I haven’t blogged all week, and it’s because we are about to begin renovating our kitchen.

Reports from around the country show that all of us, whether Mexican Americans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Central or South Americans or Caribbean peoples, feel less safe, whether our roots in lands now in the U.S. go back, as mine, 325 years, or whether we are recent immigrants.

Father Doyle fields questions about Friday abstinence for vegans and what parents might do when their children want a nonchurch wedding.

The heroes of Dachau’s priest-barracks found a way to keep sacramental life alive, in full fidelity to the Church’s tradition. Is that impossible in Amazonia? Or elsewhere?

The Orioles suffered a terrible loss on Saturday evening, but we figured you can only go up from there. And who wants to be a fair-weather fan? So, we headed to Camden Yards on Sunday afternoon to cheer them on.

We need to be a better nation, too, and, with arms open like Jesus on the cross, be there to offer hope and healing and hospitality to our neighbors, our family in need.

There is nothing as intimidating as the blank page.

I could definitely be a better mother. I fall short in many ways. But I choose not to feel guilty about letting our children have screen time.

You can almost taste the end of summer. I can no longer complain about the ridiculously early back-to-school sales, even though I have yet to buy a single No. 2 pencil or accordion file.

We are Americans living in the top nation – a country to which immigrants have been flocking for several centuries, a country with too much, a country which wastes an unfathomable 50% of its food, cluelessly ruins much of its resources, and packages products using excessive amounts of plastic, styrofoam and cardboard.