Skipping love and marriage and going straight to the baby carriage is a growing phenomenon with a myriad of websites popping up over the last few years that link adults who want children, but not romance.

KANYAKUMARI, TAMIL NADU, INDIA -- A new year is upon us, which comes first a new day. At Kanyakumari each new day is marked with festivity.

Many posters promoting the theme of this year’s Week of Prayer for Christian Unity — “They Showed Us Unusual Kindness” — include photos of a small battered rowboat to illustrate the shipwreck which landed St. Paul on the island of Malta. The story in the Acts of the Apostles (28:1-10) is short on details about that unusual kindness.

I write a lot about euthanasia and associated issues. I will not dispute this nor will I apologize. What I think drives me is not only the abhorrence of such an evil practice but that there are ways to safeguard ourselves and our friends and family from this evil. However, to a large extent we are failing to do so. We need to wake up.

As I write this it is the feast of the Holy Innocents (Dec. 28), the memorial day for children who endured the wrath of King Herod as he set out to ensure that the Light of the World would never be allowed to shine in the darkness of his kingdom. As it was 2,000 years ago, so it often is today. 

During a pre-Christmas trip to Toronto, New York Times columnist David Brooks offered a small vignette that can provide us with a new year’s resolution but, more, a spiritual shift for life.

This new year my resolution was to be less punctual. Why? Because punctuality has always been both my obsession and my curse. 

I am writing this column late in December, thinking of the annual ritual of making resolutions. I do not think in my life I ever followed through on a New Year’s resolution — but I have made resolutions at other times of the year that I have stuck to like glue. 

Earlier this month, I was reading about the fathers of three modern Irish literary geniuses — Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats and James Joyce — when I came upon a fascinating fact about Wilde’s mother.

I have been thinking a lot over the last couple of years about how God comes to us. In tragedy and grief, in deep joy and hope, in confusion and in waiting. In all these places, I am deeply convinced that He comes. Still, I often struggle to recognize Him.