Spirit & Life Blog

The Fight for Life is More Urgent After the Election

By Fr. Shenan J. Boquet / November 11, 2024 /

Last Tuesday, President Donald J. Trump won his bid to become the 47th President of the United States, and the GOP is set to control the two Houses of Congress.  This election cycle brought both some victories and tragic losses for life and family. Thankfully, people in Florida, Nebraska, and South Dakota rejected ballot initiatives…

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Voting Catholic in 2024

By Fr. Shenan J. Boquet / November 4, 2024 /

“The people are called on to take an always larger part in the public life of the nation. This participation brings with it grave responsibilities. Hence the necessity for the faithful to have clear, solid, precise knowledge of their duties in the moral and religious domain with respect to their exercise of their civil rights,…

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Killing the Vulnerable, Sick, and Helpless

By Fr. Shenan J. Boquet / October 28, 2024 /

“So-called ‘compassionate’ euthanasia holds that it is better to die than to suffer, and that it would be compassionate to help a patient to die by means of euthanasia or assisted suicide. In reality, human compassion consists not in causing death, but in embracing the sick, in supporting them in their difficulties, in offering them…

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Hopelessness and the Fear of Welcoming Children

By Fr. Shenan J. Boquet / October 21, 2024 /

For decades now, pro-life activists like Human Life International’s founder Fr. Paul Marx have warned that the real threat facing the world isn’t overpopulation, but rather underpopulation.  In making this claim, such prophetic voices were going against the grain, to put it mildly. Their views were drowned out by a cacophony of voices proclaiming imminent…

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True Mercy in the Final Moments of Life

By Fr. Shenan J. Boquet / October 14, 2024 /

“Even when not motivated by a selfish refusal to be burdened with the life of someone who is suffering, euthanasia must be called a false mercy, and indeed a disturbing ‘perversion’ of mercy. True ‘compassion’ leads to sharing another’s pain; it does not kill the person whose suffering we cannot bear.”  -Pope St. John Paul…

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We Must Be in the World, and Yet Not of It

By Fr. Shenan J. Boquet / October 7, 2024 /

“We should give no more than a side glance at all that happens in the world, but the eyes of our soul are to be focused right ahead; for our whole attention must be fixed on those realities which constitute our goal.”  -From a homily on the Gospels by Pope St. Gregory the Great, no.…

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Children Are Not Products

By Fr. Shenan J. Boquet / September 30, 2024 /

An article in The Atlantic a few days ago had quite the eye-catching headline: “The Anti-Abortion Activists Who Want to Stop People from Having Kids.”  Now, as someone who has worked in the pro-life movement for decades, I can’t say that I’ve ever come across activists who are especially interested in preventing couples from having…

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We Can Be Beacons of Light

By Fr. Shenan J. Boquet / September 23, 2024 /

“Therefore, we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us…” Hebrews 12:1 It is no use denying the reality that the challenges to living…

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The Truth About Overpopulation

By Fr. Shenan J. Boquet / September 16, 2024 /

“It is necessary to go back to seeing the family as the sanctuary of life. The family is indeed sacred: it is the place in which life – the gift of God – can be properly welcomed and protected against the many attacks to which it is exposed, and can develop in accordance with what…

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Cass Report: A Victory for Children With Gender Dysphoria

By Fr. Shenan J. Boquet / September 9, 2024 /

“Any technological intervention that does not accord with the fundamental order of the human person as a unity of body and soul, including the sexual difference inscribed in the body, ultimately does not help but, rather, harms the human person.”   Doctrinal Note on the Moral Limits to Technological Manipulation of the Human Body, United States Catholic…

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