While Pixar’s One Man Band still holds the (somewhat dubious) distinction of being my favorite Imaginative Busking Example Ever, this New York story is a worthy entry: On Monday morning, New York City added a new sound to its usual cacophony of honking cars and taxis, groaning buses, and screeching subways: 5,280 tinkling piano keys. In a collaboration … Read more
Drawing crackpot connections between seemingly unrelated things is a key skill for a writer. Whatever is actually happening in the world, he can use it to prove a point about whatever he was thinking about already. Metaphysical poet John Donne took a flea that he squished with a fingernail and stretched it out as a … Read more
According to a new poll from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press/Smithsonian Magazine, 40% of Americans think Jesus will return to Earth by 2050. Telephone and online interviews were conducted with 1,546 adults this past April. The Daily Telegraph highlighted some of the other findings: By mid century, 71 per cent … Read more
According to a new poll from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press/Smithsonian Magazine, 40% of Americans think Jesus will return to Earth by 2050. Telephone and online interviews were conducted with 1,546 adults this past April. The Daily Telegraph highlighted some of the other findings: By mid century, 71 per cent … Read more
According to a new poll from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press/Smithsonian Magazine, 40% of Americans think Jesus will return to Earth by 2050. Telephone and online interviews were conducted with 1,546 adults this past April. The Daily Telegraph highlighted some of the other findings: By mid century, 71 per cent … Read more
This time last year, the Vatican announced that it had discovered the oldest known icon of St. Paul in the catacombs of St. Tecla in Rome. Now, with the excavation of the tomb complete, they’ve discovered even more: Vatican archaeologists announced the image of Paul was not found in isolation, but was part of a … Read more
There’s an objection that Protestants sometimes pose to Catholics: Why should I confess my sins to a man, when I could simply confess alone, in my room, to God? I’m sure there are all kinds of theological answers to this question. But I want to talk about what the presence of the “other person,” … Read more
As a long-time SoCal boy, I have watched my former state’s efforts to get off the economic schneid with considerable interest. Yet no amount of concern for the Golden State’s finances can make me think of this suggestion as a good idea: The California Legislature is considering a bill that would allow the state to begin researching the … Read more
Two new pope movies have been in the news this week: The first is the miniseries Under the Roman Sky, which focuses on the Church’s efforts under Pope Pius XII to aid Italian Jews during World War II. (Pope Benedict even attended a screening during Easter Week.) On the other end of the spectrum is … Read more
A recent study suggests what the Church could have told us: many children of sperm donors are disturbed and unhappy about their origins. They are, according to the study’s authors, suffering more than those who were adopted: hurting more, feeling more confused, and feeling more isolated from their families. (And our study found that the … Read more
In a sadly unsurprising development, Jose Raul Gonzalez — who is allegedly one of the late Rev. Marcial Maciel’s illegitimate children — is claiming that his father molested him, as well. Jose Raul Gonzalez is seeking unspecified damages from the Legionaries of Christ in a lawsuit filed Monday in Connecticut. The international group has its … Read more
Last week, when the USCCB meeting in St. Petersburg coincided with the Catholic Health Association summit in Denver, the Catholic News Agency (CNA) ran several stories based on the testimonies of bishops attending the meeting. One of these stories got a great deal of attention. In it, Cardinal George castigated Sr. Keehan and the CHA for … Read more
Last week, when the USCCB meeting in St. Petersburg coincided with the Catholic Health Association summit in Denver, the Catholic News Agency (CNA) ran several stories based on the testimonies of bishops attending the meeting. One of these stories got a great deal of attention. In it, Cardinal George castigated Sr. Keehan and the CHA for … Read more
Last week, when the USCCB meeting in St. Petersburg coincided with the Catholic Health Association summit in Denver, the Catholic News Agency (CNA) ran several stories based on the testimonies of bishops attending the meeting. One of these stories got a great deal of attention. In it, Cardinal George castigated Sr. Keehan and the CHA for … Read more
Back in 1971, when experiments in educational theory from pointy-headed intellectuals with no children were just starting to become all the rage, my fellow seventh graders and I were pulled out of what used to be called a “junior high” and packed off to a newly built experiment in education called Eisenhower Middle School. It … Read more
I took the year off from Father’s Day yesterday. For several years I’d been making a point, in my secular newspaper column, of writing something quite opposite to “feel-good” on the subject for the Sunday corresponding to this secular occasion. But glancing through the last couple of them, I thought, “That’s enough now: People are … Read more
You may have caught the New York Times piece last week that made much of the fact that even economically backward Rwanda has universal health care for its residents (unlike the heartless U.S.). Of course, the Times didn’t tell the whole story… Rwanda is so poor, its per capita income is about 1 percent that … Read more
How would you feel about an iPad on the altar? Thanks to Father Paolo Padrini — the developer of the iBreviary app for the iPhone, and now an app for the iPad that contains the entire Roman missal — we may be seeing it sometime soon: Padrini, a consultant with the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for … Read more
I’ve been thinking a lot about the literature list and the categories I’d proposed, and I’ve come to a possible problem. See, in addition to what we’ve considered, there’s the whole problem of whether a work is: Christian in general (the Narnia series, Hind’s Feet on High Places), Catholic in particular (Lord of the Rings; The … Read more