Learning to speak and write clearly is essential to success in all the disciplines that young people are flocking to these days.

I was a senior in high school, and I was failing calculus. I had to be. I hadn’t understood a word the teacher had said for months, and I couldn’t recall passing a single quiz.

Rather than “Thou shalt not” as its battle cry, the church can offer a genuinely positive vision of “the joy of love,” a holistic understanding of sex and intimacy for a society increasingly despairing about both.

Need peace, need to think, need a great prayer spot? Go to a beach! It doesn’t even have to be summer to benefit from the calm it provides. Bring your own bucket and shovel … God will supply the tranquility.

Our younger son was afraid he wouldn’t find a book he wanted to buy. Then he spotted a book on a display and made a beeline for it.

I told my young Jesuit conversation partners that they ought to follow the prompt of our Jesuit pope and go not just to the economic margins but to the “existential margins”—that is to say, to those who have lost the faith, lost any contact with God, who have not heard the Good News.

There’s no sign that says, “Jesus,” with an arrow.

Father Doyle fields questions about the Blessed Virgin Mary’s virginity and offering Mass for non-Catholics.

You never want to see a business close, but seeing a local, family-owned business shut its doors after many years in the community is especially sad. So I was really sorry when I saw that Greetings & Readings is set to close later this month.

We had so many cousins to enjoy over the Christmas break. There were gifts and food and football games.