Book review by Victoria Ryan Does divorce devastate children? Will divorce be the downfall of society? Is the Catholic stance against divorce sorely out of touch? These are the questions addressed by Paul Bourget in his novel A Divorce, the story of a French woman thrust into conflict with her second […]
Book Review: Catholics by Brian Moore
Book Review by Victoria Ryan Catholics by Brian (pronounced BREE ann) Moore (1972) is a quick read – a thin book with few characters, simple dialogue, and a straight forward plot. But there is nothing thin, simple, or straight about it. The novel opens with polarity. Location: Muck Island Abbey, […]
I’m With the Pope on Pets
Victoria Ryan is a writer who has done quite a bit when it comes to the critters of the world. CWG presents her op ed here on what is purported to be the latest comments by the Pope. It’s widely reported that the way his remarks on animals and heaven […]
Book Review: The Sin Eater
I picked up the novel The Sin Eater by Alice Thomas Ellis hoping it would be the same story of an old Welsh superstition dramatized on the Rod Serling’s Night Gallery television program. In the 1972 episode, Sins of the Father, a starving peasant boy is made to eat the funereal meal laid upon his father’s […]
What to Do with Stale Bread
My husband buys bread as though our six sons are still at home. Multi-grain. Rye. Hamburger buns. There’s only so much toast, so many sandwiches the two of us can eat in a week. “The birds want their seeds back,” I told him, “so either make a weekly trip to […]
Black Bear of Clermont County
Southwest Ohioans are tracking a black bear that has roamed the region for several weeks now. It likely swam across the Ohio river in a moment of disorientation and police want to get close enough to tranquilize it so they can transport it back to the hills of Kentucky or Tennessee. […]
One last story about spelling tests
One baby boomer afternoon when my best friend and I were in fourth grade—she in the local public school and I in the parish Catholic school—she showed me her weekly spelling test. It had a shiny metallic-looking star and a great big 92% A written across the top. I too had scored […]
It Takes a Village to Spell
A few years back, one of my younger sons came home from elementary school excited about a new spelling program his teacher had introduced. “Teacher said it’s going to make us citizens of the world,” he said. I told him to tell me about it while I drove his older […]
My Neighbor and the “Firsts”
Did you practice either the First Friday or the First Saturday devotions? My mother told me about them—or was it the nuns at St. Peter in Chains Grade School. I don’t know if I actually completed one before I was twenty but I know I tried. As I remember them, […]