This Site (My Site) Is Under the Patronage and Protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary
January 5, 2009 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
My thanks go out to Nancy at her Traditional Motherhood blog for finding and posting this glorious icon of Our Lady!
Talk to Your Daughter Before the Beauty Industry Does
January 5, 2009 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
A New Year's Message From the Religion of Peace
January 5, 2009 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
Worth watching all the way through. And listen closely to what they’re saying:
How Atheism Is Being Sold to Your Children
January 1, 2009 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
David Kupelian, author of the best-selling The Marketing of Evil, offers a meaty analysis of how militant atheism is gaining ground — lots of ground — across the United States, particularly in our schools and universities.
“Thus, the pathological fanaticism and hair-trigger violence exhibited by brainwashed jihadists around the world today are easily associated by atheists with all religions, especially when they call to mind abuses committed in past centuries — say, the Inquisition or the Salem witch trials – in the name of Christianity.
“Another major, if more long-term, factor contributing to the popularity of atheist books, Prager notes, is the ‘secular indoctrination of a generation,’ thanks to our de facto atheistic public school system:
“‘Unless one receives a strong religious grounding in a religious school and/or religious home, the average young person in the Western world is immersed in a secular cocoon. From elementary school through graduate school, only one way of looking at the world – the secular — is presented.
“Finally, observes Prager, Christianity and Judaism have, with some notable exceptions, failed to effectively counter the ever-rising tide of atheistic secularism in the Western world. Pointing out that ‘it is virtually impossible to distinguish between a liberal Christian or Jew and a liberal secularist,’ he notes that all three ‘regard the human fetus as morally worthless; regard the man-woman definition of marriage as a form of bigotry; and come close to holding pacifist beliefs, to cite but a few examples.’
Lessons Learned in 2008
December 31, 2008 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
I wish I had thought to write about this, but Elizabeth Foss has already done it, and more gracefully, insightfully, and interestingly than I could have. She’s coming at this from the perspective of a wife and mother, so her insights should be particularly relevant to you ladies, but I still found a lot there for my own personal reflection as a man. This is worth sharing with your network of friends and followers.
Funny, Yes, But Also (Sometimes) True
December 30, 2008 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
10 Municipal Bankruptcies in Coming Next Year?
December 30, 2008 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
From the “how bad will it get?” file, comes this recent story from Bloomberg.com about the likelihood of a slew of cities and counties, especially in my home state of California (we’re expats living in Ohio now), going belly up. It’s already happened (e.g., Vallejo & Orange County), and what I worry about is the potential domino effect that can bring a lot of other things crashing down when a cascade of bankruptcies picks up momentum.
The Pornification of Our Generation
December 30, 2008 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
My compliments to Matthew Archbold at Creative Minority Report for articulately verbalizing something my wife and I have groused about for a long time:
“Now let me ask a weird hypothetical. If I showed up at the Mall wearing only briefs and say my wife showed up in a minuscule bra and panties we’d likely be dragged from the premises and arrested. And rightly so, especially if you’ve seen me in briefs. But no matter what, it’s bad, right? So why is it OK for some of these stores to have huge window displays of essentially naked people. I mean, are these store owners out of their minds. Walking by Abercrombie or Victoria’s Secret is essentially a walking tour of porn for children. Hey kids step on up and peer inside the sick twisted mind of adulthood where we view others as vessels of flesh waiting to be boarded and devoured. . . .” (read more)
Yet Another Reason Why I Love Technology
December 30, 2008 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
“Lectures in Dominican History,” given in to Dominican seminarians the 1980s by Father John Hinnebusch, O.P., are now available in a complete collection at i-Tunes. Check it out! (Because, for some reason, there is no permalink embedded on the blog I’m sending you to, be sure to scroll down to the post titled “Dominican History Podcast” to access the stuff I’m talking about.
A Lesson in Joy: The Death of a Young Catholic Wife and Mother
December 30, 2008 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
Although I never met Emilie Lemmons, a writer for The Catholic Spirit newspaper (Archdiocese of St. Paul and Mineapolis), I saw her work regularly, and I was shocked and saddened to learn of her death on Christmas Eve from lung cancer. She was just 40.
Immediately, I became angry. How on earth can a person with stage 4 cancer that is progressively getting worse feel joyous, I thought. My resentment seethed, and I sat like a hard stone all through Mass.
When the intentions mentioned those who are ill, I identified myself immediately and felt like such an outsider — just like the homeless people and other people on the fringes with whom I was lumped in the same intention. I felt miles away from normal, and it was hard to accept.
I’ve been like this for a few weeks now, ever since I was hospitalized for a week in November for a pulmonary embolism and fluid build-up in my lungs, ever since a CT scan found even more tumors growing there.
It’s hard to cope when I’m so angry, depressed and hopeless — yet somehow it feels fitting in this dark season of Advent.
In these weeks, we watch and wait, lighting candles that progressively light the way to Christmas Day. In my own life, when I feel so plunged in darkness, I watch and wait as I contemplate what those candles might illuminate. . . .
Sometimes I see myself in the description of people who fight toward a specific outcome and are “haunted by the specter of failure and disappointment.” It’s the mother in me. I rage against the possibility that I might die and leave my children motherless, my husband a widower. Even though the medical odds are against me, and my rational mind knows I could die, it is hard for me to accept death as an outcome.
What if I just let go of that? What if I trust that even if I die tomorrow or next month or next year, things will somehow work out? What if I allow myself to put the outcome in God’s hands and just live intensely in the present, absorbing and em bracing life as it happens? It’s not indifference or admitting defeat; it’s seeing the bigger picture. . . . (read more)
