Dust off your passport. Call your travel agent. Where would you like to go?

If you could afford to go to your favorite place on the planet, what would you pick?

That’s the intriguing premise of a new book by Jerry Camarillo Dunn. He asked celebrities, including Sandra Day O’Connor, the Dalai Lama, actors Robin Williams and Morgan Freeman, and astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Sally Ride, the simple question: What is your favorite travel discovery? He wrote about their answers in a book titled “My Favorite Place on Earth: Celebrated People Share Their Travel Discoveries.”

Q: Aside from bedtime prayers and meal blessings, how do we keep God in our children’s everyday lives?

Regular prayer times are an excellent way to foster your children’s awareness of God throughout their day. Gradually you want them to grow into the knowledge that God is with them at all times. As their hearts beat moment by moment, God is with them, loving them.

Meister Eckhart, a mystic of the 13th century, said, “God is at home; it is we who have gone out for a walk.” How do we come back “home” so as to be in tune with the God who is already there loving us, protecting us, sustaining us with life?

I gave Dominican High School my oldest child today.

I suppose some would argue we didn’t actually give our son to the small Catholic high school in Whitefish Bay; we paid them to take him, but that is quibbling over details. It has been my experience over 14 years of parenting, that every time I enroll my child for the first time in something new – from kindergarten to swim lessons to soccer – I have a sense of turning over a piece of my child to another person or institution.

The statement I am making every time I drop off my child somewhere is: “You can do it better than I.” Because if I didn’t believe the organization could do it better than I, why would I drop him or her off at all?

School is back in session for another semester so how about a pop quiz!What special year has Pope Benedict XVI [...]

It has been six months since Archbishop Dolan left Milwaukee for the bright lights of Broadway. I thought you might be wondering how things are going in the archdiocese these days. So this is just a little update based on the six pastoral priorities Archbishop Dolan set for the archdiocese five years ago this fall. I have not added any new things to the mix. It is my job to maintain the direction set by Archbishop Dolan until the pope appoints his successor. But in looking again at these six priorities, I believe our new archbishop will be pleased with the direction we have taken to focus our pastoral work in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD A COPY OF PICTURE TO COLOR Based on the Gospel of St. Mark 10:17-30 "Oh, that’s [...]

This column in our Catholic newspaper gives Bishop Sklba and me a great chance to promote those aspects of our faith that are signs of hope and consolation for all of our readers and for so many who share the values we treasure. In this Year for Priests, Pope Benedict XVI has opened up a number of ways for us to encounter the church and especially to encounter the church through the ministry and lives of priests.