Time for some Friday morning links: Judge Vaughn Walker extends the stay on gay marriages in California until August 18th, at which point the defendants must either appeal the decision or gay marriages will resume. Meanwhile, Walker himself isn’t convinced that they will have standing to appeal the decision in the first place. Read an … Read more
A while back on the blog, we had an interesting discussion about Catholic funerals and paring back the lavish accretions that seem a mandatory part of the modern funeral industry. By way of an alternative, several commenters mentioned St. Joseph’s Abbey in Covington, LA — a monastery that supports itself in part by building and … Read more
From the Ohio Columbus Dispatch comes an odd tale of warring protests: Employees at a local strip club were tired of the members of a nearby church protesting outside their club every week, so they organized a protest of their own outside the church. Fed up with the tactics of Dunfee and his flock, they … Read more
The column Brian links to below makes for discouraging reading. In an attempt to lighten the mood, I offer the following, as a sort of “bright side” to our current economic woes: With less money to spend, people are finding that they may in fact be happier without it. [T]he practices that consumers have adopted … Read more
What’s the right age for receiving the Sacraments of Initiation? Cardinal Antonio Cañizares, the prefect for the Congregation for Divine Worship, writes in L’Osservatore Romano that children should be allowed to receive the Eucharist “as soon as they are able”: Citing the 100th anniversary of Pope Pius X’s decree as a “providential occasion to remember … Read more
A few links to get the day started: Today is the 65th anniversary of the A-bomb drop on Hiroshima, and for the first time, America has sent an envoy to be part of the memorial services in Japan. Ambassador John Roos is attending to help advance the cause of nuclear disarmament: “For the sake of … Read more
A fascinating book review in The New Republic by Oren Harman tells the story of how the theory of infinity came to be — and how it was heavily influenced by the mysticism of Russian Orthodox monks on Mt. Athos. In 1913, the monks had been attacked and dispersed by the Russian Navy over their … Read more
The latest issue of the New Yorker has an excellent piece on the current sorry state of end-of-life care in this country — and not because of politics, or insurance companies, or any of the usual culprits. Rather, Dr. Atul Gawande says that, however good modern medicine has become at prolonging life, we are more … Read more
Over at the National Catholic Register, Matt Warner looks at a study of how churches (of all denominations) and their members use social media. A few of the findings: 61% of churches use social media. 62% of churches post homilies/sermons to a website as text or audio (podcast). 28% of church pastors have a blog. … Read more
Words of encouragement for Steve and all parents juggling family and writing (or any other creative pursuit): Frank Cottrell Boyce, author of Millions and father of seven, says that, in spite of the number of people who reproach him with Cyril Connolly’s aphorism that “There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the … Read more
Time for some Friday-morning link action. Somehow all the links today ended up being reading/writing/storytelling related, so get ready: Novelist Anne Rice, who had a very public reversion to the Faith in the 1990s, is now just as publicly breaking it off again: “I quit being a Christian. I’m out. In the name of Christ, … Read more
Over at First Things, George Weigel has written an excellent tribute to a man much beloved around here: Father James Schall. Father Schall is entirely incapable of blowing his own horn, so Weigel must do it for him: He is a deeply learned man, yet he wears his learning lightly. He looks the part of … Read more
Over on his newly launched blog, Michael Brendan Dougherty comments on children’s author Philip Pullman and his latest attempt to deconstruct Christianity. In his new book The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, Pullman follows a well-trod path by excising any reference to the miraculous in the Gospel accounts, leaving a Jesus who resembles … Read more
Because IC went offline last Friday while we worked on the redesign, I wasn’t able to post my usual Friday morning link round-up. (I know, it was hard for me, too.) One of the articles I had lined up that I didn’t want to go unmentioned was this excellent series from Emily Bazelon at Slate … Read more
Among the many awesome additions to the new and improved InsideCatholic, this is one that I’m very excited about: Introducing Cord Hamrick — aka “R.C.” — to our blogging family. This is usually the place where I’d introduce Cord, but longtime readers will know him already: R.C. has been writing insightful, thought-provoking, and encouraging commentary … Read more
It’s a pretty well-established fact that the new social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) have permanently changed the way we think about on-line privacy. But I’m not sure I had thought about it in terms as stark as those Jeffrey Rosen uses in his New York Times Magazine article, “The Web Means the End of Forgetting” (my emphasis … Read more
Lots of talk recently about Shirley Sherrod, the USDA employee who was fired yesterday after a video clip was released that purported to demonstrate her “reverse racism” in a speech she gave to an NAACP meeting. Andrew Breitbart, who released the tape, essentially said that the NAACP “started it” with their accusations of racism against … Read more
Lots of talk recently about Shirley Sherrod, the USDA employee who was fired yesterday after a video clip was released that purported to demonstrate her “reverse racism” in a speech she gave to an NAACP meeting. Andrew Breitbart, who released the tape, essentially said that the NAACP “started it” with their accusations of racism against … Read more
Last month, Governor Bobby Jindal signed House Bill 1272 into law, which gives houses of worship in Louisiana the authority to allow concealed handgun carry in their congregations. Catholics are out of luck, though: The Louisiana Conference of Catholic Bishops nipped that one in the bud. “We don’t think it is appropriate to have guns … Read more
I just got back from a week-long family vacation with limited internet access, so I’ve spent the morning trying to get caught up on current events (wait, we seriously had an earthquake here?). Wading through my feedreader, an article by Kathleen Gilbert over at LifeSiteNews caught my eye (via David Goldman at First Thoughts) — … Read more