Essay
Getting Advent right
Advent begins December 1st this year, making it almost the shortest Advent one can have. If I had to offer one piece of advice to Catholics, it’s getting Advent right. Advent is a time of […]
Articles by John M. Grondelski, Ph.D.
The Dispatch
Ancient Egyptians, modern Catholics, and cremation
Last November, my wife and I traveled to Boston to visit our son. While there, he took us to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, an extraordinarily rich institution still—surprisingly—not overtaken by extreme wokeness. The […]
The Dispatch
What is “the Heroic Act of Charity”? An introduction and primer
In a previous essay, I wrote about why prayer for the dead is a necessity—not just a “nice thing to do” during November. For all our prayers and good deeds to be spiritually efficacious we […]
The Dispatch
The 4B movement is a cult of death
Many people watching the post-election meltdown of the Left on social media view it with some measure of Schadenfreude and I suspect the average American dismisses it as silly. In some sense, it is silly. […]
Essay
Why pray for the dead?
Catholics observe November as the month of prayer for the faithful departed. But November begins with All Saints Day. What, if anything, connects these two? Well, they are connected. We perhaps need to widen our […]
The Dispatch
To Murder a Priest: Remembering Blessed Jerzy Popiełuszko
Forty years have passed since October 19, 1984, when Polish priest and Solidarity chaplain Jerzy Popiełuszko was kidnapped and murdered by agents of the Communist secret police in Poland. The then-37-year-old priest was abducted from […]
The Dispatch
How two 19th-century Blesseds truly read the “signs of the times”
Two Blesseds appear on national liturgical calendars this week: Blessed Marie-Rose Durocher this past Sunday, October 6, in Canada and Blessed Angela Truszkowska on Thursday, October 10, in Poland. Both women deserve our attention. Both […]
The Dispatch
“Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me…”
In today’s Gospel, Jesus takes a little child and, counterposing him to his childish disciples, tells them: “Whoever receives a little child like this receives me and receives not me but Him who sent me…” […]
The Dispatch
Fear, trembling, and the “Sunday scaries”
“Sunday scaries” refers to the “unique anxiousness that Sunday nights bring.” It’s the awareness—sometimes creeping, sometimes sudden—that another “manic Monday” is imminent. (At this time of year, it’s often accompanied by a related syndrome, the […]
The Dispatch
The ambivalence and dilemmas of “acceptance parenting”
Earlier this year, I reviewed Tim Carney’s new book Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be. Carney’s thesis is that the movers and shakers of our culture […]