If the baby was born alive and they waited for the priest to make it over to the hospital, they ran the risk that the baby might die before the priest arrived to perform the sacrament of baptism.
Death and Dying
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
The gift and challenge of love in Kirstin Valdez Quade’s ‘The Five Wounds’
‘The Five Wounds’ causes the reader pain. Call it compassion. Call it empathy. Call it the Christian experience of being heart-stretched.
Posted inFaith, Faith in Focus
I lost my baby and my father. But not my trust in God.
My parents instilled in me the lesson that no matter what life threw at me, God would always be there to guide me.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
The afterlife is having a moment. ‘Beyond’ will help Christians and nonbelievers alike discuss what lies beyond the grave.
With her new book ‘Beyond,’ Catherine Wolff mixes well-written impressionistic summaries of various religious perspectives with personal anecdotes to answer the age-old question of what lies beyond the grave.
Posted inFaith, Faith in Focus
A Mexican novena for the dead is transformed for the digital age by Covid-19
In Latin American immigrant communities, lay faith leaders adapt a ritual of mourning that builds community amid isolation.
Posted inFaith, Faith in Focus
The Assumption of Mary brought me peace after my mother’s death
I am told that at the last moment, my mother sat up, looked towards heaven and fell back to her pillow. I chose to believe Mary came to her, took her and is with her still.
Posted inFaith, News
The Catholic Church opposes composting human remains — but it’s becoming legal in more states
Washington, Colorado and Oregon are now among the U.S. states that have legalized the process of converting human bodies into soil, a procedure the Catholic Church said fails to show “respect for the body of the deceased.”
Posted inFaith, Podcasts
I lost a boyfriend, a dog and my grandfather—all in the span of two months. Here’s how I learned to grieve.
My grief did not unfold neatly or in any predictable way as the “stages of grief” might suggest.
Posted inFaith, Faith in Focus
My father’s death was his final act of love
My dad had always been a God-like figure to me.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Kazuo Ishiguro’s ‘Klara and the Sun’ is a haunting tale of love, loss and…a robot.
The robotic narrator of Kazuo Ishiguro’s new novel takes us into a dystopian U.S. future.