Good morning! Time for your Friday links: Holland proposes extending the option of euthanasia to healthy people over 70 who simply “consider their lives complete” and want to end it. ‘How I found God and peace with my atheist brother’: Peter Hitchens discusses his truce with brother Christopher after 50 years. How will the world … Read more
Having grown up in some of the most liberal dioceses in California, there were many times when I had to endure some questionable thinking from some pretty high places. During my confirmation classes, I was subjected to a sermon by the then pastor (who later left the priesthood) about how Catholic couples should get married … Read more
The 1998 Malachi Martin novel, Windswept House, opens with a Satanic ritual performed at St. Paul’s chapel inside Vatican City by members at every level of the Catholic clergy. The purpose? To open the door of the Church to the Devil’s influence, and lead to the destruction of Catholicism from within. The premise of the … Read more
A man married a pillow in Korea. No, seriously. He dressed the Japanese anime character-themed body pillow in a wedding dress and had some kind of ceremony. When they go out to eat — as apparently, they do — he orders meals for his wife-pillow. They ride roller coasters together, for heaven’s sake. And according … Read more
Dallas received word today that Pope Benedict has appointed two new auxiliary bishops to the rapidly growing diocese: Father J. Douglas Deshotel and Monsignor Mark Seitz will take up their posts in late April. But this won’t be the first time that Monsignor Seitz will have made the local news. He’s already gained some notoreity … Read more
Bob Collins at Minnesota Public Radio received a first-class letter from the U.S. Census, telling him that they’ll be sending him another letter next week. The apparent foolishness of the exercise got him thinking about its expense: There were 105,480,101 households in 2000. At 500 sheets of paper per ream, that’s 210,960 reams of paper … Read more
The lobbying strategy of the Catholic bishops in the health-care debate thus far has been one of qualified support. We support the health-care reform bill, the bishops argue, as long as it does not contain abortion funding and provides conscience protection for health-care workers. The only help the bishops have received in their effort is … Read more
Everyone remembers this awkward moment from January’s State of the Union address: Justice Alito made headlines at the time for his “not true” comment, but now Chief Justice Roberts is speaking out on the incident. When asked about it while visiting the University of Alabama School of Law yesterday, Roberts responded, “To the extent the … Read more
The Atlantic ran an article by Corby Kummer this month exploring the question of whether Walmart may actually help small farmers and restore our citizens to health. As you can guess, I nearly choked on my breakfast. In the end, though, I found Kummer’s piece interesting. Walmart has decided to grab at the locovore, health-conscious market … Read more
My former editor at the National Catholic Register, Tom Hoopes, has done me a courtesy rarely afforded tradition-minded Catholics: He has stooped to address my arguments, instead of airily dismissing them as the sad obsessions of half-wits, bag ladies, and yellow-eyed anti-Semites with dirty fingernails. Sure, he did so in a blog post which referred … Read more
Over at OSV’s Daily Take, John Norton points to the perfect antidote to such depressing news as our Speaker of the House’s insistence that ” we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.” Only this antidote isn’t a thing; it’s a person — Dr. Raymond Leo Dennehy, Professor of Philosophy, … Read more
According to CNN, some Nevada Republicans are accusing Senate Majority leader Harry Reid of campaign trickery in his effort to retain his seat. They claim he has entered his own dummy “Tea Party” candidate into the race, hoping to pull votes away from the eventual GOP nominee. “No doubt about it,” says Danny Tarkanian, one … Read more
The news of the Catholic school in Boulder that will not allow the children of a lesbian couple to re-enroll next year has been making national headlines (and most of them not pretty). The pastor in charge of the school says he was merely complying with archdiocesan regulations; and yesterday, Archbishop Charles Chaput came to … Read more
In a few minutes I will be leaving the Radisson Hotel in downtown Sydney to meet a group of local Catholics Jessica Langrell has pulled together. We will dine and I will talk with them about “Culture and Catholic Identity,” using the bruhaha at Notre Dame over Obama has a starting point. I plan on … Read more
When America’s pro-abortion forces won their great victory of January 1973 — the Roe v. Wade ruling of the United States Supreme Court — they were not surprised to see that religious and moral conservatives were immediately outraged. Similarly, white supremacists were immediately outraged when the Court handed down its Brown v. Board of … Read more
IC readers likely will agree with the above statement. But hey, the argument is gaining traction, or it is if Luke Timothy Johnson , Ross Douthat , and Rod Dreher are an indication. Over at my blog at True Slant, I argue that Christianity’s materialistic turn has had positive and negative effects: To be fair, … Read more
The number of estimated dead from the horrific attacks outside of Jos in Nigeria this weekend has reached 500, officials say: The dead were Christians and members of an ethnic group that had been feuding with the Hausa-Fulani, Muslim herders whom witnesses and police officials identified as the attackers. Officials said the attack was in … Read more
Here’s an attention-grabbing headline for you, courtesy of the UK’s Telegraph: Nail from Christ’s crucifixion found? Not to be outdone, USA Today ran with: Archaeologists find crucifixion-style nail from the time of Jesus Sounds like quite a find, right? Here’s the story, as reported: A group of unidentified “archaeologists” were excavating an alleged Crusades-era … Read more
I’ve just returned to my hotel room in Sydney after meeting with Cardinal Pell and his secretary, Michael Casey. I don’t need to tell anyone what an extraordinary man, and bishop, he is. He’s still recuperating from some heart surgery, so I was very lucky to spend the time with him I did. We discussed … Read more
In the Gospel of Luke, the angel Gabriel tells Mary, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God” (Lk 1:35). Some sufferers from Mariaphobic Response Syndrome look at this and … Read more