Questions on Sexuality? Complementarity is the Answer!

Note: This is an adapted portion of a conference session I am presenting this weekend. The session, in its entire context, will be up in the near future. In the beginning, we were created for love, by love, and in love. How do we know this? It says so, right in the beginning of Genesis!…

Teaching the Cardinal Virtues: All Fun, No Fuss

I am currently preparing to speak on two topics at a diocesan conference for the first time, ever! I'm a giddy mess of facts, anecdotes, and random tidbits of far-flung Church teachings that I am organizing as a coherent narrative for my audience. Oh, and one of the two topics is that perennial favorite: Catholic…

Are there Limits to White Privilege?

"Mom, what does 'go drink your race' mean?" This was posed to me by one of my children yesterday after school. Evidently it is one of the many odd statements directed at him by his classmates. As a standalone statement, it's a goofy thing to say, and doesn't make sense. Considering that my eldest child's…

Profound Quotables from BXVI’s “Jesus of Nazareth”

Long on my "need to read" list, I chose volume one of then-Pope Benedict XVI's Jesus of Nazareth for my Lenten reading, and finished it right after Easter began. The book shook me to my Church-nerd core, and I think my head exploded after every third page or so. For instance: offering evidence that Barabas…

Magic in the Mundane

For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return. -Leonardo Da Vinci There is something deeply compelling about the fantastical: the ideas, the possibilities, the inhabitants, of a world that is so like ours yet alien…

The Tree

On Ke'eamoku St. in Honolulu stands a tree. It is a large tree, with large, fanned roots that in and of themselves are impressive. I am always awed by this tree, and fascinated by its shape: one side obviously receives the brunt of the elements, and the other flourishes with leafy branches. I came across…

New Theories and Old Traditions

  In the protective recesses of Yale's museum is an ancient fresco fragment. To the average eye it is humble in appearance: the outline of a woman, bending down to what seems like a well. The long-held belief, logically, is that the fresco depicts the Samaritan woman at the Well, from the Gospel of John,…