Pope Benedict, on his flight to Portugal yesterday, regarding the sex-abuse scandal (emphasis added): [A]ttacks against the pope or the church don’t come just from outside the church. The suffering of the church also comes from within the church, because sin exists in the church. This too has always been known, but today we see … Read more
The Mississippi Gulf Coast still has not fully recovered from the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and yet here we are, awaiting another catastrophe. Massive quantities of oil are being released from a sunken off-shore drilling platform, about 5,000 barrels per day. The full impact of this disaster has not yet been realized, … Read more
Figures. No sooner do I switch out my snow tires in anticipation of our impending trip to Sunny SoCal than a May storm descends on the area. That’s the view from my office window this morning, and the weather man is predicting snow accumulation of somewhere between 10″ – 20″. I love it! (Though I must … Read more
An Introduction, in which the reader’s attention is firmly but politely grasped It is out of fashion, to say the least, to speak of gentlemen. Perhaps that is why there are so few of them. As Aristotle, the gentleman’s philosopher, said somewhere or other, when they are not gentled, men are worse than beasts. It … Read more
The high-fructose corn syrup scare is so passe, Zoe — the new terror lurking in our foods is salt. One New York assemblyman has already taken steps to fight this insidious additive by proposing a ban on the substance in New York restaurants, with a corresponding fine of $1,000 per salty infraction. My favorite curmudgeonly … Read more
One of the great black boxes in medicine is the placebo effect — we know that it works, but we don’t know why. The fact is, if you give a large enough set of people a phony medical treatment for some disease they share, a percentage will experience some degree of genuine recovery. And that … Read more
A religion that practices baptism is a religion that doesn’t have very rigorous membership requirements. No Herculean feats necessary to prove your mettle. You don’t have to hand your darkest secrets over to the Custodian of the Engrams for him to leverage you into keeping the Inner Secrets of the Organization. No proof is necessary … Read more
After Easter, the passage from John 21 about the catch of 153 large fish in the Sea of Galilee comes up a couple of times. The disciples go night fishing. After a fruitless night, the Lord, from the shore, asks: “Have you caught anything?” “Nothing.” “Cast your nets on the right side of the boat.” … Read more
Margaret, over on on NRO’s Corner Maggie Gallagher says that Kagan will be the lynchpin for same-sex marriage in all 50 states: A vote for Elena Kagan is a vote for “marriage equality,” which features in two key cases that will shortly be before the Supreme Court: Perry v. Schwarzenegger, which arises out of California’s … Read more
Lots of buzz today about President Obama’s pick to replace Justice Stevens on the Supreme Court — Elena Kagan. Conservatives are understandably nervous about her record on abortion; Steve Ertelt at Life News quotes Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony list, saying: “In the past Kagan has been a strong supporter of the … Read more
Award-winning actress and sex symbol Raquel Welch has a message for young women today, and it’s not what you might expect. In a piece on CNN Opinion called, “It’s sex o’clock in America,” Welch comments on the effects the Pill has had: These days, nobody seems able to “keep it in their pants” or honor … Read more
Award-winning actress and sex symbol Raquel Welch has a message for young women today, and it’s not what you might expect. In a piece on CNN Opinion called, “It’s sex o’clock in America,” Welch comments on the effects the Pill has had: These days, nobody seems able to “keep it in their pants” or honor … Read more
Sr. Carol Keehan responded to the standing ovation she received at a gathering of Obama’s Catholic coalition by making a very strange claim about her support of the recent health-care legislation signed by President Barack Obama. “We were in complete accord with our bishops and our church that abortion is a grave evil. There is … Read more
Halfway through the latest serial! Here’s the next episode in Frank Borth’s 1962 “Uncle Harry’s Monkey’s Uncle.” As always, these pages come courtesy of Catholic University’s online archive of Treasure Chest of Fun and Fact. Ooh, this should be good…
Many years ago, I visited the Carmelite Monastery in the hard coal region of Pennsylvania as the nuns were preparing for their annual novena honoring their foundress, St. Theresa of Avila. They told me of various intentions they had received for the novena, especially one that puzzled them: “Please pray for the knees of Johnny … Read more
Looks like the folks at NCR’s “Washington Briefing” had their collective Kum-Ba-Ya moment when Sr. Carol Keehan rose to speak at the podium. Michael Sean Winters describes the moment: Then there are those moments when a group of people want to express their profound admiration and love for someone and, given the context, the only … Read more
Looks like the folks at NCR’s “Washington Briefing” had their collective Kum-Ba-Ya moment when Sr. Carol Keehan rose to speak at the podium. Michael Sean Winters describes the moment: Then there are those moments when a group of people want to express their profound admiration and love for someone and, given the context, the only … Read more
Looks like the folks at NCR’s “Washington Briefing” had their collective Kum-Ba-Ya moment when Sr. Carol Keehan rose to speak at the podium. Michael Sean Winters describes the moment: Then there are those moments when a group of people want to express their profound admiration and love for someone and, given the context, the only … Read more
Jeffrey Overstreet, of the Looking Closer blog, is one of the film critics I look to with great regularity, particularly when it comes to identifying and analyzing the more “spiritual” components of cinema. (His book “Through a Screen Darkly” examines the ways in which “artists – whether they know it or not – have captured … Read more
In a recent message on modern means of mass communication, Pope Benedict XVI asked us to “give the Internet a soul”: Without fear we must set sail on the digital sea facing into the deep with the same passion that has governed the ship of the Church for two thousand years. Rather than for, albeit … Read more