I just got back from a week-long family vacation with limited internet access, so I’ve spent the morning trying to get caught up on current events (wait, we seriously had an earthquake here?). Wading through my feedreader, an article by Kathleen Gilbert over at LifeSiteNews caught my eye (via David Goldman at First Thoughts) — … Read more
I can’t decide where I stand on the ban of the burqa (full veil) in France. I want to be against it — on the grounds of religious and personal freedom — but I see the challenges the niqab (face veil) poses to national security. It’s one thing to cover the top of your head, … Read more
Having just read Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuers’s new book, Exorcism and the Church Militant, one of the first things I asked him was whether he was afraid of demons. I shivered more than once reading through its short chapters, arranged as basic questions about the devil, demons, possession, and the rite of exorcism. “Not at … Read more
They’re a vanishing breed, the sisters. Of course some are still around, but precious few, if the statistics I read are correct. And almost none of them teach school, wear long dresses and rosary beads that clack when they walk, and have names like Sister Humiliata and Sister Chrysostom. If your only knowledge of nuns … Read more
The photo below was taken earlier this week by my friend Renata Grzan. Her website www.fortheloveofbeauty.com is worth visiting. Her photo evokes memories of my summers as a young boy, when days seemed long, and I needed nothing but a stick to pass the afternoon. I had invited Renata to take some photos of Chippy … Read more
The photo below was taken earlier this week by my friend Renata Grzan. Her website www.fortheloveofbeauty.com is worth visiting. Her photo evokes memories of my summers as a young boy, when days seemed long, and I needed nothing but a stick to pass the afternoon. I had invited Renata to take some photos of Chippy … Read more
The photo below was taken earlier this week by my friend Renata Grzan. Her website www.fortheloveofbeauty.com is worth visiting. Her photo evokes memories of my summers as a young boy, when days seemed long, and I needed nothing but a stick to pass the afternoon. I had invited Renata to take some photos of Chippy … Read more
The photo below was taken earlier this week by my friend Renata Grzan. Her website www.fortheloveofbeauty.com is worth visiting. Her photo evokes memories of my summers as a young boy, when days seemed long, and I needed nothing but a stick to pass the afternoon. I had invited Renata to take some photos of Chippy … Read more
This has been a bad press week for the Vatican, and is now made worse: A new Italian court-ordered study has determined that Vatican Radio’s main broadcast tower outside Rome is increasing the neighbors’ risk of cancer. “There has been an important, coherent and meaningful correlation between exposure to Vatican Radio’s structures and the risk … Read more
I admit I was taken aback by some of the comments under my article on Gov. Christie’s effort to privatize many government services, such as toll collection, etc. (“A Catholic Governor Embraces Subsidiarity“). Given the fact that Catholic teaching on subsidiarity is directly connected to the encroachment of centralized government into the lives of communities … Read more
At 5:00AM this morning, I woke for no apparent reason. Four seconds later, the house began to rattle. It was like a huge truck had driven by, shaking our home… except there was no truck, or anything like it. Earthquake, I thought. That was an earthquake. It was brief and didn’t continue so I promptly … Read more
During all the soccer mania last week, I thought it would be a good time to watch The Damned United, the (very loose) story of the rise of Brian Clough, one of England’s most successful (and colorful) football managers in the 1970s. It was a fun, lighthearted movie: Michael Sheen is fast becoming one of … Read more
The sordid story of Rev. Kevin Gray — the Waterbury priest charged with stealing more than a million dollars from his parish to pay for a secret life of homosexual debauchery in New York — is a scandal to Catholics and an opportunity for anti-Catholics. But the faithful must keep both the scandal and Connecticut’s … Read more
I taught for a while in Paris and, after knocking off work, would walk down the rue des Écoles, past the College de France, past the statue of Joachim du Bellay, to the Cinéma Henri Langois — the best repertory cinema I know — to see a Western. I took my seat in the dark … Read more
The Telegraph’s (UK) Damian Thompson is once again lamenting the seemingly tone-deaf Vatican PR “machine:” If I’d been put in charge of the Vatican press office with a specific brief to provide ammunition for the Church’s enemies, I don’t think I could have come up with anything better than this. Increase the penalties against abusers … Read more
About two years ago, a young man — name unknown — took on the moniker of The Faking Hoaxer (TFH), and began uploading a series of astonishing short films to YouTube. These aren’t your standard videos of dolled-up teens singing along to Lady GaGa. Rather, TFH’s specialty is producing disturbingly realistic footage of fictional disasters, … Read more
Stephen Phelan, communications director at Human Life International, writes at Catholic Advocate about the alarming attempt of Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) to investigate pro-life efforts to protect the unborn in Kenya. Reading about Kennedy’s effort to mount a federal investigation of a perfectly legal lobbying effort, you have to wonder if he is coming unglued … Read more
Stephen Phelan, communications director at Human Life International, writes at Catholic Advocate about the alarming attempt of Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) to investigate pro-life efforts to protect the unborn in Kenya. Reading about Kennedy’s effort to mount a federal investigation of a perfectly legal lobbying effort, you have to wonder if he is coming unglued … Read more
Newsweek recently published an interesting piece about the decline of creativity in America by authors Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman. In May, a professor at the College of William & Mary, Kyun Hee Kim, analyzed 300,000 Torrance scores of children and adults. Named for the psychologist who created it 50 years ago — E. Paul … Read more
Since at least last March, the New York Times has been obsessed with a question: “What did Joseph Ratzinger know, and when did he know it?” At issue, of course, is the role played by Cardinal Ratzinger — now Pope Benedict XVI — in relation to the scandal of clergy sex abuse. It’s a fair … Read more