After I published last week’s article about the 60th anniversary of the Barbie doll, my mom called me on my cell phone. I wasn’t available when she called, so she left a message. In the message, she said that she had read my article and that in addition to her concern about her daughters’ self-images being affected by the Barbie doll, she was also concerned that with the introduction of a teenage, sexualized version of a doll, there would never be a return to the days when young girls were encouraged to play with baby dolls.
For the past several years, Georgette and I have done what a lot of families do during the Christmas season — mail a Christmas newsletter and a picture of our family to our relatives and friends. When we started mailing the newsletter, it was less than a page long, but over the years, as our family grew with marriages and grandchildren, the newsletter eventually expanded to four pages of text (two pages, front and back).
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the importance of willingly choosing to accept less freedom in order to become something greater than what we already are. When we choose to consistently give up certain freedoms, we become much more responsible, and we are eventually able to achieve more than we would have ever thought was possible. This is a critical concept that must be understood and practiced by those of us who are serious about becoming what God intended us to be.
Last week, I wrote about how the Mother of God appeared on six occasions during 1917 to three children in Fatima, Portugal, and asked them to warn the people of the world that they needed to pray and amend their lives. In one of her apparitions, the Blessed Mother told the children, “More souls go to hell because of sins of the flesh than for any other reason.”
A lawsuit was recently filed by a Christian-based nonprofit women’s homeless shelter against the City of Anchorage, Alaska, the Anchorage Equal Rights Commission, and the executive director of the commission. According to the lawsuit, the Hope Center, which operates as the Downtown Soup Kitchen, is asking the court to allow it to exclude individuals who were born as biological males, but who now claim to be female. The Hope Center has been in business for more than 30 years.
On Monday, August 20, 2018, a Catholic priest was physically attacked while he was praying in the sacristy of St Michaels Byzantine Catholic Church in Merrillville, Indiana. According to the Merrillville police chief, Joseph Petruch, the attacker grabbed Fr. Basil John Hutsko by the neck and “threw him down on the floor and immediately started slamming his head against the floor, both sides, front and back.”