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
Our son Chippy enters 7th grade this year. In fact, at this very moment he is attending summer band camp at the Frost Middle School in Fairfax, VA where he will start his classes in September. He tells me that he “needs” a cell phone because “all his friends” have one. I say, “Forget it, … Read more
Our son Chippy enters 7th grade this year. In fact, at this very moment he is attending summer band camp at the Frost Middle School in Fairfax, VA where he will start his classes in September. He tells me that he “needs” a cell phone because “all his friends” have one. I say, “Forget it, … Read more
Emma Silvers, an editorial fellow at Salon, has finally seen the light on popular hipster store American Apparel. Now the largest clothing manufacturer in the U.S., American Apparel opened in 2003 in Los Angeles after a short stint as a wholesale T-shirt supplier. Within two years, it had 53 retails stores in five countries. Its … Read more
When I arrived at Emory University for my doctoral studies in 1974, I had just finished three years at Princeton Theological Seminary as an aspiring Southern Baptist minister. Despite being a Southern Baptist from Texas, and having pursued Reformation studies — Calvin, Luther, and the Anabaptists — at Princeton, I was more than just intellectually … Read more
The Myth of Pope Joan Alain Boureau, translated by Lydia Cochrane, University of Chicago Press, 2001, 385 pages, $60 Pope Joan is one of the most tenacious myths of the Middle Ages, told and retold by Catholics and anti-Catholics alike since the 13th century. It is said that beautiful young Joan, an Englishwoman born in … Read more
It’s tempting to romanticize the ancients, but stories like this remind us why we should not. Archaeologists in central England have been reviewing a mass burial site of 97 infants on the property of a Roman villa, and have come to an awful conclusion: Archaeologist Dr Jill Eyers said: “The only explanation you keep coming … Read more
It was a cool fall day ten years ago when Dan, my husband, pulled our banged-up Volvo station wagon to the side of a country road and waved his hand toward the nearby woods. “This is it!” he beamed. I looked. I saw trees. “Here?” I questioned him. “Right here?” He pointed to … Read more
Rather than quote from the esteemed poet, essayist, farmer, and conservationist, I thought I’d post this short video of Wendell Berry at a talk in Arlington, Virginia, on May 4, 2010. The question posed to him related to our dependence on cheap oil. Let me know what you think. (Sorry, but they’re not allowing embeded … Read more
Time for your Friday morning links: In the Caritas Christi Health Care deal in Boston (where the Catholic hospital group was just sold to Cerberus Capital Management), how much is their Catholic identity worth? 3 percent of the purchase price. Pius XII just got a movie, and now John Paul II has… a musical? For … Read more
Modern liberal Catholic colleges and universities have made a mockery of academic freedom, as the recent Marquette “controversy” reveals (see my analysis here and here). Unfortunately, in reaction to the modernism, relativism, careerism, atheism, skepticism, and political correctness of the typical “Catholic” educational institutions today, some of the more unapologetically orthodox Catholic colleges and universities … Read more
“Europe will return to the Faith, or she will perish. The Faith is Europe. And Europe is the Faith.” So wrote Hilaire Belloc in 1920, when the death of Christianity on the European continent appeared to loom over the horizon. Now that horizon seems to have been reached. A mere 21 percent of Europeans say … Read more
The Daily Telegraph reports that theologian Gunnar Samuelsson from Gothenburg University believes Jesus wasn’t nailed to a cross at all — his ‘crucifixion’ is based on artistic renderings and Christian tradition rather than actual antique texts: Mr Samuelsson, who has written a 400-page thesis after studying the original texts, said: “The problem is descriptions of … Read more
To put it bluntly, this rules: Dozens of people who were blinded or otherwise suffered severe eye damage when they were splashed with caustic chemicals had their sight restored with transplants of their own stem cells — a stunning success for the burgeoning cell-therapy field, Italian researchers reported Wednesday. The treatment worked completely in 82 … Read more
I continue to be impressed with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. In a political age where every elected official covets the office above his, it’s nice to run across an exception. During a Fox Business Network interview yesterday, Christie — a rising star in the GOP — was asked if he had interest in the … Read more
It sounds like something that would at one time have been every British Catholic’s dream: The pope comes to England for a state visit; he is received by Her Majesty the Queen; he addresses members of Parliament in Westminster’s Great Hall, where St. Thomas More was tried four centuries earlier; and he celebrates a great … Read more
If you’ve ever been to a contemporary Evangelical church, you will love this good-natured satire. From the tattooed youth pastor to the worship leader/auteur, the filmmakers have absolutely nailed the Evangelical ‘liturgy.’ Enjoy: