Consecrated Conversations: Sister Colleen Clair

In a return to our interview series, we focus on a topic that many people, especially those outside of the Church, don't know much about: the consecrated religious life. Sister Colleen Clair was kind enough to answer our probing-but-educational questions. Today marks the seventh day of the Novena to Saint John Bosco, founder of Sister's order. His feast is Sunday, January 31.

Sister Colleen Clair, SDB (pictured, at right)

Tell us a bit about yourself! 

I’m a Salesian Sister – our official title is “Daughters of Mary Help of Christians.” When I first entered, some friends took bets on how long it would take before I would be “kicked out of the convent.” The longest bet was six weeks! It’s been almost 26 years between formation and profession, and I love religious life. I always say, being a Salesian was the smartest and bravest thing I ever did!

Pro-Life and Post-Abortive: Women Impacted by Abortion Tell Their Story, Continued

Last week marked the forty-second anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, as well as the annual March for Life. Too often, when discussing abortion, we are quick to forget the perspective of those most affected by the procedure: the women who have them and live with that decision for the rest of their lives. This post is continues our series of interviews addressing abortion, with a focus on women who have had abortions and now oppose it.

Béatrice Fedor is a French woman who used to support abortion rights. She had a change of heart after she married her husband and faced her demons. She is now a Silent No More Awareness Campaign regional coordinator. She writes about the journey to healing after abortion and reflects on ways we can change our culture to make abortion unnecessary at 400 Words for Women. Her essays and poems have been reprinted in several online publications and in The American Feminist, Feminists For Life's magazine. Béatrice lives in South Carolina with her husband and four children.

Pro-Life and Post-Abortive: Women Impacted by Abortion Tell Their Story

This week marks the forty-second anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, as well as the annual March for Life. Too often, when discussing abortion, we are quick to forget the perspective of those most affected by the procedure: the women who have them and live with that decision for the rest of their lives. This post is the first of several in our series of interviews addressing abortion, with a focus on women who have had abortions and now oppose it.

Jewels Green is a regretful post-abortive mother and former abortion clinic worker who now supports the right-to-life from conception to natural death. You can see more of her writing and other work at her Web site and also follow her on Twitter.

Living Faith: A Special Report from the Steubenville West Youth Conference

"The Catholic Church is dying. All her ancient rules and outdated traditions drive the young away. It's a faith of old, out-of-touch people who aren't enlightened like modern youth."

Chances are, we've all heard these words, or words very like them. It's become popular in the Culture of Death today to see religion, especially a religion as ancient and venerable as Roman Catholicism, as disconnected from the young and therefore disconnected from the future. The faith is dying, on its last legs, the culture says with glee, and in another generation, it will be gone entirely.

Or will it?

This past weekend, I had an amazing opportunity to attend a Steubenville Conference with my youth group in my hometown of Tucson, Arizona. The conference is one of about twenty put on across North America by the Franciscan University of Steubenville, and they serve some 50,000 high-school age teens every summer. At the behest of our beloved Editor-in-Chief [And don't you forget it! —Ed.] Damian, I decided to write about the experience. I had a notebook, a pen, and a sparkly hat to draw people in, and I interviewed five people about their faith and their experiences at the conference. In addition, I will also attempt to put down my own feelings about the conference.

The noise is deafening as the crowd files in and finds their seats. People wave flags, shout cheer routines, and even blow vuvuzelas between sessions!

Pro-Life and Feminist: Protecting Both Mother and Child

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New Wave Feminists representin' at the 2013 March for Life

The pro-life movement is frequently lambasted by its critics as "anti-woman". Anti-abortion activists, the argument goes, are nothing more than sexist religious zealots, who wish to rob women of their bodily autonomy and have no business dictating women's medical choices, because they will never get pregnant, and they don't have wombs. Well, except for the ones who do.

Pro-Life and Atheist: The Secular Case for the Unborn, Continued

Secular Pro-Life represented at the 2014 March for Life

Many of you have undoubtedly read our first post profiling two individuals who do not believe in God, yet happen to agree with the Church that innocent, unborn human life deserves protection. We have been fortunate to add a third person to that list. Without further ado, here is the second part of our series:

Pro-Life and Atheist: The Secular Case for the Unborn

It should come as no surprise that the official editorial position of Unpleasant Accents is a Catholic one. Our contributors are all pro-life and all Catholic (Yours Truly, as an Anglo-Catholic, filling our heretic quota). The Roman Catholic Church's opposition to abortion is well-known. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church states: "Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person — among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being of life." Indeed, as early as the last first century, we have evidence of Christian opposition to abortion in the Didache, one of the earliest extant extrabiblical texts, which lists abortion amongst sins such as theft, murder and adultery.

The Church's witness for life has been both a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing in that her advocacy for the protection of all life, from conception until natural death, is unrivalled by any other organisation — religious or secular — in terms of the sheer amount of investment she has placed in hospitals, orphanages and other social services. It is a curse, however, in that in our increasingly irreligious age, it is more difficult for faith-based groups to argue for their values without being dismissed by their opponents as merely regurgitating dogma, rather than contributing a legitimate point of view. This is where the subjects of our post come in.