Lapsed Catholics – Perpetual Adoration

April 3, 2021

A Plantation Hymn for Catholics

Did you know that there’s an old plantation hymn that Catholics traditionally sing in church on Good Friday? The hymn was composed in the 19th century by African American slaves and was first published in 1899 by William Eleazar Barton in his hymnal, Old Plantation Hymns. Here’s the first verse of the hymn:

February 14, 2021

Love, A Criminal & Valentine’s Day

My first jury trial was in 1983, the same year that I started practicing law. I was the attorney for a young woman who had been charged in federal criminal court for embezzling money from a local bank. After that case, I continued to accept criminal defense cases for several years. In one of those cases, I represented a young man who was charged with a serious crime. The evidence against him was overwhelming, and he was found guilty of the crime. At the sentencing hearing, he told the judge that he had discovered God, and he was a changed man. The judge responded to his comment by stating,

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 12, 2019

No Joking Matter

There’s an old joke that could have been told at any time during the past 80 years. The only change that would have had to be made to the joke would be to reference the current technology used by the young man who is featured in the joke. Here’s an updated version of the joke:

June 29, 2019

Bishop Sheen and the Woman He Loved

During the 1980s, I purchased several sets of cassette tapes of talks that had been given by the late Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen. At the time, I had a small battery-operated cassette tape player that I used to listen to tapes while I was shaving and getting ready for work, while I was driving, and while I was getting ready for bed.

June 22, 2019

Another Presidential Slogan Emerges

After former Vice President Joe Biden announced that he was running for president, he said, “We are living through a battle for the soul of this nation.” During a subsequent interview with Good Morning America, in an attempt to mimic Trump, Biden said that his campaign slogan is, “Make America Moral Again.” He then said that his goal is to “make America return to the essence of who we are, the dignity of the country, the dignity of people, and treating our people with dignity.”

May 18, 2019

A Ghostwriter For Online Dating

Her name is Meredith Golden. She’s 43 years old and lives in New York with her husband and two sons. She has a master’s degree in social work from New York University. According to a recent article in The New York Times, Golden is a professional dating app ghostwriter. The article provided the following summary of what services Golden offers to her clients:

February 2, 2019

Stepping onto the Minefield of Excommunication

We know from the teachings of the Catholic Church that angels are pure spirits. They do not have bodies, and they do not depend on any activity or matter for their existence. Every angel is an individual person who will never die. We ordinarily see the word “angel” applied to the pure spirits who remained faithful to God. The angels who did not remain faithful to God are commonly referred to as “devils.”

January 26, 2019

Are Real Catholic Men Toxic?

In last week’s article, The War Against Real Men, I wrote about the marketing video that was recently released by Gillette, which implied that all men are, by nature, mean, evil, and predatory. During the video, the announcer lectured the public about toxic masculinity and the need to eradicate it.