Jeanie Hannaman

By Randy Hain, Integrated Catholic Life - When I envision a fortress, it invokes thoughts of strength, security and protection.  The image is comforting, particularly when used in relation to one’s faith.  I was speaking with someone I met recently about my faith and learned that he, too, was Catholic.  After hearing my story, he explained to me the role faith played in his life.  He described it as a fortress in that it made him feel safe and served as the foundation of his life.

By Dr. Donald DeMarco, Catholic Exchange - People look forward to the summer when being lazy becomes respectable.  Or they may prefer the term, “indolent,” which seems to raise laziness to a higher level.  Nonetheless, no one is proud of being lazy. ... St. Thomas Aquinas treated laziness under the term acedia.  It is “sorrow over . . . an internal and divine good [in us]” (ST II-II, q. 35, a, 2).  It is, for Aquinas, a sin against charity since it fails to accept “friendship with God” and “the spiritual life that dwells within us.”  The Angelic Doctor in this instance is referring to spiritual laziness, the most pernicious kind.

By Jakub Grygiel, First Things - Over the last few weeks, Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has publicized several examples of wasted taxpayer money, including funds devoted to foreign aid. In many cases, this aid was just cash thrown away in distant lands (for example, funding “net-zero emissions goals” in Vietnam). But at worst it undermined the stability of states we are supposed to help, spreading abroad the latest iterations of woke ideology, from DEI directives to an ever-mutating spectacle of sexual preferences. This woke imperialism was the perfect example of stupidity, as defined by economic historian Carlo Cipolla: It brought losses to others as well as to us.