Commentaries

Go ahead and celebrate, but not too much

When Maureen Pratt was asked to "celebrate" lupus, the disabling disease she's been living with for 15 years, or to celebrate celiac disease or vitamins or pets, she pondered what it means to truly celebrate.

Listen up: We’re in life as a team

It's not easy being a teenager, writes Erick Rommel. It's also not easy being a preteen, toddler, or senior citizen. Life is not easy. So it's a good thing we belong to a never-ending stream of teams.

Dinner with young family comes with a big helping of noise

In their Marriage Matters column, Deacon Paul and Helen McBlain offer coping skills to two young parents sitting down for dinner with typical, but rammy, children.

If priest is infirm, shouldn’t deacon distribute the Communion host?

Father Ken Doyle answers a reader who wants to know why a deacon is distributing the Precious Blood but not the host, in absence of the priest. Father Doyle also digs into a pile of religious items in the mail.

Prince and his unique journey toward God

Prince wasn't afraid to talk about God or religion in his music, writes Father John Catoir. While the aging priest admits he didn't notice Prince's creativity, he could not miss the outpouring of love for the artist.

Motherhood, fatherhood at heart of America’s founding principles

Narberth parishioner Ellen Giangiordano is incensed over a sperm donation ad she saw on a local train. The severing of a child’s biological roots, she writes, is tyrannical.

Say it isn’t so: Was his namesake saint a myth?

It's true, Father Ken Doyle informs a reader, that St. George was a real Roman soldier and martyr. But that story of him slaying dragons, not so much. See our priest columnist's weekly Q&A.

Papal document shows mercy as medicine on life’s battlefields    

Steven Bozza, director of archdiocesan Office for Life and Family, sees people’s suffering in certain family situations -- as well as the truth of church teaching, given tenderly in love for families.

With a farewell comes a trove of lessons learned

As a Generation X columnist, Karen Osborne has written for teens for 14 years. That column comes to an end now, but her advice for Millenials to look at the world with bright, new ideas will carry on.

Watch out for an ‘agenda’ in quote marks

John Garvey can't help but notice, in reports on Southern states' recent legislation, how headlines treat "religious liberty" as though it is a "so-called" liberty. He fears there may be more at work than punctuation.