1. This seems to me a challenge to every believer:

2. By five doctors: It Is Never Necessary to Intentionally Kill a Fetal Human Being to Save a Woman’s Life: In Support of the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act

3.

4. Actress Rose Byrne, co-star of Instant Family, about foster care and adoption:

Working on this film opened my eyes, my heart, and my mind. I met families who have adopted, parents with biological children and foster children, boys raised in different families. I immediately realised that I was profoundly naive and not very informed about these things. Would I adopt boys without a family? The answer is yes.

(The movie’s DVD release is March 5.)

5.

(My recent interview with J.D. about adoption and things.)

6. Adoption advocate Malka Groden has a conversation with a young woman who works as a counselor at an orphanage in a Chabad-Lubavitch movement in the Ukraine.

7. Foster-care appreciation in Florida

8. An Illinois store aims to help foster families

9. Marion county in Ohio tries to boost a culture of foster care

10. Michael Gerson on depression and faith

(Reminds me of this book on Catholics and depression. More here.)

11. A thread from Kirsten Powers on humility and silence and the examined life and social media.

12. A former NR-er Brad Miner: How much secular culture can you live with and enjoy, without becoming an unwitting secularist?

13. Today’s Fra Angelico’s fast day. Some samplings of non-worldly art:

14. Pope Francis: Where is your brother?

15. Rod Dreher likens Sohrab Ahmari’s new book to Thomas Merton’s Seven-Storey Mountain.

Over the weekend, I was in a bookstore in Chelsea, Manhattan. In its religion and philosophy section, I may have missed something but the Christian book I found was that one from Merton. It made me think they could wind up adding Sohrab’s to make two!

PLUS:

Sohrab and I will be talking at The Sheen Center in New York next month. Details here.

About a shop window across from The Sheen Center that astounds.

Something I wrote about prayer.

Something I wrote about the heart of a saint (John Vianney, whose incorrupt heart is currently on a tour of the U.S.)