Chloe Lundy, 2, plays on a swing in the yard of the home of her grandmother, Debbie Hendricks, in Dousman [...]

Sr. Frances Cunningham invited parishioners to “see with their hearts” during her mission presentation at Blessed Sacrament Church in late September. Sr. Fran spoke of the nearly 30-year relationship the Archdiocese of Milwaukee has had with La Sagrada Familia Parish in the Dominican Republic. According to Sr. Fran, a Sister of St. Francis of Assisi and director of the archdiocese’s world mission office, seeing with your heart opens your eyes to the needs that exist in the world.

She described the struggles the Dominicans face in an area where the average yearly wage is $60; where children are often raised by grandparents because the parents must leave for weeks at a time to earn money in the cities, and where children cannot attend school because they don’t have needed school supplies or the required uniforms. She painted virtual pictures of young baseball-loving Dominicans playing America’s favorite pastime with sticks and rocks, because they don’t have money for bats and balls.

Our children recently dealt with very sad events. Luc, Aidan and Andre said goodbye to the pet freshwater frogs Luc received as a gift for his birthday. We buried Mr. Froggy yesterday evening and we buried Mr. Plum tonight.

I found Mr. Froggy belly-up yesterday afternoon in his aquarium. All the boys were sad. We took him outside and made a final resting place in the mulched area near the back door. Luc, 3, dug a shallow hole with a cement trowel and the boys passed Mr. Froggy’s body to one another so they could hold and pet him in one last display of affection. After that, Luc placed him in the hole and I covered it with mulch again.

We thanked Jesus for the gift of Mr. Froggy and I ushered Luc and Aidan back inside. Andre, 7, rumpled up on the doorstep, sank against the house and started to weep quietly, his shoulders heaving, his head buried between his legs. I asked him if he was OK, and he just sobbed for a good few minutes. He finally got up, came inside and told Terese and me, “I don’t want anyone else to buy our house.”

Playing soccer with friends on a soft, grassy knoll, trampling over dusty dirt roads to examine exotic flowers and wildlife might be the stuff of an ordinary summer for most young boys, but for Andre Bauer his summer vacation was anything but ordinary.

At 7, the second grader from St. Sebastian School in Milwaukee has more adventure notched under his belt than most individuals 10 times his age. In July 2009, Andre traveled to Nyakibale, Rukungiri District, Uganda where his parents, Drs. Terese and Paul Bauer, served on a medical mission trip to Karoli Lwanga Hospital.

I am caretaker for my 86-year-old dad who is ill and very frail. Though raised a staunch Catholic, he fell away from the church when he and his wife began to practice birth control. He is frightened about death and what may await him in the afterlife because he has not prayed or gone to church in more than 40 years. He feels it is pretty hopeless to do anything about it now. How can I help him to come back to the Lord?

First off, set firm in your mind and heart the fact that God has never stopped loving and seeking your dad for one single moment of his life! That half of the equation hasn’t wavered. Your challenge is to gradually help Dad correct his perception that he has somehow fallen out of God’s tender embrace. Dad feels distant, yet God is so very near.

Our family has had trouble with the fourth commandment: Keep holy the Sabbath day.  It’s not that we skip Mass on Sunday, but rather that, too often, we only keep holy the Sabbath hour and a half (our time at Mass), rather than the Sabbath day itself.

We live in a neighborhood with a high population of Orthodox Jews. Their Sabbath runs from sundown Friday evening to sundown Saturday. During this 24-hour period, they may not drive, cook, clean, shop, mow their lawns, do laundry, repair problem areas of their home or play in soccer tournaments. There are probably additional things they may not do, but these are the ones I notice, since that’s what Bill and I are generally up to while they are walking past our house back and forth to synagogue.

Simon Humke, 21 months, chases bubbles during a visit to his grandmother, Betty Humke’s house in Sheboygan. Simon is the [...]

Every spring the students at the now-closed St. Catherine School on the northwest side of Milwaukee would celebrate the end [...]

My 11-year-old daughter recently spent the night at a friend’s house and accompanied the friend’s family to a non-denominational Christian service on Sunday morning. Did that meet her Sunday obligation or should we have made sure that she attended a Catholic Mass as well?

The Third Commandment instructs us to “Keep holy the Lord’s day.” Certainly your daughter did this by going to church with her friend’s family. The Catechism of the Catholic Church further instructs: “The Sunday celebration of the Lord’s Day and his Eucharist is at the heart of the Church’s life. (2177)” And, “On Sundays and other holy days of obligation the faithful are bound to participate in the Mass.” (2180)

God doesn’t equip parents with a manual that explains how to raise their bundles of joy, but he sends helpers like Marybeth Hicks who offers tips to parents on how to raise GEEKS – Genuine, Enthusiastic, Empowered Kids.

As a wife and mother of four children – a college senior, college sophomore, high school junior and eighth grader – Hicks highlighted parenting strategies from her book, “Bringing Up Geeks,” on how to raise kids in a “grow-up-too-fast world,” during a presentation last fall to about 75 parents at the Basilica of Holy Hill.

“It is a book of ministry for me, something I really feel strongly about and I wanted to do because I’m really worried about our culture, and I’m worried that one of the things we’re seeing, what we’re seeing in so many ways in our culture, is the direct result of very poor, unskilled parenting,” Hicks said.

She said it’s time for parents return to listening to their instincts.