Note: This reflection on single life was previously published by the Union of Catholic Asian News on March 25, 2025. If you are Catholic, you might recognize that the three Church designated vocational callings are religious life, marriage, and singlehood....
Valentine’s Day arrives each year with predictable enthusiasm. Shops turn red, restaurants fill, and love is packaged into cards, flowers, and carefully planned moments. For a brief time, it feels as though love is everywhere. Then the day passes, the...
I’m an amateur artist. I love color, and I’ve always appreciated talented artists and their work. Sadly, I’m not a talented artist myself, nor have I been formally trained. The reason I paint is that my spiritual director, in the...
Editor’s Note: A priest asked Deacon McManaman to write this article as something to give to couples who come to seek baptism for their child, but who are not married in the Church, to help them understand Catholic teaching on...
On December 18, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) published the Declaration Fiducia Supplicans on the Pastoral Meaning of Blessings. This document is the most recent addition to an ongoing debate within the Catholic Church regarding blessings...
There is often a double standard in many Catholic spaces in how gay and straight Catholics are perceived to engage in sexual sin. Many commentators seem to treat being or identifying as gay as being inherently unchaste or as presenting...
When I was in college, the leader of a young adult group told me something like, “While the particular vocation a person is called to is the best vocation for them, the priesthood and consecrated vocations are objectively greater.” At...
In the second installment of this series on Stephanie Gordon’s book, Ask Your Husband: A Catholic Guide to Femininity, published in February by TAN Books, I discussed how Gordon’s guidance is potentially harmful to her readers’ wellbeing. Today I’d like...
A reflection on the readings for Sunday, October 3, 2021 — The Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time There are two important aspects of Church teaching that relate to today’s readings. The first is the beauty and indissolubility of marriage, and the second...
Although Catholics in the United States frequently discuss issues related to human sexuality, our catechesis on marriage and sex very rarely treats these as the complex mysteries that they are. Instead, we tend to unintentionally promote an unrealistic vision of...
Unpacking Vatican II Dei Verbum chapter 3, part 7 In my previous post, I explained why Dei Verbum says the Bible must be interpreted in its historical context. I focused on scientific issues, but the implications are much broader. Christians...
The Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith’s response to the question of whether the Church has the power to bless same-sex unions, and the reaction that ensued upon its publication, is a moment of reckoning for Catholics. Although the...
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