She wrote me at Christmas, as she always does. I annually look forward to her card and letter. She was in high school in my first parish assignment as a priest, and even back then we “argued” about religion and conversed about many things. She was — and is — remarkably intelligent, witty, and sensitive.

I have followed her closely these last nearly three decades, saddened, while not surprised, when she left the church. An “odyssey” is how she termed her spiritual journey, and I have stayed with her, prayed for her, coaxed her, debated with her, and listened to her for a long time.

This year her card held good news: she has returned to the church, and she reports peace, relief, joy, and enthusiasm. She reasons that what brought her back, after a quarter century of searching, doubt, skepticism, study, prayer, and membership in other churches, is that, for the Catholic Church, certain matters are non-negotiable. In matters of faith, she figures the Creed we pray at every Sunday Mass rather tidily sums up the non-negotiables in what we believe; in morals, how we behave, she has concluded that the non-negotiable is the innate, inherent, inviolable value and dignity of every single human life, from womb-to-tomb.

This discovery she attributes to Pope John Paul II. Her holiday letter reports that, in all the wonderful attention given him at the time of his dying, she began to read some of his teachings. She admits they could be a bit complicated at times, but she distilled all of his moral legacy to that one non-negotiable: that every human life was an unrepeatable miracle, created in the very image and likeness of God, the Lord’s work of art, and thus deserves dignity, protection, and respect, from the moment of conception until the advent of natural death. To tamper with that sacred life, to cheapen it, to hurt it, or, most tragically, to terminate it, is but a repetition of the original sin, as we would then claim for ourselves what only belongs to God — dominion over human life.

Thus does she claim that the church is “batting a 1000” (she’s a diehard St. Louis Cardinal fan, another reason I like her) on life issues. The baby in the womb, the hungry child, the expectant mother with no insurance, the undocumented refugee family, the death-row inmate, the little girl killed on the playground by a stray bullet, the children huddled in basements in Baghdad, the brave man near the end with Lou Gehrig’s disease — all life is sacred, deserving dignity, protection, and respect. Think of how differently we would treat ourselves, and each other, if we really believed that, she exclaimed.

And then she asked me if I knew of any good restaurants in D.C. (I do, as a matter of fact), because she is going there for the annual “March for Life” on Jan. 22nd, the 33rd anniversary of the Supreme Court’s tragic decision which has led to unrestricted abortion in our country. No other stage of life, she writes, is safe and can ever be accorded the dignity, protection, and respect it inherently deserves until the innocent unborn baby is secure.

That holiday letter on “non-negotiables” was the best refresher course in moral theology I’ve ever had.

Rarely do I save a Christmas card. Hers, I will. I thank her for her wisdom. I thank her for giving me this week’s column.