Today's Page · Sunday, July 12, 2026

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Combating Coercion: Charlène Bernard Speaks Out at European Parliament
Charlène Bernard told the European Parliament that institutional pressure ended a pregnancy she wanted to continue. Her testimony names something the public health literature has largely avoided: coercion toward abortion is measurable, psychologically intelligible, and a clinical failure with specific causes.
faith
The Pursuit of Happiness Was Never About Feeling Good
When Jefferson wrote 'the pursuit of happiness' into the Declaration of Independence, he was drawing on a classical and Christian vocabulary in which happiness meant ordered flourishing — eudaimonia — not subjective preference satisfaction. Tracing how that meaning shifted over 250 years while the phrase stayed fixed reveals something precise about what America's anniversary is actually commemorating.
The Anatomy of Hope: A Mother, a Newborn, and a Bible Under the Rubble
When a devastating earthquake buried Dayana Patiño under a collapsed building, she lay in the dark cradling her 18-day-old son Juan David — and found a Bible beneath her body. Her survival is a story about hope, and what the human person draws on when survival is not guaranteed.
charity
The Other Side of the Road: The Call for Compassion from Lampedusa
Pope Leo XIV celebrated Mass on Lampedusa on July 4, 2026, naming chosen indifference as a moral failure with its own interior logic. The priest and the Levite in his homily's parable were not the men who beat the traveler and left him for dead — they were people who crossed to the other side of the road, and in doing so, became the kind of people who cross to the other side of the road.
justice devotion
What Brother Columba O'Neill Meant When He Said 'The Little Girl Will Be Alright'
In 1918, a Holy Cross lay brother who repaired shoes told a father his polio-stricken daughter would recover — and she did. The case of E.P. Schwartz and his daughter Jean clarifies what separates theologically grounded hope from temperamental optimism, and why that difference shapes how faith and presence function in healing.

Manufactured Presence: What Electromagnetic Brain Stimulation Cannot Produce

Beginning in the 1980s, neuroscientist Michael Persinger developed a research program using weak magnetic fields to stimulate the temporal lobes — work that eventually produced a modified helmet device generating felt experiences of divine presence in laboratory subjects. The device raises a precise question: if a machine can produce the phenomenology of mystical encounter, what exactly is being produced? Catholic anthropology offers a more rigorous answer than neuroscience alone can supply.

Jul 7, 2026 · 7 min read

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What the Padua Program Actually Proved — and What Therapists Can Draw From It

A University of Notre Dame randomized controlled trial found that participants in Catholic Charities Fort Worth's Padua program earned 46% higher incomes and were 64% more likely to secure stable housing. The trial measured economic outcomes, not clinical ones — and the distinction matters for how therapists read the results.

Waiting, Disappointment, and the Interior Work of Vocational Readiness

Elizabeth Busby, therapist and founder of Discerning Marriage, argues that the period before a serious relationship begins is not empty time but a season of interior formation. The capacity to suffer disappointment without fear or resentment, and to remain open rather than defended, is itself a measure of readiness for self-sacrificial love.

Anglican Euthanasia Liturgies and the Abdication of Accompaniment

The Anglican Church of Canada has published official pastoral liturgies for clergy accompanying those who choose medically assisted death. The document frames this as compassionate presence, but producing ritual forms for a death a minister could have worked to prevent raises a harder question: is this accompaniment, or its surrender?

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Rome or Avignon? The Church's Standoff with the SSPX

On July 1, 2026, the Society of St. Pius X consecrated four bishops without papal authorization and then rejected the resulting excommunications as objectively invalid. The society's position rests on a coherent internal logic — one that absorbs every counter-development as confirmation rather than challenge. Understanding what sustains that logic is a prior condition for evaluating what comes next.

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Searching for Bliss, Meaning, and the Divine: What Trending Queries Reveal About Spiritual Hunger — June 29, 2026

Reddit's highest-engagement threads this week are cries of spiritual emergency: users asking whether life has inherent meaning, seeking non-bleak frameworks, and reporting bodily alienation and depression. Clinicians should expect presentations of existential vacuum, identity diffusion, and embodied distress clothed in spiritual language. The CCMMP's Created, Rational, and Volitional premises — alongside Augustine's anthropology — offer a native framework for meeting these clients.

Top stories

Combating Coercion: Charlène Bernard Speaks Out at European Parliament

The Pursuit of Happiness Was Never About Feeling Good

The Anatomy of Hope: A Mother, a Newborn, and a Bible Under the Rubble

The Other Side of the Road: The Call for Compassion from Lampedusa

What Brother Columba O'Neill Meant When He Said 'The Little Girl Will Be Alright'

Manufactured Presence: What Electromagnetic Brain Stimulation Cannot Produce

More to read

Psychological Accompaniment and the Yoke of Matthew 11

Why China Fears Christ: Pastor Ezra Jin's Release and the Surveillance State's Deepest Anxiety

Presence Cannot Be Performed: Catholic Formation and the Practice of Authentic Presence in a Digital Age

Top stories

Combating Coercion: Charlène Bernard Speaks Out at European Parliament

The Pursuit of Happiness Was Never About Feeling Good

The Anatomy of Hope: A Mother, a Newborn, and a Bible Under the Rubble

The Other Side of the Road: The Call for Compassion from Lampedusa

What Brother Columba O'Neill Meant When He Said 'The Little Girl Will Be Alright'

Latest

What the Padua Program Actually Proved — and What Therapists Can Draw From It

Waiting, Disappointment, and the Interior Work of Vocational Readiness

Anglican Euthanasia Liturgies and the Abdication of Accompaniment

Book reviews

DIARY OF ST. FAUSTINA - BURGUNDY LEATHER EDITION

The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI: How to Think About Artificial Intelligence Before It's Too Late

SHIFT YOUR LIFE: Let Go of Survival Mode, Seize Your Moment, and Build the Future You Were Created For

UMMA: A Korean Mom's Kitchen Wisdom & 100 Family Recipes

Always Remember: The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, the Horse and the Storm

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Rome or Avignon? The Church's Standoff with the SSPX

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Searching for Bliss, Meaning, and the Divine: What Trending Queries Reveal About Spiritual Hunger — June 29, 2026

Blood Pressure Recalls, Mortality Salience, and the Body We Inhabit — June 23, 2026

Between Waking and Dreaming: Consciousness, Loss, and the Search for Inner Ground — June 19, 2026

The Inner Life Under Economic Pressure: Anxiety, Self-Regulation, and the Search for Stability — June 18, 2026