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Atstock Productions/Shutterstock It comes down to science and logistics. Unless you have a seat in first or business class, boarding and deplaning an aircraft can be stressful experiences. Because you’re so busy worrying about finding room in the overhead compartment and trying not to knock other passengers on the head with your personal item, you may not notice things like the plane’s interior color scheme. But if you pay attention the next time you board a plane, you’ll likely notice that its seats are blue. Of course, there are exceptions to this—like Virgin Atlantic’s red seats and the green seats on Aer Lingus—but in general, airline seats tend to be blue. So why is that? We spoke to some experts and looked into the science to find out. Here’s how to pick the best airplane seat for ev...

This Sunday’s Readings include some of the best known—and hardest to practice—passages from the Gospel, including Jesus famous command to “turn the other cheek.”  Biblical scholarship can only go so far in elucidating some of Jesus’ challenging commands; beyond that, we need the saints.  1.  Our Readings start off showing the continuity between Jesus’ teachings and the Old Testament, quoting a section from Leviticus (19:1-2, 17-18): The LORD said to Moses,“Speak to the whole Israelite community and tell them:Be holy, for I, the LORD, your God, am holy. “You shall not bear hatred for your brother or sister in your heart.Though you may have to reprove your fellow citizen,do not incur sin because of him.Take no revenge and cherish no grudge against any of your people.You shall ...

@shannon_last, Twitter / Nheyob, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA / ChurchPOP I wish every parish did this! Parents commonly struggle with loud, wiggly children in Mass. But how should parishes respond? Many parents become discouraged due to the lack of support, stares, and the general challenge of managing a child in Mass. But let’s aim to put parents’ minds and hearts at ease! The flyer below recently circulated Twitter. It supports parents’ tireless efforts in bringing children to church. While this Twitter user saw the letter in an Anglican church, the same message can also apply to Catholic Mass-goers. Along with a photo of the letter, Catholic twitter user Shannon Last wrote, “At a nearby church for our kids’ winter concert and saw and love this! Something for Twitter priests to consider?...

If insanity can be defined as not having a complete grip on reality, then I think all of us (except the saints) are at least a little bit crazy some of the time and some of us are crazy a lot a lot of the time, and a few of us are crazy all the time. Remember that it is only the ones who have lost total grip on reality who are confined to a hospital or prison somewhere. Most of the rest of us crazy people are wandering about living lives of quiet desperation not sure if we are really grasping all of reality all the time, and the ones who I worry about the most are the ones who think they are never crazy not even a little bit, ever and have everything sewn up and are think they are totally 100% sane and in control all the time. Those folks give me the creeps. In fact we see all sorts of cra...

“The beloved is said to be in the lover, inasmuch as the beloved is in the lover’s affections… [even] in the absence of the beloved, because of the lover’s longing towards…the good he wills to the beloved with a love of friendship.”“… in the love of friendship, the lover is in the beloved, inasmuch as he reckons what is good or evil to his friend, as being so to himself.”Thomas Aquinas The power of will is astounding in what it can effect in us, and in others, every day. Human life is always about presence. And presence cannot be taken for granted. As Thomas Aquinas notes, absence is opposed to presence. Often we are separated in some way or absent from those that we love. Certain kinds of absence we cannot remove, at least not completely, but rather we need to endure. For instance, if a l...

On the weekend of February 8, 2020, a storm ripped through Ireland. Storm Ciara was one of the worst of its kind for many years. Its winds, snows, and driving rains caused havoc with landslides and flooding. At the same time, a political storm ripped through the Irish political landscape. Sinn Féin up-ended the political consensus and sent shock waves through the political establishment by winning the most first-preference votes in the 2020 general election. The party almost won the most seats, too, and would have done so if it had put up more candidates, as even Sinn Féin was not able to forecast correctly last weekend’s political tempest. In the end, Sinn Féin won 37 seats; before the election it had 22. By all accounts, given the votes the party was piling up in constituency after const...

Hello! Nĭ hăo! Namaste! Hola! Bonjour! There are so many ways we as human beings can express ourselves, as one can see in our list of most-spoken languages. Around the world, there are more than 7,000 regularly spoken vernaculars, but we decided to show off the top 100 most common languages in our linguistic infographic. World languages list varied origins, with some branching off from the same ancient roots and some having a history all their own. We’ve illustrated each one with its language origin tree, so you can trace their roots. Beautiful and ever-evolving, like a forest, the sheer variety of common languages spoken around the globe has been charted here in one world language map. Check out the top 100 most popular languages and their origins. What Is the Most Popular Language in the...

Will you make it through this article? You have been re-programmed in the media-saturated age of consumerism and internet galloping to skim this article.  You’re here to grab enough of it to sense a completion after reading, perhaps gaining a sense of gained knowledge, maybe feeling part of a tribe or something. I’ve been trained as a “content” writer to keep this article skimmable (shallow), but with a feel of depth and wisdom, but in a form that – if we’re honest – will pass quickly as you move on to the next site.  Writing for the internet is a specific gig and has very specific (and effective) rubrics.  I believe in the power of the written word, naturally, but I know what’s going on here too. I use very short paragraphs to allow enough white space to accommodate your sk...

By Tom Hoopes, February 15, 2020 Archbishop Joseph Naumann publicly corrected a state legislator’s misrepresentation of Church teaching in a strong, straightforward column about abortion. He also revealed more of what Pope Francis told U.S. bishops regarding the abortion issue when they visited him last month. His column is published in the Feb. 14 edition of The Leaven and is not yet available online. Last year the state’s Supreme Court, emboldened by a new governor who wants to ease restrictions on the abortion industry, which helped fund her candidacy, “discovered” a right to abortion in the very language of the Kansas state constitution that was written to protect the right to life. This year, an effort to put a state Constitutional amendment on the ballot for Kansas voters to dec...

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio – articles – email ) | Feb 11, 2020 In the wake of unusual vocations of married persons to the consecrated life, there is always speculation about the superiority of a consecrated single vocation, as compared with marriage, or of virginity over marriage generally. Some have gone so far as to argue that the “higher” calling to a form of consecrated life justifies breaking up a sacramental marriage to accommodate a “new vocation” of either the husband or the wife. This question was raised again last month after I explored the strange vocation of the Servant of God Rose Hawthorne, who set aside her husband’s will, with ecclesiastical permission, in order to undertake a special service to the poor who were suffering from cancer (Ecclesiastical judgment: Sain...

The commercial below shows a glimpse of the special kind of love that we call familial love. The Greeks called it storge (στοργή), and the Romans called it pietas. Both words refer to familial love, the natural or instinctual affection between parent and child. Michelangelo’s “Pieta,” depicting Mary cradling the dead body of Jesus with tenderness and sorrow, demonstrates beautifully the meaning of pietas. Familial love has some unique qualities. For example, we don’t choose our family; we are born into it. We can choose friends, and for the most part we select them because they are agreeable to us. Not always so within the family! And when couples marry, although they establish their own nuclear family, each brings to the marriage his or her own family and extended family. Because we ...

By Tom Hoopes, February 13, 2020 In This Sunday’s Gospel, the Sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time Year A, Jesus continues the Sermon on the Mount and demands that his followers not just behave well, but change who we are on the inside, as well. There is a big difference. We are used to being able to fake our life. We know what we need to do to get by in nearly every situation: at work, at home, with our friends, with our enemies, in church and at prayer. We are not so good at interior change. Given what Jesus sets as a standard, we Christians have a huge problem on our hands. “You have heard that it was said to your ancestors, You shall not kill,” he says. “But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgement.” He adds: “and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ will be liabl...