Every now and then I have one of those moments when I realize just how much life has changed since my conversion. One such occasion occurred earlier this week when I made a trip to Whole Foods.

It was a spontaneous decision, based on vague positive associations of the organic foods chain rather than any kind of rational thought process. You see, the last time I had been in a Whole Foods was back when I had one child and lived downtown, a short walk from the flagship location. I have these fond memories of relaxing strolls down to the store with the baby in the sling, picking up one bag’s worth of food that would feed my whole family, not even glancing at the receipt because I still had the...READ MORE

On Monday, professor PZ Myers wrote a nuanced treatise titled “Jennifer Fulwiler: vacant-eyed, mindless cluelessness personified.” Oh, man, he doesn’t even know the half of it. I’m no genius on my best days, but I’m so sleep deprived right now that I’m shuffling around vacant-eyed and mindless, acting like the poster child for cluelessness. I’m drooling on myself as I type this.

After the accurate title, however, the piece kind of goes off the rails. I don’t recommend that you read it due to offensive content, so I’ll summarize it: Professor Myers was flustered about my post called 5 Catholic Teachings that Make Sense to Atheists, and in response to most of the points he basically said...READ MORE

Last week I gave a talk about atheism, and in the Q&A afterward there were a lot of questions about how to share our faith with atheists. I emphasized that the most important thing is simply to pray and work on becoming a saint yourself, so that you can show people Christ rather than just talking about him, but people with atheist friends, family members and coworkers wanted to know more. In the case where you’re chatting with a nonbeliever who is open to hearing your perspective and specifically asks for information about what you believe, how should you proceed?

Obviously there’s no one right answer, but I thought I’d list out some Catholic beliefs that might be good places to start....READ MORE

While we’re on the subject of NFP, this New York Times article has been making the rounds. It’s about Sam Torode and Bethany Patchin (formerly Bethany Torode), authors of the well-known book Open Embrace: A Protestant Couple Rethinks Contraception, who were once vocal opponents of artificial contraception. In 2006 they announced that they no longer believed that natural family planning is the best method of birth control, and went on to say that it is in fact harmful to marriages. In 2009 they divorced.

The article focuses on the problems that NFP caused in their marriage, and the reasons they ended up speaking out against it. Mr. Torodes said that it makes men feel guilty for desiring...READ MORE

Now that I’m Catholic, I spend a lot more time feeling guilty than I used to. “Ah-ah!” the world would say, “Catholic guilt! Told you being Catholic was no fun.” I’d heard of this concept all my life, and I too had a vague image of Catholics walking around all tense and frowny-faced, too held back by unnecessary guilt to live life to the fullest. I felt bad for these sad sacks, thinking that that was the sort of thing that one would need years of therapy to get over. So it’s been interesting, then, to find that Catholic guilt is one of the best things that’s ever happened to me.

Before I was Catholic I had much less guilt—not because I never did anything wrong, but because I told myself I...READ MORE

I need to be careful with the posts I write now that I have five kids, because any time I make a joke about being bad at NFP my inbox is flooded with concerned emails. The gist of the feedback is usually something like, “Shhh! Don’t say that! Now everyone is going to use contraception and reject the beauty of natural family planning!” I see where these folks are coming from, and always appreciate a defender of the culture of life, but I disagree that these kind of jokes turn anyone off to natural methods of birth control. In fact, as a convert to Catholicism who didn’t always understand the Church’s teaching on openness to life, I think that these kinds of comments are not only not harmful,...READ MORE

A while back my husband and I were at a dinner party where most of the other people in attendance were not religious. When the food was served, we faced an awkward moment: Do we say our usual prayer?

I don’t know whether it’s because both of us spent so much time living secular lifestyles or because of all our taciturn English and German genes, but public displays of faith don’t come naturally to us. At all. (The other day I crossed myself after saying a silent prayer when I was out for a walk. When I noticed that one of my neighbors had seen me do it, I briefly felt the urge to rush up and apologize to him for my overbearing holy rolling antics.) And so at the dinner party, my husband...READ MORE