Ginny’s Gems

by Father Charles C. Fiore Every Catholic knows the primacy of love in the Christian life. Jesus’ words (Mt. 19:19 and 22:37) about love of God and love of one’s ...

Unless you do penance you will likewise perish… (Lk. 13:3) Inquisitive young people have often asked, “What is the purpose of doing penance in Lent?” Some have been told that ...

In A Wonder Book and The Tanglewood Tales Hawthorne retells some of the famous classical myths in an imaginative and charming style that captures the universality and moral wisdom of ...

One of the greatest of Catholic poets, Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J., is best known for his appreciation of the beauty, variety, and individuality (“this-ness”) of God’s creation. As a poet ...

In ancient times, the Egyptians, lacking an advanced alphabet, used a combination of pictures to express their ideas. That might amuse us in this day and age, but it seems ...

“It’s knowing what to do with things that counts.”—Robert Frost, “At Woodward’s Gardens” In Frost’s poem, “At Woodward’s Gardens,” a boy visiting a zoo carries a magnifying glass. From his ...

There’s no question about it! Discipline is the hot topic in Catholic home schooling circles today. I receive calls about discipline problems every week. I believe that worry about discipline ...

by Rev. Robert Skeris The Gospel of the Eight Beatitudes is surely one of the best beloved passages in all of Holy Writ, and deservedly so. For the fact is ...

Sancho Panza, the comical squire of the illustrious Don Quixote who vowed to restore knight-errantry into a debased world and recover the Golden Age, once told his master, “An ass ...

My children and I were recently speaking about when and how I first began home schooling. The textbook answer is that I started home schooling in the sixth grade, but ...

Several years ago, His Excellency Cardinal Jose Sanchez was the featured speaker at the Catholic Home Education conference in Manassas, Virginia. He had traveled from Rome in his position as ...

“It is not enough that your actions are good. You must take care that they appear so.” In Henry Fielding’s novel Tom Jones, the wise Squire Allworthy offers this advice ...

Moms instinctively know how to help their children. It has been said that no thermometer is as accurate as a mother’s hand. There is a lot of truth to that saying.

I have been honored and privileged over the past few years to speak at homeschool conferences across the United States and Canada. The key element in all of my talks, and the theme that binds them together, is that Western Civilization is a specifically Christian inheritance that it is the duty of parents to pass on to their children.

One of the most famous statements of wisdom comes from Dr. Johnson, the eminent man of letters of the eighteenth century England who wrote Dictionary of the English Language, Lives ...

As I have written in prior articles, my thirteen-year-old son Demetrius has long had aspirations to be a marine biologist. And as a parent who seeks to encourage his children ...

Every other day, it seems some new gadget hits the market promising to solve every problem that ever existed. While we all know the hype usually far exceeds reality, some ...

These articles will cite famous advice, wise proverbs, and prudent counsel as they appear in the classics of literature, in the words of famous characters from the good and great ...

A basketball coach had a meeting with a player who was not performing well and asked him, “What is the problem with you? Is it ignorance or apathy?” The player ...

With Ash Wednesday fast approaching, many home schooling families are revisiting their annual question: “What should we give up for Lent?” While there are many worthwhile answers to the question, ...