Vagueness. That’s what Clark Whelton calls today’s spoken language in his column in City Journal, published by the Manhattan Institute. Whelton believes a linguistic virus is responsible, though he’s not exactly sure where it came from: I recently watched a television program in which a woman described a baby squirrel that she had found in … Read more
Recently I paid my $1.99 and downloaded the new iPhone app for confession. Seeing the app was subtitled “a Roman Catholic App,” I figured it wasn’t going to suffer from “Catholicism Lite.” (Whether the new app would meet the demanding standard of John Allen’s “Taliban Catholicism,” I was about to find out.) Since its release, … Read more
Here’s #3 of 10 in the 1952 adventure serial “The Treasure of Paradise Island,” written by Capt. Frank Moss and illustrated by Frank Borth. As always, these pages come from Catholic University’s online archive of Treasure Chest. More next week!
The feminist slogan of the sixties, “sisterhood is powerful,” was not in itself a falsehood, but insofar as it led to an eclipse or a denial of the value of motherhood, it created a great deal of confusion and unhappiness for young women. Whereas the late John Paul II saw motherhood as a fulfillment of … Read more
Time Magazine has an interesting article about a theory some futurists hold that artificial intelligence (AI) will change what it means to be human in the very near future. Our species will be transformed into something no longer recognizable, they say, and this idea has a name: “the Singularity.” The difficult thing to keep sight … Read more
So here we are, the day we started referring to “Former president Hosni Mubarak,” and I can’t help feeling, with my 20/20 hindsight, that maybe our own president didn’t play things all so well. Truthfully, I haven’t felt very confident in our foreign policy throughout this entire struggle. I was frankly surprised at the loudly … Read more
Many years ago, my mother compared her life as a mother of nine children to a Merry-Go-Round. She said it felt like she stepped on each morning and spun around and around until the end of the day when she stepped off, slept a little, and got right back on the neext day. Back then, … Read more
BREAKING NEWS: Egypt’s embattled president Hosni Mubarak has stepped down, and Cairo is rejoicing. I wonder what this will mean for Egypt’s Christian population, especially if the Muslim Brotherhood gains in power.
Before we get to this week’s links, I just wanted to thank everyone who donated during this week’s fund drive. Asking for money is not my favorite thing ever — none of us here particularly enjoys it — but we do it because we believe that strongly in what InsideCatholic is about. We have big … Read more
The great Orthodox theologian Sergius Bulgakov writes that the world about us was made for us to exalt, to spiritualize, not because matter is in itself evil, but because the good that it possesses was meant to be united by man with the God whom man serves. That is the meaning of our being … Read more
It can be lonely in the scientific community for a pro-life stem-cell researcher, as Theresa Deisher is discovering. In its latest issue, the scientific journal Nature profiles Deisher’s work — and her role as one of the co-plaintiffs in a case to discontinue federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research. Suffice it to say, her conviction … Read more
On the last page of the final chapter of Democracy in America, Tocqueville summarizes the comparison he has just drawn between the new democracy and the old order as follows: “They are like two distinct humanities.” This is very much the feeling experienced by the partisans as well as the opponents of the modern democratic … Read more
Ave Maria University announced today that Tom Monaghan, AMU’s founder, will be stepping down as CEO, and Jim Towey will be taking over as president of the university: “This is a huge win for Ave Maria University,” [Chairman of the Board of Trustees Michael] Timmis said. “We retain the vision and experience of our pioneers, … Read more
Have you given to InsideCatholic yet this week? If not, don’t make me call you a procrastinator — tomorrow is the last day! (I’m really good at nagging; just ask my husband.) If you need a little reminder, or you happen to be hearing about this for the first time, we’re conducting an InsideCatholic fundraising … Read more
The Catholic Herald has a moving profile of one Coptic laywoman in Cairo who has made it her mission to minister to the people who live in the city’s garbage dumps. There are 60,000-70,000 Zabbaleen, or “garbage people,” in Cairo who survive on what they can scrounge in the dumps — children fighting with rats over … Read more
John Allen, senior correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter, routinely uses the phrase “Taliban Catholicism” to describe “an exaggerated allergy to anything that smacks of secularism, liberalization, or corruption by modernity — an angry form of the faith that knows only how to excoriate and condemn.” Allen says it’s become part of the “standard stump … Read more
If this Washington Post article is correct, modern-day Hamlets are going to have to find a new way to express their frustrations: Acronyms have been around for years. But with the advent of text and Twitter-language, it certainly feels like we’re speaking in groups of capital letters a lot more. It’s a question that intrigues … Read more
Delicate museum-goers, avert your eyes now: A group of breastfeeding moms is planning a “nurse-in” at the Hirshorn Gallery this weekend to “highlight their right to breastfeed.” The idea was born when one local mom was told that she couldn’t breastfeed her baby in the gallery, and instead should nurse in the bathroom (only to … Read more
I’m sure it has happened to you: In the course of an argument about some timeless teaching of the Church, your opponent dismisses what you’re saying as “medieval.” In other words, your position (and the Church’s) might have worked well enough when the Black Plague was ravaging Europe, the majority of literate men were … Read more
The Interwebs are really lighting up with the story of a new iPhone app that aids Catholics in making a good confession. The app allows users to create a secure personal profile that then leads to a guided examination of conscience based on one’s age, gender, and state in life. You then “select” your sins … Read more