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Catholic parents of Texas flood victims share witness to faith amid grief #Catholic The parents of Blair and Brooke Harber, the Catholic sisters who died in the 2025 Texas Hill Country flash floods, shared how their faith has sustained them through the tremendous grief and how they are honoring their daughters' legacy.Blair Harber, 13, and Brooke Harber, 11, who attended St. Rita Catholic School in Dallas, were among the victims of the Texas Hill Country flash floods that devastated parts of the state on July 4, 2025.“I would say after a year, itʼs almost more difficult than it has been," RJ Harber said in an interview with host Catherine Hadro on “EWTN News In Depth” alongside his wife, Annie Harber.“The depth of the grief does not go away. It actually enhances, because this is your reality now, and you understand your children are actually gone,” he said.“Now there is comfort knowing that they are in heaven, and we did our job as parents to prepare them to get them there. But our love for them was so deep that the grief that we have is just tremendous,” he said.The family was vacationing with RJ Harber’s parents, Mike and Charlene Harber, on the Guadalupe River near Hunt, Texas, when the floods occurred.The flash flood raised the river more than 22 feet in half an hour in the early morning hours of July 4, dislodging and carrying away the sisters’ cabin, in which they were staying with their grandparents.Harbers have ‘leaned heavily’ on Catholic faithAnnie and RJ Harber detailed the challenges of navigating such a profound loss. They shared how it tested their faith, while also relying on that same faith to carry them through the past year.It was “really important to us to instill the Catholic faith and values in our girls,” Annie Harber said. “But … after all of this, I definitely questioned God and was angry at God” and “didnʼt understand why, or how, this could happen to us.”“We have leaned on each other and our faith to get us up every morning,” she said. “I think for me, truly, when I wake up, I tell myself Iʼm one day closer to seeing the girls, because we know theyʼre in heaven and our goal is to ultimately get there. So we have to continue to live by the Catholic faith and our values that we taught the girls.”“I think weʼre still alive because of our faith,” RJ Harber said. “God can accept anger, but he can also help us carry this cross. And the Church has rallied around us.”“We found the girls on Saturday, July 5, and we went to Mass Sunday, July 6. It was probably the most difficult thing Iʼve ever done. But thatʼs because we want to follow the commandments,” he said, citing the Third Commandment to keep holy the Sabbath. “So weʼve leaned heavily … on our Catholic faith,” he said.RJ Harber, who also lost his parents in the disaster, said his “daughters were their greatest joy.” His parents attended “every single sporting event” of their granddaughters.The girls “were their only grandchildren, so they just doted on them,” he said. “My father was suffering from Parkinsonʼs disease, but he would just want me to drive him to Brooke’s softball game and watch her pitch, or ask to watch Blair play soccer.”“We find solace in the fact that theyʼre watching over our girls in heaven and are just thankful that theyʼre there with them now,” he said.‘The faith was very important to our girls’As Annie and RJ Harber have relied on their faith through their grief, they detailed the importance the Catholic faith played in their daughters’ lives as well.“Not only did they go to Catholic school, but we would go to Mass every Sunday,” RJ Harber said. “It was instrumental in our lives.”RJ reflected on his daughter Blair’s faith, sharing that she prayed the rosary “every single night.” Two weeks before the tragedy, “her rosary beads broke and she asked to borrow mine, which I received when I converted to the Catholic faith, and took those down to the river with her.”“So we know that she died with those beads in her hands, and with Mary and God protecting her, in those last moments,” he said. So we know that she died with those beads in her hands, and with Mary and God protecting her, in those last moments.” RJ Harber “We prayed every single night. And we still pray with them every single night,” RJ said.“Prayer has been instrumental. We get messages from all over the world about people praying for us. And I think thatʼs helping us share the girls with the world. And honestly I think God, through the Holy Spirit, is using our daughters to bring people closer to the faith,” he said.The couple said they have heard from several people who have returned to Mass and confession since hearing the sisters’ story.“Weʼve received … messages about people converting to the Catholic faith because of Brooke and Blair. So their work is not done in this world — itʼs only beginning.”The Blair & Brooke Harber Beloved Sisters FundSince losing their daughters, Annie and RJ have started a fund to continue to honor their daughters through The Blair & Brooke Harber Beloved Sisters Fund.The fund, set up through The Catholic Foundation of Texas, supports flood and disaster relief efforts and aids Catholic after-school activities, including after-school education and Catholic sports.Blair and Brooke “played lacrosse and there is a large barrier to entry into lacrosse,” RJ Harber said. “So weʼve been able to get hundreds of sticks donated, hundreds of goggles donated, and have allowed girls to come and try lacrosse for the first time who would otherwise never try it.”“This February, we hosted an event. Over 200 girls came out and tried the sport for the first time. So these kindergartners, first graders, second graders are looking up to our girls and carrying their life forward. And I just think thatʼs a beautiful thing to see,” he said.

