation. The context for her declaration was not a Hallmark moment, nor were the circumstances like those of the birth of Chr

Looking for alternative models of catechesis.

In the beginning, God ran the grains of the embryonic earth through creating fingers and dreamed a dream: that every one of these grains might become, in Gods love and power, a being capable of reflecting something of the mystery from which it springs; that each grain might become what it is destine

Come play with us under the blanket, Mama.” I don’t have to be asked twice. I set aside my work, civilian casualty figures for the Iraq war, and join the kids under the tent they’ve made of my grandmother’s afghan. “Tell us again about your grandma,” they ask, and