Sociologist Gail Dines was recently interviewed by PULSE about her new book, Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality. The thesis of her book — that porn destroys sexuality by accustoming our culture to ideas of sex that are unrealistic and completely severed from intimacy and love — won’t be new to most InsideCatholic readers. … Read more
Another good reason to homeschool your kids was offered by the high school of Arlington, Massachusetts: they aren’t offering to let students recite the Pledge of Allegiance in the classroom – even voluntarily. 17-year old Arlington high student Sean Harrington has been leading a crusade to allow the Pledge of Allegiance to be recited in … Read more
Tony Woodlief responds to the recent report that parents are actually less happy than non-parents by wondering if “happiness” is really the metric we want to use to measure a full and satisfying life: . . . I wonder if we ought to re-examine our commitment to happiness. It seems to me that there’s possibly … Read more
I don’t really understand the whole Twitter phenomenon, but I do know that it set off a small firestorm when Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff tweeted several times about the execution of convicted killer Ronnie Lee Gardner. At first he wrote: “A solemn day. Barring a stay by Sup Ct, & with my final nod, … Read more
As my eldest son’s Little League season draws to a close here in town, this (somewhat tardy) story seems eerily relevant: In “Field of Dreams,” Kevin Costner’s character builds a baseball diamond out of a corn field after a voice tells him: “If you build it, he will come.” Well, now he can buy it and so … Read more
If you are one of the three million iPad owners, I would recommend a helpful guide for taking advantage of all its functionalities. iPad Made Simple, co-authored by Martin Trautschold and Gary Mazo, is easy to read and takes the reader step-by-step through all its various potencies. I thought I had a pretty good … Read more
Thanks to Mark Shea (you did read his column this morning, “Counsel the Doubtful,” didn’t you?) for sharing this hilarious read: What happens when an American anthropologist tells the story of Hamlet to some African tribesman? Laura Bohannan’s thesis that “human nature is pretty much the same the whole world over” met its match in … Read more
Do we need a book telling us that monogamy isn’t natural, because our ancestors 8,000 years ago didn’t mate for life? Apparently so. A new book called Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha has just been released in the U.S., and while I haven’t read it, … Read more
Belgian officials have now responded to the outcry over their raid of Catholic institutions this past weekend — including the tomb of a cardinal — in search of documents relating to sex-abuse cases. They claim the search was prompted by a tip from the former head of an internal Church commission in charge of investigating … Read more
Belgian officials have now responded to the outcry over their raid of Catholic institutions this past weekend — including the tomb of a cardinal — in search of documents relating to sex-abuse cases. They claim the search was prompted by a tip from the former head of an internal Church commission in charge of investigating … Read more
Elena Kagan’s credentials to serve on the Supreme Court are being scrutinized closely, as they should. We know already she is strongly pro-abortion and gay marriage, which should be enough to cause most Catholics concern. Now we learn she is oblivious to the worst excesses of the government’s power to ban free speech, i.e., the … Read more
Elena Kagan’s credentials to serve on the Supreme Court are being scrutinized closely, as they should. We know already she is strongly pro-abortion and gay marriage, which should be enough to cause most Catholics concern. Now we learn she is oblivious to the worst excesses of the government’s power to ban free speech, i.e., the … Read more
David Weigel has apologized for the nasty anti-conservative comments he made to members of the liberal listserv Journolist, and is frank about his own motivations. I was cocky, and I got worse. I treated the list like a dive bar, swaggering in and popping off about what was “really” happening out there, and snarking at … Read more
David Weigel has apologized for the nasty anti-conservative comments he made to members of the liberal listserv Journolist, and is frank about his own motivations. I was cocky, and I got worse. I treated the list like a dive bar, swaggering in and popping off about what was “really” happening out there, and snarking at … Read more
David Weigel has apologized for the nasty anti-conservative comments he made to members of the liberal listserv Journolist, and is frank about his own motivations. I was cocky, and I got worse. I treated the list like a dive bar, swaggering in and popping off about what was “really” happening out there, and snarking at … Read more
Doubt can be the emotional equivalent of anything from a brief spring rain to a Galveston-destroying hurricane. People can feel doubt over whether to place two bucks on the Mariners to win (don’t) or about whether the God in whom they have believed all their life is a sham, a fraud, and a delusion. Doubt … Read more
It’s not every day that the Supreme Court makes headlines because of the cases it chooses not to hear: The US Supreme Court has declined to hear the Vatican’s appeal of an Oregon judge’s decision allowing a sex-abuse victim to proceed with a lawsuit against the Vatican. The Supreme Court made no decision on the … Read more
Over at the St. Austin Review’s “Ink Desk” blog, Richard Aleman has written a fascinating post on two areas about which I know nearly nothing yet which I find endlessly fascinating: the great Russian writer Aleksander Solzhenitsyn and the economic/social/geopolitical philosophy most widely known as distributism: …Solzhenitsyn, once crushed under the boot of massive centralized government, … Read more
When the history of 20th-century music is written in the next several hundred years, will it bear much resemblance to how we think of it now? I have long suspected that there is a hidden history of classical music during this period that would one day surface. I tried to write part of it in … Read more
Father Rob Spaulding, a new priest in the diocese of Cheyenne, Wyoming, was a seminarian when his life was changed forever. After having a few drinks with three fellow seminarians, Rob was nominated to drive the group home — but he lost control of the car and crashed, ultimately killing two of the passengers, Jared … Read more