1. This seems to me a challenge to every believer:

A possibility, which has become over the years my guess. Lincoln wanted to be fully Christian, to believe what they believed, feel what they felt, be in the mainstream. Backwoods preachers, his own cool eyes, the casual hypocrisy of others got in his way. 1 https://t.co/ROnML2oy5b — Peggy Noonan (@Peggynoonannyc) February 17, 2019

2. By five doctors: It Is Never Necessary to Intentionally Kill a Fetal Human Being to Save a Woman’s Life: In Support of the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act

3.

I know many foster parents and there is so much suffering and hopelessness in our foster care system. People who take in kids everyone else has forgotten/discarded understand what love is: not sentimentality or self satisfaction but sacrifice that doesn't survive without hope. https://t.co/UWYtb2QJJm — Jennifer A. Frey (@jennfrey) February 17, 2019

4. Actress Rose Byrne, co-star of Instant Family, about foster care and adoption:

Working on this film opened my eyes, my heart, and my mind. I met families who have adopted, parents with biological children and foster children, boys raised in different families. I immediately realised that I was profoundly naive and not very informed about these things. Would I adopt boys without a family? The answer is yes.

(The movie’s DVD release is March 5.)

5.

We often feel self-conscious at Mass. We’re like a circus act. Three kids, two of them with Down syndrome, singing loudly off key, intoning the priest’s parts, talking about Elmo, throwing things, farting, bickering, occasionally bolting for the sanctuary. (Cont) — JD Flynn (@jdflynn) February 17, 2019

(My recent interview with J.D. about adoption and things.)




6. Adoption advocate Malka Groden has a conversation with a young woman who works as a counselor at an orphanage in a Chabad-Lubavitch movement in the Ukraine.

7. Foster-care appreciation in Florida

8. An Illinois store aims to help foster families

9. Marion county in Ohio tries to boost a culture of foster care

10. Michael Gerson on depression and faith

(Reminds me of this book on Catholics and depression. More here.)

11. A thread from Kirsten Powers on humility and silence and the examined life and social media.

1) I have spent the last few weeks in a mostly Twitter free zone to spend time reflecting on what role I may have played in what indisputably has become a dangerously toxic culture. I am not proud of what I have found. — Kirsten Powers (@KirstenPowers) February 18, 2019

12. A former NR-er Brad Miner: How much secular culture can you live with and enjoy, without becoming an unwitting secularist?

13. Today’s Fra Angelico’s fast day. Some samplings of non-worldly art:

14. Pope Francis: Where is your brother?

15. Rod Dreher likens Sohrab Ahmari’s new book to Thomas Merton’s Seven-Storey Mountain.

Over the weekend, I was in a bookstore in Chelsea, Manhattan. In its religion and philosophy section, I may have missed something but the Christian book I found was that one from Merton. It made me think they could wind up adding Sohrab’s to make two!


PLUS:

Sohrab and I will be talking at The Sheen Center in New York next month. Details here.

About a shop window across from The Sheen Center that astounds.

Something I wrote about prayer.

Something I wrote about the heart of a saint (John Vianney, whose incorrupt heart is currently on a tour of the U.S.)