Jaymie Stuart Wolfe: Seek a new heart this Lent

I know it’s part of getting older, but when my husband was told to go to the ER because a clinical trial EKG had revealed an irregular heartbeat, I was startled almost into one of my own.

Jason Adkins: Online sports gambling harms the poor, doesn’t deserve Catholic support

Gambling seems to be everywhere, especially when watching or listening to sports – both collegiate and professional. In fact, during this March Madness season, nearly 68 million Americans are expected to wager over $15 billion on the NCAA basketball tournament.

Chad Engelland: What’s lost if machines create and we only consume?

Modern machines are amazing, complex, intricate. There is not a task that they cannot do and do better than a human laborer. No longer do people have to spend hours over the washboard or churning butter or grinding grain; no longer do people have to spend hours in the fields or fashioning things. Instead, all we need to do is run our machines and call someone if they happen to break down.

Effie Caldarola: A random guy walks into a bar …

So, a random guy walks into a bar. No, this isn’t the beginning of a joke. For me, it’s a Lenten meditation.

Brian Pusateri: Jesus wants to pull us from the muddy pit

Life has a way of pulling us into the mud. At one time or another, every person finds themselves sinking into a pit – sometimes of their own making, sometimes through no fault of their own. It could be the weight of addiction, the burden of guilt, the exhaustion of trying to measure up, or the deep sorrow of broken relationships.

Jason Adkins: Catholic professors make the case for marriage, children

Catholic social scientists are doing some of the most important work in the public square making a reasoned case for both state and society to promote marriage and stable two-parent families as important public goods.

Deal with anger before it turns to wrath

A lot of people are angry today, about a lot of different things. Some of that anger is justified. Some of it is not. Thus has it ever been.

My purpose here is not to talk about this or that thing that may make us angry, but to reflect on how we should deal with anger from a spiritual perspective.

Scott P. Richert: Look to the skies: Science, beauty and meaning

One evening, after dinner at a conference in California, their stomachs filled with good food and better wine, a group of mathematicians and physicists went for a stroll on the beach. As they discussed some of the finer points of the papers they and their colleagues had delivered that day, one of them suddenly cried, “Look!” and pointed to the west.