Francis Etheredge

About Francis Etheredge

Mr. Francis Etheredge is married with eight children, plus three in heaven. He is the author of Scripture: A Unique Word and a trilogy, From Truth and Truth (Cambridge Scholars Publishing); The Human Person: A Bioethical Word (En Route Books & Media, 2017), with forewords from eight writers; The Family on Pilgrimage: God Leads Through Dead Ends (2018); and Conception: An Icon of the Beginning, with contributions from ten other authors, as well as The Prayerful Kiss (2019); Mary and Bioethics: An Exploration (2020); Honest Rust and Gold: A Second Collection of Prose and Poetry (2020), Within Reach of You: A Book of Prose and Prayers (2021), Unfolding a Post-Roe World (2022), Reaching for the Resurrection: A Pastoral Bioethics (2022), Human Nature: Moral Norm, Lord, Do You Mean Me? A Father-Catechist! (2023), A Word in your Heart: Youth, Mental Health, and the Word of God (2023), and An Unlikely Gardener: Prose and Poems.

Francis is currently a freelance writer and speaker and his “posts” on LinkedIn can be viewed here. A radio interview can be heard here.

He has earned a BA Div (Hons), MA in Catholic Theology, PGC in Biblical Studies, PGC in Higher Education, and an MA in Marriage and Family (Distinction). He is a collaborator of the Dignitas Personae Institute for Nascent Human Life.

A Touch of Experience: Where Are You?

“In the light of the experience of many couples and of the data, . . . theological reflection is . . . called to study further the difference, both anthropological and moral, between contraception and recourse to the rhythm of the cycle: it … [Read more...]

Conception: A Contradiction?

[Cf. Francis Etheredge: Conception: An Icon of the Beginning, St. Louis: En Route Books and Media, 2019: https://enroutebooksandmedia.com/conception/ (the publisher’s page includes interviews, reviews, endorsements, Contents and connections … [Read more...]

Conscience as Relationship, Part II

A Dialogue through Which God Takes Us beyond Ourselves

In the second of these two articles on conscience[1. See Francis Etheredge, “Conscience as Relationship, Part I: General Principles and Personal Experience,” Homiletic & Pastoral Review (Jan 2020), hpr … [Read more...]

Conscience as Relationship, Part I

General Principles and Personal Experience

As regards the discernment of what is actually good amidst the multitude of the many possible goods arising out of the “results of physics, genetics, and neuroscience, as well as of increasingly powerful computing capabilities, [and the] p … [Read more...]

The Whale in the Bath

Is mass communication like a background noise that is just loud enough to catch our attention and make it difficult for us to concentrate on what we are doing and yet not loud enough so that we can hear clearly what is going on? Are … [Read more...]

Mary and Prayer

Part III of a Marian Triptych

Mary is not a conceptual counterpoint to Christ, imagined and projected into the Gospels as a kind of semidivine goddess who was made manifest, as it were, in preparation for the coming of the Savior of mankind: a kind of “power of woman” to … [Read more...]

Our Hope in Mary

Part II of a Marian Triptych

[1. This piece first appeared as part III of chapter nine of volume III of a trilogy called From Truth and truth: Volume III-Faith is Married Reason (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016), 57–66; the present version is, h … [Read more...]

Mary Is the Choice of God

Part I of a Marian Triptych

Where do we need to begin with a reflection on Mary, spouse of St. Joseph[1. Cf. St. John Paul II, Redemptoris Custos.] and Mother of the Lord? On the one hand, in the times in which we live, it could be argued that we need to recover … [Read more...]

The Gift and Rights of Being Conceived, Part 2

Even if, as we have seen in Part I of this essay, there are unresolved questions concerning the definition of the moment of conception, an irreversible moment involving the action of God, each one of us is nevertheless evidence of an actual … [Read more...]

The Gift and Rights of Being Conceived, Part 1

In the first of this two-part essay there is an examination of the wholeness of human being, the complementarity of faith and reason, and what human conception is, and what is said about it in the teaching of the Church (Part I). In the … [Read more...]

On the Truth that Heals the Crisis of Marriage

Part II: On Christ’s Love of the Sinner[1. This is now a part of the book, The Family on Pilgrimage: God Leads Through Dead Ends, (Chapter 4: Part I: enroutebooksandmedia.com/familyonpilgrimage/)] Do we believe that God can act in our l … [Read more...]

On Coming to the Sacrament of Marriage

A Personal Pilgrimage

Part I of II: On Christ’s Love of the Sinner[1. This is now a part of the book, The Family on Pilgrimage: God Leads Through Dead Ends, (Chapter 4: Part I: enroutebooksandmedia.com/familyonpilgrimage/).] In the context of the widespread d … [Read more...]

Being Open to Life—Abstract Norm, or Embodied Word?

Preamble We have a temptation to separate a moral norm from its existential reality and, in so doing, to imagine that we have “an abstract norm”[1. Although the expression, ‘abstract norm’ (ncregi … [Read more...]

A Gift from Edith Stein (1891-1942)

A Modern “Mother” of the Church

Edith Stein was born into a Jewish family on the Feast of the Atonement, 1891, and died a Catholic Carmelite nun, St. Teresia Benedicta of the Cross, in Auschwitz in 1942. She is an "eminent daughter of Israel and faithful daughter of the … [Read more...]

The Human Person Is a Bioethical Word

The Need to Recover the Humanity of the Human Race

Leonardo Da Vinci Pencil Drawings The choice in our time is this: either we are equally in receipt of the gift of life[1. Cf. Donum vitae, Introduction, 1.] or the ethical outcome of the "survival of the fittest" is that the fittest … [Read more...]