I have a few — okay, more than a few — macabre interests that reach back into my childhood. One of them is an intense curiosity about fatal infectious diseases. (I blame early and frequent viewings of Little House on the Prairie, which seemed to have an epidemic threat each season.) I spent some time … Read more
Two news tidbits for an overcast Friday: First, as everyone knows, my neighbors to the south in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts are getting ready to vote on the Senate seat vacated by Ted Kennedy when he vacated the earth last August (they’ve been represented since by his temporary replacement Paul Kirk, whom state lawmakers appointed … Read more
The Times Online ran a great piece last May on Haiti, highlighting the history of the impoverished nation. Many people don’t know the background story: The appalling state of the country is a direct result of having offended a quite different celestial authority — the French. France gained the western third of the island of … Read more
If you wonder if there is any limit to the anti-Catholicism of pro-abortion “Catholic” politicians, you should try to get your arms around this story. Yesterday, Martha Coakley, the Democratic candidate for Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, was asked in a radio interview whether doctors and nurses working in a hospital emergency room have religious freedom. … Read more
Time for your Friday morning round-up: Via the Anchoress, Archbishop Dolan on the earthquake in Haiti: “Haiti is the broken, bloody body of Jesus, in the arms of His blessed mother, crying out to the world now for aid and assistance.” If you’re still looking for a way to help, Lizzie has one of the … Read more
Catholics in America have more reasons than ever to worry about the future of the law. The legal practice of the Catholic faith in the United States is already becoming difficult because of funding abortions via our taxes, scuttling our philanthropic organizations rather than supporting same-sex marriage, or paying for the artificial contraception of Catholic … Read more
Burly, red-headed slugger Mark McGwire’s spine-tingling pursuit of Roger Maris’ single-season home run record was credited by many for returning baseball to its post-strike popularity. His head-to-head battle with Slammin’ Sammy Sosa as they chased Maris through the Dog Days of 1998 was the stuff sports writers’ dreams are made of, and when he finally broke the record (on September 8, … Read more
A happy announcement for carpetbagging opportunists everywhere: You have a new king, and his name is Harold Ford, Jr. You may remember Ford as the former five-term Congressman from Tennessee, where his voting record — and campaign rhetoric — marked him as a moderate Democrat. But political winds rarely blow in one direction for long, … Read more
Three Virginia Catholics are leading the resistance against the encroaching power of the Obama White House. As reported in the Washington Post, legislation has been introduced to curb federal power over health insurance, interstate commerce, and gun regulation. Three of the leaders behind this effort are pro-life Catholics: Robert G. Marshall, a delegate to the … Read more
It was Easter in 2006 and I was attending a Maronite Catholic Mass in the Middle East. I was (somewhat cockily) celebrating the Risen Lord with my new found ability to read Arabic. The Liturgy was beautiful, the music angelic (with everyone singing), and the Mass really, really long. I guess I shouldn’t have been … Read more
So much for genetically modified (GM) foods being ‘absolutely safe.’ The Huffington Post reports that a study released by the International Journal of Biological Sciences shows that GM corn is linked to organ damage in rats. The study looked at three varieties of big agribusiness Monsanto’s GM corn — all three were approved for human … Read more
The full extent of the damage from the earthquake in Haiti yesterday is still unknown — the death toll has been estimated in the thousands already. Tragically, among those confirmed dead is the Archbishop of Port-au-Prince, Joseph Serge Miot, along with perhaps hundreds of priests and seminarians throughout the region: “Port-au-Prince is totally devastated. . … Read more
If you haven’t read The Screwtape Letters, you should. In fact, click over there right now and buy it. C. S. Lewis’s harrowing look inside of the mind of a “designated tempter” (he’s just like a guardian angel, except . . . the opposite) isn’t just insightful entertainment; it’s more like reading an intercepted copy … Read more
The full extent of the damage from the earthquake in Haiti yesterday is still unknown — the death toll has been estimated in the thousands already. Tragically, among those confirmed dead is the Archbishop of Port-au-Prince, Joseph Serge Miot, along with perhaps hundreds of priests and seminarians throughout the region: “Port-au-Prince is totally devastated. . … Read more
Starting a business is hard, but one of the most enjoyable things I’ve ever done in the last 24 years (yeah, and there’s this “lapse in the blog thing”–again. Mea maxima culpa.) Anyway, the very nature of my job is to create economies in a global environment, but through local resources and talent. While the … Read more
This is wild. The Catholic University of America has unveiled a Rembrandt etching in a new exhibit that went up this week at the school — but the real story is how they acquired it: “I went into the restroom in Nugent Hall and opened a cabinet there,” [CUA president Father O’Connell] notes. “I found … Read more
Among political consultants in Washington, DC, there are a few who are principled, most are pragmatic, and a few crawl out from under a rock to go to work. Bob Shrum, consultant to the losing presidential campaigns of Gore and Kerry, emerged from beneath his rock recently to post a tirade against Bart Stupak and … Read more
On Christmas day, a Delta Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit narrowly escaped catastrophe when an intended suicide bomber who had passed through security could not get the plastic explosives he hid in his underwear to detonate. The attempt occurred as the plane was on its final descent, 20 minutes from landing, with 289 people … Read more
Today, while browsing YouTube in an effort to keep a 3-year-old-boy with an unknown-but-unfriendly stomach ailment amused, I happened across this intriguing video clip: My boys have several of the Superman comic book compilations from the 40’s and 50’s, and there are a handful of Superboy stories in there, so I’m familiar with the overall … Read more
Thanks to the American Papist, I came across this post on “The Anglo-Catholic,” translating the summary of a study done by La Croix about the “de-Christianization” of France. Father Anthony Chadwick has the grim numbers: Whilst, in 1965, 81% of the French declared themselves as Catholics, they were no more than 64% in 2009. More … Read more