The Catholic faith has always taught that sexual relations between two consenting married heterosexual adult human beings not already related by blood are not just good but sacramental. We got rid of the Catholic faith and assumed that would continue as the norm. Then racism got into it, and nutty racists developed a nutty theory … Read more
Much bustle here at Inside Catholic last week, as well as on my blog. Lots of people wanted to know why I was so adamant about defending the UK bishops’ suggestion that Muslim students be given a prayer room and other accommodations. To reiterate: I’m not particularly adamant about defending the bishops’ dubious idea. I … Read more
An article in the Daily Mail tells about some Catholic bishops in the U.K. who decided it’s a good idea to provide space for Muslim students to observe their prayer rituals in Catholic schools. The bishops also suggested that “existing toilet facilities might be adapted to accommodate individual ritual cleansing which is sometimes part of … Read more
Here’s a recent piece that asks the musical question, “Hitchcock: Monster or moralist?” In moments like that I most miss the common sense of G. K. Chesterton, who wrote: The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a … Read more
Bound up with the biblical understanding of God from the get-go is the conviction (one almost wants to call it the foregone conclusion) that God knows the future. This isn’t always necessarily the case with those delightful works of pagan imagination called “the gods.” In some pagan myths, one gets the impression that the … Read more
One of the great strengths of the Roman Republic was its courageous realism. When Hannibal defeated the Romans in the first great encounter between the two armies, a battle in northern Italy, the leaders of the city called the people together to give them the news, and the opening words of the announcement were these: … Read more
Discussing the moral sense of Scripture would seem easy. After all, we’re talking the Good Book here. Even when they were busy abandoning Christianity as supernatural revelation from God, Americans for the past couple of generations still tended to treat the Bible as a Solid Moral Code Enshrining Tested Values with some lingering respectability. … Read more
We noted last week that one of the principal problems of trying to treat Scripture as a purely human book is that, though God can supernaturalize nature, we cannot naturalize the supernatural. God can assume a human nature and join it to His divinity, but we cannot take a supernatural thing and reduce it to … Read more
Jesus famously said, “Seek first the kingdom of God and all these things will be added to you as well.” Elsewhere, He restated this principle using a different image and adding a negative corollary: Take heed what you hear; the measure you give will be the measure you get, and still more … Read more
For some folks, it takes a lot to dispel the myth of the hyper-controlling Church that only permits Bible study among the faithful after the insertion of the Vatican Orbital Mind Control Laser Platform chip in the frontal lobe of the brain. Indeed, it may come as a shock to such folk to discover that … Read more
As we saw last week, antique atheists like Bill Maher still imagine that people who take the Bible seriously must read it literalistically, as he does. However, there is a difference between literalistic interpretation — which is the habit of all fundamentalists, whether atheist or Christian — and the literal sense of Scripture. The Catechism … Read more
Bill Maher is on the loose with his new film Religulous. Proving yet again that within the breast of every dime-store atheist beats the heart of a Christian fundamentalist crank, the latest pop paladin of Truly True Scientific Atheist Thought sallies forth to combat the ravages of faithheads like Louis Pasteur who promote irrational superstitious … Read more
I think G. K. Chesterton is onto something profound when he says that when you abandon the big laws, you don’t get freedom and you don’t even get anarchy: You get the small laws. In other words, the paradoxical effect of attempting to be lawless is to become more and more legalistic, to parse words … Read more
I don’t know nothin’ ’bout economics and high finance. But I have eyes and ears. The national conversation about the Great Wall Street Meltdown, such as it is, appears to be something that takes place in secret government chambers, with news bulletins to us trembling laity who do not speak or understand the strange hierophantic … Read more
I’ve always loved this funny little tune from Chaucer’s day called “Sumer is icumen in.” Joyful and ebullient, it was doubtless sung by many an English peasant out sweating in the field and is full of the solid earthy, good humor of a people who were closely bound to the land. For them, one of … Read more
It is an old fact of Christian theology that concupiscence “darkens the intellect” — or, as I prefer to put it in more colloquial terms, “Sin Makes You Stupid.” The visceral reaction to Sarah Palin by the Enemies of the Normal in the Obama camp is a picture-perfect illustration of this. From the instantaneous embrace … Read more
By adding Gov. Sarah Palin, Sen. John McCain made his presidential ticket a whole lot more attractive. (See my own endorsement: “Me Vote Pretty This Time.”) Of course, Palin’s presence is no guarantee that McCain will keep his word and appoint solid choices to the U.S. Supreme Court — any more than doting husband Al … Read more
Appearing Sunday on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Sen. Barack Obama tried to undo the damage done by his Saddleback Church interview with Rick Warren — specifically his comment that the question of when an unborn child receives human rights was “above [his] pay grade.” “Was that phrase too flip?” Stephanopoulos asked Obama. “Probably,” Obama … Read more
The pictures say it all. No, not the Tigh/Roslin ’08 pictures (though they do make you wonder). I mean these pictures here. The believers in the Lightworker (i.e., most MSM types) have all of a sudden morphed into upstanding Republican Puritans of a kind not seen since Ozzie and Harriet ruled the earth. So we … Read more
Scene: The Democratic Convention. Denver, August 26, 2008. HILLARY CLINTON motions her hand to speak. FIRST CITIZEN. Stay, ho! and let us hear Hillary. THIRD CITIZEN. Let her go up into the public chair; We’ll hear her. — Noble Hillary, go up. HILLARY. For Obama’s sake, I am beholding to you. [Goes up, clad in … Read more