My best friend still makes fun of me for something I said on a liquor-tilting night last century. Fired by some undergraduate combination of sudden conversion and Southern Comfort, I misexplained to her, “It’s just that my worldview is so unified!” This is one temptation of a certain kind of bookish Catholic. (Cradle Catholics … Read more
With 75% of the Massachusetts returns in, Martha Coakley conceded her defeat to Republican Scott Brown. Coakley was 7 points behind. The last time a Republican held the Senate seat, recently vacated by Ted Kennedy, was 1953! This election is for the Democratic Party what the 1755 Lisbon earthquake was to Enlightenment philosophers like Voltaire … Read more
This post over at the The Anchoress today is a must read. A missionary friend, writing from a city 30 miles from Port-au-Prince, paints a grim picture. They have received no aid, no help. As the Anchoress notes, reading the personal account is like reading a modern-day psalm. Also interesting is the info there on … Read more
This story has been getting a lot of attention today: Coded references to New Testament Bible passages about Jesus Christ are inscribed on high-powered rifle sights provided to the United States military by a Michigan company, an ABC News investigation has found. Oh boy. One sentence in, and already several questions are raised. Where to … Read more
Now this is embarrassing: Two years ago, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a report claiming — among other things — that the glaciers of the Himalayas would melt by 2035. Unfortunately, it appears that the researchers didn’t do a lot of actual, you know, research. In the past few days the … Read more
Writing for Catholic Advocate, Matt Smith deconstructs Sen. Barbara Boxer’s admission the Senate health care bill fully funds abortion, in spite of the accounting procedures that purportedly keep separate money for health insurance from money for abortion. Boxer Confirms Senate Bill Does Not Restrict Abortion January 20, 2010 By Matt Smith A buyer’s … Read more
Last week, I chronicled something of the bafflement that ensued as I was confronted with the weirdly malleable term “neo-Catholic.” Judging from the combox discussion that followed, many readers share the tremendous confusion surrounding the term. Did it denote converts or those who loathe converts? Was it code for “neocon” or for non-neocon? Was it … Read more
The Challenger disaster, the shooting of Ronald Reagan, the fatal crash of Ayrton Senna, and the assassination attempt of Pope John Paul II — I remember exactly what I was doing for these events. But while I don’t remember exactly where I was when I heard of the pontiff’s forgiveness of Mehmet Ali Agca, I … Read more
God has blessed my wife and I with five wonderful, wonderfully rambunctious boys. By necessity, I find myself more than passingly familiar with the struggles and rewards that accompany the “Nine and Under – Exclusively Male” crowd. A home as heavily testosterone-laden as ours provides unique challenges, and in a society that seems to struggle with just exactly what … Read more
In the second week of October 1942, Stalingrad was still standing, if cruelly battered after 80 days of siege and starvation. Ottawa announced that U-boats had torpedoed eleven vessels in the St. Lawrence Seaway. The Polish newspaper Nowy Swiat noted that the Germans had forbidden priests to wear crucifixes, since such was “not in harmony … Read more
Pope Benedict paid a visit to Rome’s main synagogue yesterday, where the canonization cause of Pope Pius XII — something of a sore spot in Catholic-Jewish relations these days — was almost guaranteed to come up. (Some in the Jewish community feel he didn’t do enough to combat the Holocaust, but others counter that he … Read more
Here’s a fascinating article by Ethan Watters in the New York Times about how mental illness is being exported from the West to other parts of the world: For more than a generation now, we in the West have aggressively spread our modern knowledge of mental illness around the world… There is now good evidence … Read more
As pro-lifers head to the nation’s capital this week, they are united in their opposition to abortion funding in the health-care bill. But, as they gather for the 37th annual March for Life, pro-life leaders are divided on the merits of the Personhood Initiative, a nationwide effort to establish legal “personhood” for the pre-born from … Read more
Last week, we met Uncle Harry, who had inherited an American castle-and-personal-museum from his grandfather, and his nephews Jody and Will. Uncle Harry disappeared at the end of the episode. This 1960 serial comes from Catholic University’s online archive of Treasure Chest of Fun and Fact. To be continued…
The monster earthquake in Haiti this week wrought unprecedented physical devastation and human misery. The disaster and its aftermath have created a world of pain felt far beyond Haiti — and it may be years before this pain can be fully assuaged. We cannot but empathize with the victims, among whom are neighbors and coworkers … Read more
No, I’m not talking about Cameron’s latest “Absolute Shoe-In for Best Visual Effects” epic, or anything involving Hannah Montana. (OK, that Miley Cyrus one — the previous record holder for 3D Digital releases — is probably more of a “lowpoint” than a “height,” but I couldn’t help throwing it in there. Studios will do just … Read more
I have a few — okay, more than a few — macabre interests that reach back into my childhood. One of them is an intense curiosity about fatal infectious diseases. (I blame early and frequent viewings of Little House on the Prairie, which seemed to have an epidemic threat each season.) I spent some time … Read more
Two news tidbits for an overcast Friday: First, as everyone knows, my neighbors to the south in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts are getting ready to vote on the Senate seat vacated by Ted Kennedy when he vacated the earth last August (they’ve been represented since by his temporary replacement Paul Kirk, whom state lawmakers appointed … Read more
The Times Online ran a great piece last May on Haiti, highlighting the history of the impoverished nation. Many people don’t know the background story: The appalling state of the country is a direct result of having offended a quite different celestial authority — the French. France gained the western third of the island of … Read more
If you wonder if there is any limit to the anti-Catholicism of pro-abortion “Catholic” politicians, you should try to get your arms around this story. Yesterday, Martha Coakley, the Democratic candidate for Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, was asked in a radio interview whether doctors and nurses working in a hospital emergency room have religious freedom. … Read more