Chastity

November 18, 2017

Thank God I’m a Catholic Boy

In March 1975, during my senior year in high school, country music singer John Denver released a new single record with the song, Thank God I’m a Country Boy. That year, only six songs made it to the top of both the Billboard Hot Country Singles Charts and the Billboard Hot 100.

September 30, 2017

The Death of the Playboy

The year was 1970. I was in the eighth grade at St. Mark’s school in Peoria. I remember the day like it was yesterday. One of my classmates — I’ll call him Paul — brought a Polaroid picture to school to show to his friends. Paul and I were the same age — 13 years old. The person in the picture was the girlfriend of Paul’s older brother. She and Paul’s brother were in high school. She was a student at Academy of Our Lady and Paul’s brother was a student at Spalding Institute.

January 28, 2017

Her Smile Could Light Up The World

LOS ANGELES - OCTOBER 10: Dick Van Dyke, Mary Tyler Moore for The Dick Van Dyke Show. Image dated October 10, 1962. Hollywood, CA. (Photo by CBS via Getty Images)

LOS ANGELES – OCTOBER 10: Dick Van Dyke, Mary Tyler Moore for The Dick Van Dyke Show. Image dated October 10, 1962. Hollywood, CA. (Photo by CBS via Getty Images)

September 3, 2016

Forced to Testify in a Deposition

DepositionOne of my early mentors — I’ll call him James — was a well-known trial lawyer in Peoria. I met James in January 1983, the same month that I opened my law practice. He started out by giving me research and writing projects. Before long, I was covering his court hearings and helping him prepare cases for trial.

May 28, 2016

We Live In A Bizarre World

Restroom CartoonEarlier this month, the U. S. Department of Justice (DOJ) sent a letter to Pat McCrory, the governor of North Carolina. In the letter, the DOJ threatened Governor McCrory and gave him a deadline to confirm that North Carolina will not enforce a recent law that was passed by the North Carolina Legislature. The letter accused North Carolina and the governor of “engaging in a pattern or practice of discrimination against transgender state employees.”

December 19, 2015

Would the Mother of God Ever Wear Jeans?

JeansI’ve written before about the first time I went Christmas shopping alone with my mom. It was in 1969, when I was 12 years old. At that time, my parents had 13 children — seven boys and six girls — all of whom were living at home.

October 24, 2015

The Sin That Infected Our Entire Society

Sin PatentLast week I wrote about how the Governor of California, Jerry Brown, had signed a bill into law that legalized doctor-assisted suicide. When I found out about the new law, I thought about the deep-rooted thistles I had to dig up from the pasture next to my parents’ home when I was a teenager.

June 6, 2015

John Wayne vs. Bruce Jenner

John WayneEvery so often, my wife tells me that I’m living in the wrong times. Because of my old-fashioned beliefs, she claims that I would have been better off living during the 1800s. Whenever she comments about this, I remind her that I spent the better part of my early years at my grandfather’s (Tom Williams’s) house, and since he was born in 1898, that’s probably where I picked up a lot of my beliefs.

September 26, 2013

Weak: “having little physical power or ability”

For some unknown reason, during the past couple of weeks I’ve been thinking a lot about the 10 principal virtues of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  As a reminder, the 10 principal virtues are (1) her profound humility, (2) her lively faith, (3) her blind obedience, (4) her continual mental prayer, (5) her mortification in all things, (6) her surpassing purity, (7) her ardent charity, (8) her heroic patience, (9) her angelic sweetness, and (10) her divine wisdom.