Rick Santorumn’s presidential run may soon be over, but his most important role as father to his seven children, including little Bella who has Trisomy 18 will never end. Speaking of Bella, this precious gift of life is back in the hospital today. Communications director Hogan Gidley, issued the statement: “Rick and his wife Karen have taken their daughter Bella to the hospital. The family requests prayers and privacy as Bella works her way to recovery.”
You may recall that Bella was hospitalized in January with pneumonia and had a “miraculous turnaround” a few days later.
Also in need of prayers: Evangelical leader and pro-life activist, Chuck Colson, who is in the hospital after suffering a brain hemorrhage last Friday. And Anchoress reader Sarah K, who’s kidney’s appear to be failing.
For these and all who are in need today, we pray: Lord, look upon your servants laboring under bodily weakness. Cherish and revive the souls which you have created so that, purified by their suffering they may soon find themselves healed by your mercy. We ask this through Christ our Lord, crucified for us this day. Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us. Amen.
Bruised, bloody and beaten, naked and humiliated, abandoned by his friends and loyal followers, Christ’s Passion was the 
According to liberal feminists like Nancy Pelosi and Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards, opposition to the Health and Human Services mandate forcing religious employees to cover contraceptive services amounts to a misogynistic “war on women.” The media is often all too willing to repeat this opinion as being representative of the female population at large, but is this what the majority of American women really think, themselves?
and the taste of a surprisingly fine Merlot at the Italian restaurant up the street. The body remembers. Even my thinking is sensuous; as I lay there going back in memory my recollections are tactile, touching the burlap of disappointments and running my fingers over the velvet of joys recalled. This body and I, this body that is inseparable from me, together we have been this life. That medieval pope was right. And Thomas Aquinas was right. No matter what the joy of the beatific vision, I think, it will not be perfect until my body and I are together again. Or, put differently, heaven will be perfect, but I, body and soul, will not be perfectly present to the perfection until then. 
So what should we do? Thankfully, we have a roadmap, because we’ve been here before! If you think about it, our situation is just like that of the early Christians living in the heyday of the Roman Empire. For the first three centuries of our Christianity, Roman culture and law provided a climate that was not particularly friendly to the Church, and was openly hostile to it at certain points.
Last Friday was the big day for Religious Freedom rallies across the country, but we had to be a little different here in Missouri. We decided to have our rally in conjunction with our annual pro-life lobby day, so we had to schedule it on a day that the legislators would be in session. Despite being in the middle of the week, we always get a fairly significant turnout with busloads of people coming from all over the state. Considering the anger at what’s going on in Washington, I expect this year to be even bigger.
