Keeping a list of the gifts we have received can be a good way to develop our sense of gratitude and to sharpen our ability to recognize the hidden benefits in things that have not come giftwrapped. — “Thanks for Everything!” F.R. Duplantier, 1987.

Bob's mailbox sign, a Bridgeton landmark, Thanksgiving 2008

My life, my wife, my family, good health, unemployment — those are the things I’m grateful for. Yes, even unemployment, which gives me extra time to appreciate the other four things, and to reflect on the most important gift of all: the promise of salvation.

The so-called “stalled pedophile case,” blame for which has been laid at the feet of then-Cardinal Ratzinger, had nothing to do with pedophilia and everything to do with strengthening marriage and the priesthood. – Joseph Fessio, S.J.

It’s all connected: Sexual liberation is an attack on the Church and the family, and on the dignity of the individual. The attackers are now blaming the defender for the effects of their attack.

The Manhattan Declaration

A Call of Christian Conscience

Christians, when they have lived up to the highest ideals of their faith, have defended the weak and vulnerable and worked tirelessly to protect and strengthen vital institutions of civil society, beginning with the family.

We are Orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical Christians who have united at this hour to reaffirm fundamental truths about justice and the common good, and to call upon our fellow citizens, believers and non-believers alike, to join us in defending them. These truths are:

1. the sanctity of human life
2. the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife
3. the rights of conscience and religious liberty.

Inasmuch as these truths are foundational to human dignity and the well-being of society, they are inviolable and non-negotiable. Because they are increasingly under assault from powerful forces in our culture, we are compelled today to speak out forcefully in their defense, and to commit ourselves to honoring them fully no matter what pressures are brought upon us and our institutions to abandon or compromise them. We make this commitment not as partisans of any political group but as followers of Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Lord, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

Sign the declaration!

Louis was only 53 in the picture above. He just made 70 yesterday.

Louis and his wife, Iris, are two of our best friends in the whole world. They’re the godparents of our third daughter, Isabel.

I first met Iris back in the early 1980s when we worked together at an advertising agency in New Orleans. Louis was a deputy chief of police at the time. They’ve always treated us like family, which was especially nice since our own families often didn’t. Their three “kids” are about our age, and great people, too.

When we left Wisconsin in 1991, we headed back to New Orleans, but wound up in New Iberia — in the heart of Cajun country, about three hours west of New Orleans — for a few months. One day, Louis and Iris drove over from New Orleans and popped in on us unexpectedly. We didn’t have much to offer them in the way of entertainment, so we invited them to take a spin on the rope swing I’d hung from a giant oak tree in our backyard. It was a barge-mooring rope I’d found behind the Mississippi River levee in Jefferson Parish, with a Volkswagen hubcap for a seat (very comfy!); and it hung far from the trunk on a branch 20-feet high, so it made a full circle and provided quite a ride. It’s hard to believe it was 17 years ago. A fond memory.

Today more than ever is needed the testimony and public commitment of all the baptized to reaffirm the dignity and the unique and irreplaceable value of the family founded on the marriage of a man and a woman and open to life. . . . — Pope Benedict XVI

The text of the Pope’s video address to the Sixth World Meeting of Families is available at zenit.org.

Westerners have been sold the myth of a world orphan crisis. We are told that millions of children are waiting for their “forever families” to rescue them from lives of abandonment and abuse. But many of the infants and toddlers being adopted by Western parents today are not orphans at all. — E.J. Graff, Foreign Policy

This is truly tragic: American couples unwittingly finance the theft of foreign children from their parents, while American babies that could be adopted are aborted instead. “There are simply not enough healthy, adoptable infants to meet Western demand,” says Graff, but this is not true. The number of babies aborted in this country every year far exceeds the demand for adoption, and there are agencies that help unwed mothers forego abortion in favor of adoption. Why can’t the media glamourize a far superior option?

Keeping a list of the gifts we have received can be a good way to develop our sense of gratitude and to sharpen our ability to recognize the hidden benefits in things that have not come giftwrapped. — “Thanks for Everything!” F.R. Duplantier, 1987.

Bob's mailbox sign, a Bridgeton landmark, Thanksgiving 2008

My life, my wife, my family, good health, unemployment — those are the things I’m grateful for. Yes, even unemployment, which gives me extra time to appreciate the other four things, and to reflect on the most important gift of all: the promise of salvation.