by TOBET | Jan 26, 2023 | TOBET Blog, by Patrick Gordon
We are a safety-obsessed culture. One need only recall the world’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic to see just how much people are willing to sacrifice for the cause of bodily health. Or consider how the phrase “safety is our top priority” is the standard jargon we...
by TOBET | Sep 28, 2022 | TOBET Blog, by Patrick Gordon
September 29 is the Feast of the Archangels, but this day has also traditionally been called “Michaelmas,” and has a long history of religious and harvest celebrations connected to it (start looking up those Goose recipes!). The traditional story of St. Michael as the...
by TOBET | Aug 24, 2022 | TOBET Blog, by Patrick Gordon
If you’ve been a Catholic for longer than five minutes, you probably take for granted terms like the “spiritual life,” or “spirituality.” A close friend might have asked you recently: “How has your spiritual life been going?” And perhaps you have a “spiritual...
by TOBET | Jun 20, 2022 | by Patrick Gordon, TOBET Blog
Catholics often think of St. Joseph as the obvious exemplar for fatherhood. However, like many Christian mysteries that we take too easily for granted, I think we often overlook how counterintuitive it is to place St. Joseph as the model of fatherhood. First, the...
by Patrick Gordon | May 30, 2022 | TOBET Blog, by Patrick Gordon
Our recent celebration of Mother’s Day and the Church’s dedication to Mary during May stand in a certain paradoxical contrast to the current media obsession regarding Roe v. Wade. That is, the contemporary public discourse seems to be almost exclusively rooted in a...
by Patrick Gordon | Mar 7, 2022 | TOBET Blog, by Patrick Gordon
Lent is back. As Catholics, we are accustomed during this season to hear various exhortations to further conversion in our lives, especially through practicing the three traditional Lenten practices of prayer, asceticism, and almsgiving. It seems to me that most of us...