Bravest Thing (He Ever Did)

Picture a quiet and peaceful Sunday evening. It would involve watching the end of the football game, a snack and story with the kids, and then saying our prayers and getting them into bed. Such an evening would inevitably involve me laying down with my four year old and settling him down to sleep. He would snuggle in close, probably chat too much, and drift off with heavy and contented breaths. The reality for that Sunday evening was that he was taken to the hospital once again to deal with an impetigo which, we were convinced, was not actually impetigo. Our suspicions were confirmed, and the young lad was given a large dose of antibiotics. We were told to bring him to the hospital every eight hours for more medicine. However, by 1:30pm the next afternoon his condition had deteriorated, and his sick body was filled with a painful rash. He could hardly move. We were stunned. Now life in small town Saskatchewan can be wonderful, but a drawback is that it is nearly impossible to attra...

"Peace, man." The existential cry of the hippy lives on in the Catholic Church. While prolife, male, white, Catholic teenagers from Covington are subject to virulent unicorn-esque condemnations from the liberals of America, a large portion of Catholics are guilty of having joined in on the mob attack. Some Catholics have since retreated, perhaps grasping at some natural reality that black is not white, up not down, and receiving death threats because of one's prolife, male, white Catholicity is not actually criminal, at least not this time. Yet rather than take the next logical step of actually defending the Covington teens, many Catholics are simply content to offer a "peace, man", and let those prolifers fend for themselves. For instance, at Bishop Barron's ingratiating website we encounter the typical hippy Catholic mantra. Writer Elizabeth Scalia opines that we must do better at being peaceful, and that we should just appreciate the anthem: "Le...

"His name is John...   ...Paul." With that our second child was entrusted to the benevolent intercession of the only Pope my wife and I knew for the majority of our, then young, lives. Exactly one month later this same Pope was canonized to the heavenly hall of fame. An estimated four million pilgrims arrived in Rome for the canonization ceremony. I will be so bold as to proclaim that these pilgrims did not come simply to honor John XXIII's canonization (the second miracle perhaps being that he was in fact canonized). Pope Saint John Paul II was enshrined as a saint in heaven, and the rest is history. Or so I thought. History takes time in revealing itself.  But it is best to start at the beginning. Pope John Paul II was a celebrity Pope much admired by Catholics such as myself. His personal holiness was inspiring. Knowing that the Pope said three rosaries daily, confessed most frequently, had a tender...