Catholic scholar says classical learning can help renew America #Catholic ANN ARBOR, Michigan — Catholics should be proud of their contributions to the United States, especially for the intellectual tradition inherited from philosophers, theologians, and saints who contributed to the ideas leading to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, author and Hillsdale College Professor Matthew Mehan told EWTN News leading up to the 250th anniversary of the nation.Mehan is associate dean and professor of government studies at Hillsdale College’s Washington, D.C. campus. He holds a doctorate in literature from the University of Dallas and recently authored The American Book of Fables, a book for all ages that reflects Mehan’s desire to contribute to national renewal. The fables are set in the American landscape, framed by the Declaration of Independence, and accompanied by historical documents illustrating the country’s history, complexity, and geographical regions. In interviews with EWTN News, the author and scholar said the book grew out of his broader efforts to promote culture renewal through educational reform.“In a sense, it is an unsurprisingly Catholic endeavour of ‘fides et ratio,’” he said. “I wanted something like in church, where there is a papal flag and an American flag, representing faith, morals, love of country, and love of neighbor.” “I’ve always thought that way. I’ve also thought a lot about a combination of those things, with beautiful images and beautiful moral sentiments, and how those come together. So when the semiquinquicentennial was coming up, I thought it would be a great gift to the country.”. Mehan won the America 250 Innovation Prize from the Heritage Foundation for the work.The educator and father of eight said he shares the concerns of many teachers and parents dismayed by the current culture and how education has failed to cultivate virtue, civic pride and responsibility. He and his wife founded a school cooperative in Reston, Virginia that now has 38 participating families. He has also designed curricula for schools across the country. The role of educators is essential, Mehan said, while noting that doctorates are now the equivalent of 19th-century master’s degrees in terms of academic formation. “Catholic academics don’t know their own traditions very well,” he argued. “They know Greek philosophers, and the moderns who reject the Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian, and Catholic vision of Western civilization and human nature, and may know the Summa Theologica and St. Augustine. But what they don’t know is the poetical and rhetorical tradition which moves people toward a common vision, which is an indispensable part of good letters and a healthy citizenry.” “And they don’t know the Romans,” he added. Drawing on the classical tradition, Mehan noted that Roman thinkers such as Cicero and Seneca prepared the “good soil,” the intellectual antecedents that inspired America’s founders. “Cicero, for instance, was taught in all seminaries until the 1900s,” while Seneca was praised by St. Jerome, he said. And ideas found in Cicero were the underpinnings of the theory of natural rights that informed later Catholic philosophers. Seneca’s De Clementia, for example, contributed to concepts of constitutional democracy and rights that shaped the American experiment in government. These classical authors, he argues, still have relevance and deserve renewed attention in universities and seminaries.

Matthew Mehan is associate dean and professor of government studies at Hillsdale College’s Washington, D.C. campus. | Photo courtesy of Matthew Megan

Asked about the future of Catholic education and how it can play a role in a national renewal, despite the closing of Catholic parishes and schools, Mehan said: “Catholic education is displaying a nascent energy.”“It’s very dynamic and full of people who have reoriented education towards what the Christian humanists of the Catholic tradition understood as their goal, which is to help students have a clean conscience and thus have the most joyful life possible in this life and the next,” he said.For Mehan, moral formation must take precedence over the mere transmission of information. He argues that Catholic education drifted from this mission in the 20th century as it increasingly followed secular models of education.Subjects such as calculus, computer coding, and the sciences are valuable, he said, but they should not be the primary focus of Catholic schools. “If you aim at them, ironically, you won’t get them. If you aim high, you’ll get the high and the low. If you aim for the low, you’ll get nothing. That is why education has collapsed except where the moral life is, ideally, centered around Christ.”Catholics holding doctorates who complain that tenured positions at colleges and universities are scarce should look to K-12 schools to make national renewal a reality, Mehan said.The renewal of Catholic education, and how it can contribute to national renewal, depends on placing Christ at the center and embracing the universal call to holiness emphasized by the Second Vatican Council, he argued. Movements such as Opus Dei and the Neo-catechumenal Way serve as “an enormous engine,” Mehan said, to plant holiness in students and encourage teachers themselves to be saints. It will change “how people teach, how they design curricula, and how they bring forward the richness of the Catholic faith and tradition.” “Actually, I’m very hopeful,” he said.To Catholics who may think of themselves as strangers in the United States, Mehan said, “No, brother, you built this too.” “Your people, your religious tradition, are at home here,” he said. “And you are meant for republican self-government. Augustine’s City of God laid the groundwork, St. Thomas Aquinas built the scaffolding, and St. Thomas More made it shine. American Catholics built this country with sweat, blood, and their arms.” “This is your patrimony too,” he said.

unitedyam June 28, 2026June 29, 2026

Author and professor calls on Catholics to revive American culture through faith and classical learning.

Picture of the day Doll (musha-ningyo) featuring Takenouchi no Sukune, minister of Emperor Ōjin; end of the Edo period, 19th century, Japan. Ann and Gabriel Barbier-Mueller Museum, Dallas (Texas) ; the photograph was taken during an exhibition in the Musée des Arts Premiers in Paris #ImageOfTheDay

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Doll (musha-ningyo) featuring Takenouchi no Sukune, minister of Emperor Ōjin; end of the Edo period, 19th century, Japan. Ann and Gabriel Barbier-Mueller Museum, Dallas (Texas) ; the photograph was taken during an exhibition in the Musée des Arts Premiers in Paris

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