Devout Catholics – Perpetual Adoration

January 16, 2021

A Tornado is at our Nation’s Doorstep

When I was growing up, it didn’t happen very often, but every time there was a tornado warning, my dad would go outside and look toward the horizon where the tornado was supposed to be coming from. He wanted to see with his own eyes whether a funnel cloud was coming toward our house. There were a couple of occasions when everyone in our family went downstairs and stayed in the basement until it was safe to come up.

January 9, 2021

Stupid People and Foul Language on Facebook

When I was 11 years old, every Friday my dad made me write a personal letter to a woman he hardly knew. The woman’s name was Miss Miller, and she was my sixth-grade teacher at St. Mark Catholic Grade School. I don’t remember if it was her idea or his idea. All I remember is that after she called him on the phone a few times to complain about my behavior in class, they developed a scheme in which I was forced to write the following letter on a blank sheet of paper every week:

December 26, 2020

A New Year’s Resolution That Can Transform Your Life

I want to share a concept and a technique that when fully embraced and implemented can significantly change the direction of your life and help you build the self-confidence and immunity to the criticism that you need to accomplish more for yourself and your family.

December 20, 2020

A Child, His Mother, and an Iron Lung

He was born to die on a cross. That was his destiny. The “word made flesh” came to Earth as an infant whose mother was a poor, humble virgin. He was born on Christmas day and was murdered 33 years later.

November 7, 2020

Friends, Cheating, and Trump

A couple of years ago, one of my relatives — I’ll call her Jane — posted a message on Facebook that ordered anyone who was a friend of hers who was also a supporter of President Trump to immediately unfriend her. She made it clear that any supporter of Trump was not a friend of hers and she didn’t want to have anything to do with them.

October 24, 2020

Help From Heaven on a Home Project

I recently worked on a project at home that required a certain tool that I did not have. I searched through three of my old toolboxes and could not find the tool. I hate it when I don’t have the right tools to do a job.

October 3, 2020

How to Handle a Defiant Child

In last week’s article, The Defiant Catholic Child, I wrote that in every large devout Catholic family there is at least one child who is difficult to handle and demands more attention than the other children. In my article, I called this type of child “the defiant Catholic child” and limited my discussion to children who grow up in normal, devout Catholic two-parent homes.

September 26, 2020

The Defiant Catholic Child

I’ve written before about how I grew up in a family of 17 children — nine boys and eight girls — and how my wife and I raised seven children of our own. In every large family, there is at least one defiant child who is difficult to handle and demands more attention than the other children.

September 12, 2020

A New Insight on Suffering

Last month, while my 10-year-old granddaughter, Grace Hercik, was playing outside, she fell and broke her arm. Two days before she broke her arm, when my family was together for a birthday party, I told Grace and my other grandchildren about how I broke my leg in 1967. I was the same age as Grace when I broke my leg.