Author’s Note: This post falls as part of a series on female saints, but since there is so much that can be said about the greatest of all saints, the Blessed Virgin Mary, I chose to focus on her as represented in the literature and movies of the Lord of the Rings, which provides a familiar common ground for many of us. The Lord of the Rings books and movies depict some of the strongest

The newsfeed on Facebook (or any social media) is a troubling place. News of bombed planes, war in Gaza, murdered clergymen, and school shootings have all claimed prominent space over the past couple months as I scroll through my newsfeed. To quite literally add insult to injury, people post and comment on Facebook in a degrading, self-righteous, and outright obnoxious manner. Most people accompany the news of violence in the world with violence in their

My last article was published on the same day as the SCOTUS ruling on the Hobby Lobby case. In a 5-4 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that for-profit corporations, including Hobby Lobby, are not required to provide coverage on contraception and abortifacients if these violate their religious beliefs. (Let us focus here on the fact that Hobby Lobby was opposed to abortifacients, not preventative contraceptives; the Green family accepted 16 out of 20 contraceptive

In my previous post, I spoke about the problems of modern secular feminism, and I offered Saint John Paul II’s teaching on the dignity and vocation of women as an alternative for the modern Christian woman. This week, I intend to delve more deeply into this teaching, which represents centuries of the Catholic Church’s teaching on women. In subsequent posts in this series, I wish to closely examine the lives, writings, and teachings of various

Modern feminism has failed. I proclaim this as a modern woman: I will soon graduate with a master’s degree, I am training to become a half-marathoner, and my fiancé and I make our major decisions together. My gender has never prevented me from education, sport, ownership, or participation. I owe a large debt to the men and women of the early twentieth century feminism, who fought for my right to vote, who petitioned for Title