Nancy Flanders

The people we love the most are the ones who know us the best. They know our flaws just as well as they know our strengths. They’ve seen us at our worst and they’ve forgiven us for it. Yet the holidays together can still be a time of…

The statistics are sobering. According to a study published in 2015 by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University: Only 22 percent of Catholic parents are attending Mass weekly or more often. 68 percent of…

June is a big month for weddings. For those of us planning to marry or are already married to non-Catholic spouses, the journey often ends up more difficult than we could have imagined. Once upon a time, Catholics were usually expected to…

Unfortunately, unplanned pregnancies are often seen in a negative light in society. For those of us who face them while married and in good health and financial status, an unplanned pregnancy might add a few months of unplanned stress to…

It’s finally spring and with the thrill of opening the windows on that first warm day comes spring cleaning. The latest craze in organization calls for people to rid their homes of objects that don’t “spark joy.” But even if something…

It’s that time of year again. Time to make a list of resolutions for the new year and forget about them before the month of January comes to an end. Or at least that’s how it usually goes for me. No matter what your resolutions are, if you…

We’ve all got our temperaments and our children do too. It easy to pick out which of my children is the heart-on-her-sleeve mini-me of her father and which one is the spitting absent-minded image of myself. But our children don’t just get…

The Joneses — that family down the street or (nowadays) on Facebook who always have the best of everything. As the outsider looking in, it seems like life is amazing for them. Maybe it’s the car that never breaks down or the house that’s…

Let me just start by admitting: I’m writing this to help all of us, myself included. The holiday season – Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s – can get a bit out of hand and out of budget sometimes. It can be tempting to get caught up in…

When we think “Catholic pilgrimage” our minds often go big — to places like Jerusalem or Rome, Lourdes, or Fatima. As amazing as those would be, traveling that far isn’t always an option. Thankfully, there are amazing Catholic sites we can…