Frances Kissling, former president of Catholics for a Free Choice, has been disowned for not being consistent in her pro-choice stand. According to LifeSite News: Ann Furedi, chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), the largest abortion provider in the United Kingdom, has “excommunicated” U.S. abortion philosopher Frances Kissling from the abortion movement, … Read more
Reading Nietzsche taught me one thing: People can talk about values and really be interested only in getting their way. Case in point: All the talk about political “civility” is more about power than good manners. Specifically, it’s about marginalizing everyone who finds it necessary and appropriate to speak passionately on the subject of abortion. … Read more
Before examining the Catholic Church’s relationship with the Jews in the Middle Ages, it would be worthwhile to state an obvious yet often overlooked fact: The Middle Ages were, well, medieval. It is a fallacy (one that historians call presentism) to judge the past by the standards of the present. In a modern, post-Enlightenment world, religious … Read more
As Oscar Wilde once said, “Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life.” Evidence in support of his statement can be found in this mind-boggling article, courtesy of the Wall Street Journal: Life isn’t easy for the self-proclaimed superhero who calls himself “Phoenix Jones, Guardian of Seattle.” A 22-year-old day-care worker by day, he dons … Read more
Northwestern University is getting a lot of heat for the live sex-act segment of an after-class presentation (on campus) on sexual arousal recently. What’s lost in the maelstrom is the absolute farce this course is in the first place. Professor J. Michael Bailey’s Human Sexuality class has nothing to do with psychosexual development, morality, biology — … Read more
Shortly after entering the Utopia of all-you-can-eat dining halls and come-as-you-please elective courses, I found myself singled out as “the girl who hates college.” My peers concluded that this distaste for paradise stemmed from my apparently deficient education at a small, intimate Catholic high school. Maybe I was too sheltered, naïve, homesick, close-minded, and judgmental … Read more
Time for some Friday morning links: France’s ban on the niqab, or face veil, goes into effect next month: Face veils will be outlawed virtually anywhere outside women’s own homes, except when they are worshipping in a religious place or travelling as a passenger in a private car, although traffic police may stop them if … Read more
One hundred and seventy five years ago, on March 6, 1836, Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, Colonel W. B. Travis, and about 180 other brave men were killed trying to defend the Alamo. Their deaths have come to symbolize courage and sacrifice for the cause of liberty, and the call to “remember the Alamo” survives even today. … Read more
I doubt there are many readers here who are pro-choice. Why, then, do I write an argument against abortion? Why preach to the choir? Preaching to the choir is a legitimate enterprise. Scripture calls it “edification,” or “building up.” It is what priests, ministers, rabbis, and mullahs try to do once every week. We … Read more
Pope Benedict’s second book on Jesus of Nazareth — Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection — is set to be released next week, but readers can get a sneak peek at a few sections now. Amy Welborn teases out one of the interesting chapters on “The Dating of the Last Supper.” … Read more
Pope Benedict’s second book on Jesus of Nazareth — Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection — is set to be released next week, but readers can get a sneak peek at a few sections now. Amy Welborn teases out one of the interesting chapters on “The Dating of the Last Supper.” … Read more
One of my heroes, Wendell Berry, was awarded the National Humanities Medal yesterday at the White House by President Obama. Berry, 76, is a farmer and activist from Kentucky who has written more than 40 books. He just spent a long weekend at a sit-in at the Kentucky state capitol with a group called “Kentucky Rising” … Read more
“I wake up each morning with deep gouges in my back. I don’t know how they get there, and they won’t heal.” Thus began an email I received a few years ago from a young girl who feared she was demon possessed. She experienced other disturbing symptoms and admitted to a long involvement with all … Read more
If you’re having a hard time understanding the problem with raising the statutory debt limit (yet again), here it is on a family scale:
Earlier today, the Supreme Court decided 8-1 in favor of the Westboro Baptist Church’s right to be egregiously hateful by protesting at military funerals. Offensive as their speech may be, the majority opinion states that they have a right to it: Westboro believes that America is morally flawed; many Americans might feel the same about … Read more
The past few weeks have seen a contentious, sometimes enlightening debate over how committed Catholics must be to truth-telling, in what circumstances, and at what price. The issue arose when bloggers responded acerbically to the pro-life sting operations of the heroic Live Action operatives who exposed Planned Parenthood’s use of our tax money in violation … Read more
Last month I blogged about Shahbaz Bhatti, the Catholic politician in Pakistan who had been courageously speaking out against the anti-blasphemy laws in that country, even in the face of death threats. “I follow the principles of my conscience, and I am ready to die and sacrifice my life for the principles I believe,” he … Read more
Parliamentary Network for Critical Issues (PNCI) reports that Ireland’s Fine Gael party has won the largest number of seats in the Irish National Parliament’s lower house, the Dáil Éireann: Prior to the election, Fine Gael had pledged to uphold the nation’s pro-life protections: “Fine Gael is opposed to the legalisation of abortion” and “Fine Gael … Read more
In The Joys of Yiddish, Leo Rosten defined chutzpa as “presumption-plus-arrogance such as no other word, and no other language, can do justice to” and then offered classic examples of chutzpa in action: “Chutzpa is that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of … Read more
Anti-Catholicism has always been a problem in America, although today it is nothing like what existed in an earlier era. Catholics are part of the nation’s economic, political, and cultural establishment, no longer the lesser citizens of a society that was generically Protestant and fairly proud of that fact. But every so often, events conspire … Read more