Harry Potter may be the perfect series to speak to this moment in time. But we need to do more than use it as a way to identify like-minded readers. We need to use the texts to create like-hearted brothers and sisters.

Three huge bags of baby clothes! My baby is 25. Why have I saved these things?

My boys’ complaints about going to church and my refusal to capitulate to them are themselves a kind of ritual.

My grandmother, Dorothy Day, believed that to lose one’s faith was the greatest sadness.

In my unofficial survey of mothers, not a single mother mentioned gifts as part of a perfect Mother’s Day.

“Once marriage is redefined as a personal instead of a social institution, it makes no sense to stick it out through even moderately bad times.”