J.R. Baldwin is the relationships editor at Ignitum Today. She is one of the three Bright Maidens, and is a regular contributor for The Imaginative Conservative and Progarchy. She blogs at The Corner With A View. She lives in the Midwest with her husband.
The Huffington Post must have known the publication of “My Wife Is Expecting Twins and I Am Not Happy About It” would cause waves. Tsunami-level waves, where people were aghast to read paragraphs like this one: Two blessings, two bundles of joy. How could you not be happy, you ask? Of course I’m sympathetic to [...]
A male reader of my post “This Modern Love” wrote an aside of how “man conquers woman” in the courtship process. He gave a personal example and said that though he did all the right things (e.g. gave her flowers, wrote her letters), he did not win her heart. He also wrote that, at one [...]
To pursue, or to be pursued? That is the question. ‘Tis nobler in the mind to date until your breath is taken, or heart is broken… Dating – in the man-meets-woman, man-asks-woman-out way**- may sound outdated to those more liberated in their feelings. Instead, people get to know each other by hanging out and never [...]
There are as many paths to God as there are people, said Pope Benedict XVI in his 1999 interview with German journalist Peter Seewald. That being said, the then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger continued, all paths lead to Christ Jesus, who is the way, the Truth, and the light. When living out one’s vocation, one must think of [...]
There is a great fear among women that we are being under-appreciated. It’s not that we women want all the power; we just want credit for sharing it! In Amanda Mortus’s “To Be Used or Appreciated?”, she laments how tired a Proverbs 31 woman seems, and wishes more of those holy verses spoke intimately of [...]
Flying home, the college lady next to me mentioned she was in a “complicated” relationship with someone back home. I smiled and said I’d been there. “Make sure you draw clear lines,” I said. “Relationships don’t have to be complicated.” Perhaps this sounds too simplistic – as I fear the lady took it – because [...]
The morning after my future sister’s wedding, my fiance and I attended the family brunch and were asked the question: short or long engagement? B. said “short” and I said “long” – the listeners laughed. We’ve been engaged for eight months now; four more months to go. It’s been a struggle intertwined with the joy [...]
In what can only be described as “true love,” I agreed to marry my fiance without ever dancing with him. Perhaps this seems impossible, improbable, or a smallish point in the grand scheme of our love. But I tell you, it is not. I come from a dancing family. My mom and dad fell in [...]
The hubris of the Catholic Church is often a huge turn-off to many people. How can she, the Church, this whore (my mother), claim to know the will of God? After all, everyone knows her reputation. Everyone knows her mistakes. Everyone believes they know all about her and her kind- those “Catholics” who “claim” to [...]
Today is Good Friday. At noon, my family will drive to Mt. Adams, to a hill overlooking the Ohio River. We will descend many steps, cross a bridge, and then go down many more, before reaching a landing, turning around, and going back up each step, one rosary bead at a time. I will wear [...]
The little girl I babysit likes to give me her art. As it is now February, she is currently making Valentines. She asks me how to spell my name, writes the letters backwards and proudly presents it to me. I praise it, praise her and show it off. She makes sure I take it home [...]
Wolfgang Pauli, a physicist who pioneered the field of quantum physics, is famous for the critique, “Das ist nicht nur nicht richtig, es ist nicht einmal falsch!” Or, “Not only is it not right, it’s not even wrong!” Pauli reserved this most severe criticism for papers whose theories or theses were so unstable and not [...]
I’m wearing bunny slippers as I type this post. My late Aunt Tracey gave them to me two Christmases ago (her last Christmas). I wear them, but I don’t even like slippers. I’m not a fan of slip-on shoes. They always slip off. I wear them because Aunt Tracey gave them to me. Aunt Tracey [...]
I came across an amazing documentary called “180″ paralleling the Holocaust and abortion. It is produced by Living Waters, a ministry run by Ray Comfort. Comfort was born a Jew, and, while he still identifies himself as such, is an Evangelical Christian pastor in California. Comfort begins the movie by discussing with people what they would [...]
Let’s suspend disbelief in God for a moment. To understand a Catholic studying the Bible, that disbelief in God must be suspended. We believe in God, even when we struggle or question. Our belief in God gives us reason to hope. Disbelief is not seen as enlightenment, but a serious internal struggle. I do not [...]
Ladies, what would you say if …your boyfriend told you he masturbates? …your husband confessed his struggles with pornography? …your brother is actively unchaste? I have come to the understanding that many females are blissfully unaware of the sexual (and, thus, spiritual) struggles men encounter in daily life. If you think your special male is [...]
In a romantic rush of words, my boyfriend told me he loved me. A week or so later, he had “an interesting conversation” with his mother, and she bought us a book. No, it wasn’t Three to Get Married by Fulton Sheen, Love and Responsibility by Blessed John Paul II or even poetry. It was [...]
Last month, my boyfriend’s grandfather died. The beauty of our Catholic faith never felt more exposed to me than with the passing of another believing soul from earth into eternity. I could not turn a corner in the grandfather’s house without seeing a crucifix. The family physically came together in fellowship- to eat meals, participate [...]
I have a tennis ball shaped bruise on the side of my thigh. In grotesque literary fashion, I see the bruise as God’s grace literally leaving its imprint on me. This was not the first time I have been hit with a ball: earlier in the set, I had been nailed in the stomach. I [...]
“Speak about Christ only when you are asked. But live so that people ask about Christ!” exclaimed Paul Claudel. Claudel, a 20th Century French poet, dramatist and diplomat, was a revert to his Roman Catholic faith. When he was 18 years old, he was an agnostic; then, during Christmas day Mass, he had a mystical [...]
Q. How do you pronounce “ignitum”? A. Well, you have some options. The Romans would have said ig-NEE-toom. In church, we’d say “in-YEE-toom.”
Why?
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