Marriage, Faith, and Family: How JD Vance Became the Father He Never Had

A successful, Ivy-league educated dad reflected that when his first son was born, he realized something surprising that terrified him: “I knew exactly how to help my kid get into a good college but was woefully underprepared to make him a good man.” His own family background was dysfunctional to an extreme, which contributed to his malaise. Just what is it that makes someone a good father? This was a question this man found himself mulling over at length. He knew he needed help, but not the sort that a professional could offer. But where to find it?

Read More

Love on a Tuesday Afternoon

Love thrives in the ordinary, not the extraordinary
Relationships don’t live or die from the major events that happen in our lives. They thrive or dissolve on a series of Tuesday afternoons.

I like to talk to my clients about Tuesdays, because they are the days that no one remembers.

We remember the outliers: the proposal, the wedding, the birth of a child, the special vacations. We also remember the devastating argument when someone mentioned breaking up, the day our partner wasn’t there for us when we desperately needed them, or the moment we wondered if our relationship would survive. Those moments matter. They shape us. They deserve our attention.

Read More

New Dire Fertility Prospects for the United States and Real Hope for a Fix

Sustained declining fertility violates God’s first command to humanity to not only be fruitful and have children, but to actually multiply – to have more children than the couple themselves. A demographic truism is that a population that is not moderately multiplying is slowly dying. That is the present fact of global fertility.

Leading UPenn demographer Jesús Fernández-Villaverde has explained, “Humanity has entered a new era of rapid population decline.” He adds, “If we are unable to address our fertility crisis, the US will face an existential economic crisis driven by a steep decline in fertility rates – one that could have an impact measured in the quadrillions of dollars.”

Read More

Protection of the Holy Eucharist, Canon Law, and the Virginia Amendments: Why Should Catholics Care?

This November, Virginians will be presented with two monumental questions on their voter ballots that directly impact the respect for human life and family within the commonwealth. The first question asks Virginians if they want abortion to be enshrined as a “right” in the state’s constitution. The second question asks Virginians if they want to redefine marriage in Virginia’s constitution from the current language that states that marriage is a union between one man and one woman to a “right” between two consenting adults, regardless of sex and gender. What is proposed in both amendments is radical and troubling for a multitude of reasons, but most especially for Catholics.

Read More

Marriage and the Pursuit of Happiness

Few in the world today would consider marriage an important schoolhouse for learning virtue, but it certainly is. And the character-shaping nature of marriage leads to greater overall life happiness, especially when husband and wife have a serious faith. This is amply demonstrated in findings from the General Social Survey, the gold standard of sociological population research.

Read More
Loading