On August 4, 1978, I met my wife for the first time. It was around 5 p.m. on a Friday afternoon and a friend and I had just arrived at a hotel in Indianapolis, Indiana, for a convention that was being sponsored by the Midwest Federation Lebanese Organization.
My friend, Sam Joseph, and I walked into the hotel and Georgette was standing in the lobby visiting with a group of other people. Sam already knew Georgette [...] Read More »
Earlier this year, I handled a case for a 17 year old boy who had been involved in an automobile accident. The accident was not his fault, but the police officer found a reason to give him two traffic tickets. The boy’s mother called my office and scheduled an appointment.
Prior to the accident, her son had been placed on probation in another case. The mother knew that if he was found guilty of one (or [...] Read More »
My son Harry recently turned 30 years old. He’s the oldest of my seven children. When Harry was a young boy, one of his favorite shows was Sesame Street. You remember Sesame Street don’t you? It was a children’s show that had a cast of characters with names like Big Bird, Cookie Monster, Bert and Ernie.
Georgette recently reminded me about how I use to marvel at the success of the show. Sesame Street was created [...] Read More »
Last week I flew to California with Georgette and my daughters to attend the wedding of someone who is very special to us. As you may already know, Georgette and I have 7 children – Harry, Anna, Maria, Laura, Mary Rose, Christine, and Teresa. The wedding was on Saturday, June 18. The groom was my son, Harry, and his bride was Kathryn Neill.
Harry was born 10 months after Georgette and I were married. Our wedding [...] Read More »
The time for sorrow and suffering is over. That’s what you and I will hear when our souls enter into heaven. Can you hear the words being spoken as you enter into the Kingdom? “The time for sorrow and suffering is over.” Can you smell the heavenly scent? Can you feel the soft cushion of the plush green heavenly grass under your bare feet? Can you taste the cool clean sparkling water from the nearby [...] Read More »
In 451 bishops from throughout the Mediterranean traveled to Constantinople for the Council of Chalcedon. At the council Marcian, the emperor of Constantinople, asked the patriarch of Jerusalem if he would provide the emperor with some relics of Mary, the Mother of God. The emperor wanted to enshrine the relics in Constantinople. The patriarch had to explain to the emperor that no such relics existed.
There were no relics because after Mary died, her body was [...] Read More »
One Friday afternoon during my first year in law school (1979), while I was sitting in the law library, a girl who was in one of my classes walked over to me and asked, “What is that book you’re reading?” She had seen the title of the book, The Woman Shall Conquer, and was wondering what it was about.
She quickly lost interest when I explained to her that the book was about the role of [...] Read More »
If you pay any attention to the news, you know that on Friday morning, December 14, a 20-year-old man shot and killed his mother in her home in Newtown, Connecticut, and then drove her car to a local elementary school and murdered six adults and twenty children. He then turned his gun on himself and committed suicide.
Later in the day, Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy said, “Evil visited this community today, and it’s too early to [...] Read More »
You may have seen the recent report describing how Pope Francis made a telephone call to a kiosk in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to cancel his daily newspaper delivery service. The call was made a week after the former cardinal, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, was elected as our new pope. The person who answered the telephone, Daniel Del Regno, is the son of the owner of the kiosk. When he answered the phone, Del Regno heard a [...] Read More »
There was a time when all the Catholic grade schools in the country held an event every May that celebrated the crowning of Mary as Queen of Heaven and Earth. The event included a procession with music, followed by a crown of flowers being placed on the head of a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Among devout Catholics, the month of May has always been known as the month of Mary.
As children, we learned [...] Read More »
I periodically encounter a devout Catholic who is struggling with emotional issues that are causing him or her to experience significant suffering. After a short discussion about what’s troubling the person, I always ask the exact same question: Do you pray your rosary every day? The answer is always ‘no.’ Always.
Immediately after answering ‘no,’ the person usually follows up with a comment admitting that he or she should be praying the rosary but can’t seem [...] Read More »
For some unknown reason, during the past couple of weeks I’ve been thinking a lot about the 10 principal virtues of the Blessed Virgin Mary. As a reminder, the 10 principal virtues are (1) her profound humility, (2) her lively faith, (3) her blind obedience, (4) her continual mental prayer, (5) her mortification in all things, (6) her surpassing purity, (7) her ardent charity, (8) her heroic patience, (9) her angelic sweetness, and (10) her [...] Read More »
One of the top ten movies on my recommendation list for Catholics is The Incredibles. Produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures in November 2004, The Incredibles won two Academy Awards and was the first entirely animated film to win the prestigious Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Performance.
The movie starts with Mr. Incredible, a well-known superhero, getting married to another superhero, Elastigirl. While Mr. Incredible possesses super-human strength, Elastigirl has the [...] Read More »
About 20 years ago, when one of my relatives was going through some tough times, I tried to get him to commit to praying a rosary every day. (For the purpose of this article, I’m going to call him “Jim.”) Over a period of six months, Jim and I met on three separate occasions.
Although there were some legal issues concerning his situation, his primary problem was that his wife had cheated on him and he [...] Read More »
There’s a business on Main Street in downtown Peoria, across the street from the courthouse, called The Nut House. The inside of the business consists of a tiny storeroom that is lined with glass display cases along three sides. Inside the display cases are numerous trays and jars that contain different types of candy and nuts. On top of the display cases and on shelves attached to the walls are decorative jars that are also [...] Read More »
I met my wife, Georgette, on August 4, 1978, a few weeks before starting my senior year in college. We dated for almost two years and we got married on June 15, 1980, a couple of months before I started my second year of law school.
Within a month of our marriage, Georgette became pregnant with our first child, Harry. Early in her pregnancy, Georgette was hospitalized and was told by her doctor that there was [...] Read More »
About 20 years ago, I was hired to represent a young man in his mid-20s who had been charged with the crime of arson. He had set fire to the house of a man who had “stolen” his girlfriend away from him. (For the purpose of this article, I’m going to call my client “James.”)
The crime was committed while James was drunk. He had not planned on burning the house down. He impulsively started the [...] Read More »
It happened during the summer of 1990. Georgette needed to go to the grocery store, so she asked me to keep an eye on our four children while she was gone. At that time, Harry was nine, Anna was seven, Maria was six, and Laura was three.
Georgette was gone for about an hour and a half. When she returned home, I was in the den; I was sitting at my desk and reading a book. [...] Read More »
I’ve written before about how I broke my leg when I was a boy. The events leading up to my broken leg began during the summer of 1967, when I was 10 years old. While holding onto the end of an old rubber garden hose, I climbed the weeping willow tree in the back yard of my parents’ home. When I got about 20 feet high, I climbed out onto a thick branch and tied [...] Read More »
About 15 years ago, I met a couple whose 20-year-old daughter was instantly killed when her car was hit by a train. She died five minutes after she walked out of her parents’ home. She was on her way to class at Illinois Central College. When she left the house, her mother told her goodbye and told her that she looked beautiful.
The young college student obviously had not seen the train prior to crossing the [...] Read More »
