Good morning! Time for a few Friday links to get the day rolling: Protests against the president in Egypt are heating up — and so is the pushback from the government and police. There are reports now of Internet and cell connections being cut off (social media sites being one of the only reliable ways … Read more
Last week Creative Minority published a story about Ralph McCloud, the director of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, revealing that he served as the treasurer of a political campaign during his first year on the job at the USCCB. The candidate, as it turns out, was an abortion supporter. McCloud has responded, and Creative … Read more
As a person who makes his living in the media (and I wouldn’t if I had any marketable skill), I often wonder what is wrong with us. For when I stop looking for events in the media and instead squint my eyes — so that I am looking not through the mirror of the media … Read more
The last thing I wanted to do on a Saturday morning was discuss my husband’s death with 20 women. Not that he had died; neither had theirs. But, encouraged by him, I signed up for a workshop on what to do if suddenly widowed. Leading this sobering examination was a woman whose fate had been … Read more
Aware of my life-long fascination with classical music, Laurance kindly passed along this intriguing Wall Street Journal article, entitled “How Mahler Rewrote the Score for American Concerts.” Surprisingly, the article is not about the significant musical contributions Gustav Mahler made to the classical repertoire. Instead, it focuses on the dramatic, oft-overlooked changes he brought to the ways … Read more
I’ve mentioned IC contributor Tony Esolen’s new book, Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child, here on the blog before, but with all the flap over Tiger Mothers in the past couple of weeks — as well as Elizabeth Scalia’s recent article on encouraging wonder, not just rote learning — I couldn’t pass … Read more
This Wall Street Journal article points to another casualty in the economic slump: churches. Many are having to close their doors because they can’t make their mortgage payments: Since 2008, nearly 200 religious facilities have been foreclosed on by banks, up from eight during the previous two years and virtually none in the decade before … Read more
Contraception is the elephant in the living room of contemporary Catholicism: Everybody knows it’s there, but few people care to acknowledge the fact. Meanwhile, the accumulating pastoral damage that results from this state of collective denial is painfully real. Partly it arises from the circumstance that even churchgoing Catholics today live in a state of … Read more
Last night, the best response to the president’s State of the Union address came not from Reps. Paul Ryan or Michelle Bachmann, but from freshman Senator Rand Paul. Earlier in the day, he released a plan to cut the Federal budget by close to $500 billion. Paul’s budget cuts more than five times as much … Read more
There’s plenty of buzz about the upcoming Anthony Hopkins film The Rite, which tells me that, somewhere, some publicist is going to keep his job. In my long years as an obscure Catholic journalist (is there any other kind?), I’ve gotten regular invites from PR companies that specialize in the “Christian market” to preview movies … Read more
From the Magnificat‘s Meditation of the Day, by Caryll Houselander, on the feast of Saints Timothy and Titus: Christ is that good seed with which our humanity is sown… We are the soil of the divine seed; there is no other. The flowering of Christ in us does not depend upon pious exercises, on good … Read more
Here’s something my mother sent me out of the blue (no, I’m not pregnant). Seems like an excellent follow-up to the March for Life. You know, that day when hundreds of thousands of ninjas march to show their support of women and babies. I say “ninjas” because they somehow slip by the attention of the … Read more
I wasn’t able to catch last night’s State of the Union address, so I’ve been poking around this morning to see what I missed. (I might start with reading the full text of the speech here. Apparently there was something about salmon…?) The Wall Street Journal sums up what I’ve been seeing in a lot … Read more
It’s always something of a shock to me when an art critic I respect starts talking about politics. What startles me is how quickly someone who is intelligent, cultured, and well-educated can sound downright stupid. Such is the case with the New York Times’ Michael Kimmelman. On the front page of today’s Art section, Kimmelman … Read more
The otherwise inexplicable cure of a French nun suffering from Parkinson’s disease was accepted in early January by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints and Pope Benedict XVI as the confirming miracle that clears the way for the beatification of Pope John Paul II on May 1, Divine Mercy Sunday. John Paul II’s life … Read more
It belabors the obvious to say that Haiti is a mess. I was there for the one-year anniversary of the January 12, 2010, earthquake and can verify the reports of how little has been done to put the shattered capital, Port-au-Prince, back together again. The overall look of the downtown area is something akin to … Read more
Over at First Things, Elizabeth Scalia has an interesting column on the dangers of valuing “credentials” over a curious mind: To become educated is a marvelous thing; to have the opportunity to study is a privilege too many take for granted. But have we become a society that places too much weight on the attainment … Read more
The Catholic Advocate State of the Union Live Blog is back by popular demand. Join Deal Hudson and Matt Smith along with leading pro-life activists and journalists for a LIVE discussion during President Obama’s State of the Union tonight. Visit the Live Blog page on the Catholic Advocate website to sign up. When you click on the … Read more
Pope Benedict recently praised new media and social networking, while also warning people of its dangers: He said the possibilities of new media and social networks offered “a great opportunity,” but warned of the risks of depersonalization, alienation, self-indulgence, and the dangers of having more virtual friends than real ones. “It is important always to remember … Read more
A little more than a week after three Anglican bishops were ordained as priests in the new ordinariate in England, Our Lady of Walsingham, another wave of converts is announced: Seven Anglican priests and 300 members of six congregations are to join a new section of the Catholic Church, the Catholic Diocese of Brentwood says. … Read more