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I can still hear her voice, all these years later: A coworker at the local newspaper where I was working was angry — very angry — and launched into an explosive tirade with one word.

If you’ve ever watched a football game on television, you’ve no doubt seen a banner in the stands proclaiming the message “John 3:16.”

Near the end of the beloved Charles Dickens’ classic, “A Christmas Carol,” the cold heart of Ebenezer Scrooge is transformed and he exclaims, “I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.”

Part one of this article elaborated on how attacks to religious freedom take many forms, sometimes violent sometimes subtle. We also saw how our...

Recently there was a case of a woman who petitioned the state of Illinois to be able to wear a colander on her head in her drivers’ license photo as part of her religious beliefs. The woman was a Pastafarian, a member of the faux Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster invented out of the imagination of atheist activists.

There is an enduring myth that African-American Catholics were largely absent from the freedom struggles of the 1950s and 1960s, which resulted in the legal demise of Jim Crow segregation.

There’s an old adage that one shouldn’t discuss religion or politics in polite company. The same could be said about science and religion. There seems to be no end to the clashes between the creationists and scientists over the existence of God as manifested in the history of the universe.

Prompted by my father, I am inclined to consider what I suggest is a more Catholic view of a nation where we are free AND morally obliged and eager to earn our keep by giving others something they need.

“Es preciso redescubrir el mensaje de la Encíclica Humanae Vitae del Beato Pablo VI, la cual hace hincapié en la necesidad de respetar la dignidad de la persona en la valoración moral de los métodos de regulación de la natalidad”. Con estas palabras en su exhortación apostólica Amoris Laetitia, el Papa Francisco nos recuerda que su propia enseñanza sobre el matrimonio y la familia se basa en la enseñanza de sus predecesores papales; en este caso en particular cuando se trata de métodos anticonceptivos y el don de la nueva vida humana, llama la atención a la voz profética del Beato Pablo VI.

As a child I grew up in a house without air-conditioning, a small, three-bedroom ranch with few windows.