During all the soccer mania last week, I thought it would be a good time to watch The Damned United, the (very loose) story of the rise of Brian Clough, one of England’s most successful (and colorful) football managers in the 1970s. It was a fun, lighthearted movie: Michael Sheen is fast becoming one of … Read more
Now that the World Cup is over, I can finally turn my attention to that other international sporting event of the summer: the Tour de France. Even without the drama of Lance Armstrong’s record-breaking back-to-back wins, the Tour is endlessly compelling to watch. I’m hard-pressed to think of a sport that demands more from its … Read more
The Associated Press reported today that Pope Benedict has appointed a senior Vatican official, Archbishop Velasio De Paolis, to serve as papal delegate of the Legionaries of Christ. De Paolis, an Italian, currently heads the Holy See’s financial office. The news report says it is not known what this means for Father Alvaro Corcuera Martinez … Read more
Time for some Friday morning links: 2010 has been a rough year so far for the Holy Father, but Sandro Magister says that, “for Pope Benedict, the Horrible Year 2010 is a year of grace.” Sad follow-up to Brian’s post yesterday about the murdered Chinese priest and nun: A fellow monk in the underground Church … Read more
Time for some Friday morning links: 2010 has been a rough year so far for the Holy Father, but Sandro Magister says that, “for Pope Benedict, the Horrible Year 2010 is a year of grace.” Sad follow-up to Brian’s post yesterday about the murdered Chinese priest and nun: A fellow monk in the underground Church … Read more
IC’s own Bob Reilly doesn’t just know music; he also has a keen understanding of the history of Islam and insight into its radicalization and current struggle with the West. All of this is laid out in his latest book The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist, which he … Read more
There’s been a lot of talk in the last week about Elena Kagan’s role in influencing partial-birth abortion legislation during the Clinton administration by rewriting a crucial passage of a statement by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) on the necessity of such a procedure. (Shannen Coffin has an excellent summary of the … Read more
The Netherlands managed to hold back Uruguay yesterday to earn a spot in the World Cup finals this weekend, and CNA notes that one of its star players — Wesley Sneijder, who scored against the Brazilian favorites in last week’s quarterfinals — recently converted to Catholicism: At the end of May he converted to Catholicism … Read more
John Allen reports that the Vatican will be streamlining the process by which sex-abuse cases are handled: The church’s current law in sex abuse cases was laid out in a 2001 document, known as a motu proprio, meaning under the pope’s personal authority, from Pope John Paul II, titled Sacramentorum sanctitatis tutela. Sources say the new revisions … Read more
While we’re talking about admonishing the sinner, can someone admonish this guy already? Wired’s Dylan Tweney recounts his live-tweeting of Wagner’s Die Walküre at the San Francisco Opera. I cannot fathom how he escaped the opera house alive. Look, fussing with your phone constantly—even on “minimum brightness”—is kind of a d— move at any performance, but it’s borderline sacrilegious … Read more
In his New York Times column this morning, Ross Douthat says that, in spite of the dark economic news on the horizon, we should beware the “pessimism bubble.” Just as there is such a thing as being irrationally optimistic about the future (the housing boom, anyone?), we can take the tendency to doom and gloom … Read more
Happy Day after Independence Day! Things might be a little slow around here today, as we all emerge from our hot dog hangovers; meanwhile, here’s a little thought experiment that should make us glad there were no blogs in 1776. James Joyner imagines how the Declaration of Independence would have been received… by bloggers: He … Read more
When I saw Laurie Goodstein and David Halbfinger’s 4,000-word article on Pope Benedict and the sex-abuse scandal in the New York Times this morning, I knew it would be a big story — but I didn’t have the time then to do anything other than link to it in my morning round-up. Since then, others … Read more
A few links to start the day: Get ready: The New York Times has another lengthy article this morning looking at Cardinal Ratzinger’s time as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — “Amid Church Abuse Scandal, an Office that Failed to Act” — claiming that he actually had the authority to … Read more
For those of you you haven’t seen Psycho and don’t know the secret of the Bates Motel… well, for one, I hope you’ll rectify that immediately. Also, you might want to skip the rest of this post. The rest of you know who killed Janet Leigh in that infamous shower scene, right? Well, turns out … Read more
This heartbreaking CBS report of a woman suffering from early onset Alzheimer’s has been making the rounds the past couple of days. It follows the story of Jan Chorlton, an energetic news reporter who was diagnosed with the disease at the young age of 55. Now, at 60, she lives in an assisted living facility, … Read more
A selection from Conan the Barbarian: The Musical. Need I say more?
Sociologist Gail Dines was recently interviewed by PULSE about her new book, Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality. The thesis of her book — that porn destroys sexuality by accustoming our culture to ideas of sex that are unrealistic and completely severed from intimacy and love — won’t be new to most InsideCatholic readers. … Read more
Tony Woodlief responds to the recent report that parents are actually less happy than non-parents by wondering if “happiness” is really the metric we want to use to measure a full and satisfying life: . . . I wonder if we ought to re-examine our commitment to happiness. It seems to me that there’s possibly … Read more
Thanks to Mark Shea (you did read his column this morning, “Counsel the Doubtful,” didn’t you?) for sharing this hilarious read: What happens when an American anthropologist tells the story of Hamlet to some African tribesman? Laura Bohannan’s thesis that “human nature is pretty much the same the whole world over” met its match in … Read more