Irreplaceable

I’ll call her Lucinda.  She was 13, a little undersized for her age, and pretty with small, neat features and olive skin.  Her English, like her Spanish, was flawless; she had grown up speaking both every day of her life.  She was from a part of the South Bronx I knew only by precinct.  I [...]

Accuser: Simply The Wrong Word

When the story of former NFL star Lawrence Taylor broke a couple of months ago, I was angry but not surprised to find the victim in the case- a child used in prostitution by a Bronx pimp- referred to as “Taylor’s Accuser.”  Really?  Even when we’re talking about a child, beaten into submission and presented [...]

Failed Adoptive Parent: Watch Your Language

The invective that’s being hurled at Torry Hansen for returning her adopted son to Russia is sad, but mostly richly deserved.  Cooler heads and kinder people than I am will reasonably resist a rush to judgment, of course.  Caring for a child who has been raised in an institution, in a remarkably different culture, can’t [...]

Holy Week and the Nonsense Continues

It continues from the Church and its defenders, desperately trying to alienate further multitudes.  And it continues from anti-Catholics and the anti-religious who want the institution brought to its knees, some justified because of personal betrayal but many out of sheer, gleeful contempt.

Ross Douthat, a conservative columnist for the New York Times, blames the crisis, [...]

Let The Little Children Come To Me

“Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.’”  Matthew 19:14 (NIV).

This lovely, simple sentiment is relevant to me again, after receiving it like a gift from my mother decades ago, because of the actions of my Church yet again.  [...]