C. S. Lewis once remarked that he was a converted pagan living among apostate Puritans. Our culture is, if anything, even more redolent of curdled apostate Calvinism than it was in Lewis’s day, and that fact can be seen everywhere. On a whimsical note, it is discovered in an NPR broadcast I heard a few … Read more
“The Church is alive!” Â Pope Benedict XVI spoke these stirring words five times over in his homily at the Mass inaugurating his ministry as Bishop of Rome on April 24, 2005. During a recent visit to the Pacific islands of Oceania, as chaplain on a cruise ship, I experienced firsthand what the pope was … Read more
Gov. Mike Huckabee will be a major player in the run for the GOP presidential nomination regardless of whether he finishes first or second in the Iowa Caucus. As in Iowa, Evangelical voters will undergird his efforts in Michigan (Jan 18), South Carolina (Jan 26), and Florida (Jan 29). Huckabee, however, will need Catholic voters … Read more
InsideCatholic.com asked prominent Catholic leaders, writers, and commentators to offer their predictions for 2008. There were some surprises… InsideCatholic.com asked prominent Catholic leaders, writers, and commentators to offer their predictions for 2008. They run the gamut from the humorous to the serious, from the likely to the merely hopeful. Obviously, the prognostications expressed are strictly … Read more
Here’s a short list of my favorite cultural finds from 2007. If you happen to have seen, read or heard one of these, be sure to leave your own opinion in the Comments section below. I’d like to hear from you. ♦ ♦ ♦ Best Film: Golden Door The one film from this past year … Read more
God’s Continent: Christianity, Islam, and Europe’s Religious Crisis is a rather scary book if you happen to be reading it on the island where I live, off the coast of North West Europe. Â Â God’s Continent: Christianity, Islam, and Europe’s Religious Crisis By Philip Jenkins Oxford University Press, 2007 $28.00 Â Â God’s Continent: … Read more
Do you know what two straight days’ worth of candy cane breakfasts, cookie lunches, and cupcake dinners — all washed down with sippy cups of juice — does to a 2 year old’s digestive system? If you don’t, Merry Christmas! Enjoy the blissfulness of that ignorance. If you do, Merry Christmas! And join me in … Read more
Mitt Romney, by his own admission, was a pro-abortion governor of Massachusetts. That changed on November 8, 2004 in his second term during a conversation with Dr. Douglas Melton from the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. According to Romney, Dr. Melton dismissed the “moral issue” of cloning embryos for stem cells “because we kill the embryos … Read more
A culture of death is a culture of fear and ours is a culture of death. Fear is a sort of background radiation, a certain slant of light coming through red, lowering clouds and casting a strange pall over what used to be called “normal life.” The signs of it are everywhere. Here’s some Muslim … Read more
“The Word was made flesh, and dwelt amongst us” (Jn 1: 14). We begin with the Beginning. The Word was with God. The Word was God. Flesh did not make the Word. What “dwelt amongst us” was the Word, the Logos, nothing less. This is a fact. The whole world is different because of it. … Read more
Children are different from adults; better in some ways, worse in others. In my own later childhood, my favorite words of taunt and abuse to my contemporaries were, “Grow up!” I was an atheist by then; the phrase was never meant as an allusion to 1 Corinthians 13:11. But I was still thinking as a … Read more
All I want for Christmas is more CDs. Â Let me qualify that request, as piles of unplayed material accumulate in my study, my family room, my bedroom, my briefcase, and my car. Defying the “death of classical music” predictions, there have been some 1,500 CD releases yearly — and bargains abound. When I was … Read more
In case you have some last minute Christmas shopping to do, the InsideCatholic.com staff and writers put together our own list of recommended gifts. Enjoy! In case you have some last minute Christmas shopping to do, and you’re out of ideas, the InsideCatholic.com staff, writers and columnists have put together our own list of … Read more
Whoever planted this news item might as well have planted a bomb. Last February, a woman at a local Pennsylvania mall was asked by security guards to cover up while she nursed her baby. In protest, over 150 “lactivists” gathered with their own babies to hold a “nurse-in” at the same mall. On Mother’s Day, … Read more
For some years, I have set aside time during Advent to read Hilaire Belloc’s short essay, “A Remaining Christmas.” First published 80 years ago next year, it has been worth my annual rereading. It is an extended reflection on the mystery of the Incarnation and of each person’s earthly journey. Even now, Belloc (1870-1953) arouses … Read more
In his excellent new book, 33 Questions About American History You’re Not Supposed to Ask, Thomas E. Woods Jr. explodes the common myths that surround the short life of our nation. Brian Saint-Paul spoke with him about two of those errors, which have appeared frequently in the media and popular opinion. ♦ ♦ ♦ Brian … Read more
Bishops are closing Catholic schools all over the country because they can no longer afford them. But this is the story of one school being closed that doesn’t cost the bishops a penny. Seventy-five-year-old St. Augustine Catholic School is the only Catholic school in Ocean City, New Jersey. Supported by three local parishes, St. Augustine’s … Read more
People with limited horizons tend to go for small and utterly implausible conspiracy theories. Blokes with some theory about the assassination of JFK are a dime a dozen. And for just that reason, they tend eventually to cancel each other out, leaving me simplistically thinking Lee Harvey Oswald was a trained marksman and a jerk … Read more
Imagine that you are standing in line at the supermarket pharmacy. As you wait to pick up your prescription, you overhear the pharmacist explaining to the person ahead of you. “To induce death, mix all of this into a sweet beverage and drink it very quickly.” Â Unimaginable? Unfortunately, no — that type of prescription … Read more
There were two political Henry Hydes, and until the second lived his life’s span (1924 – 2007), no historian would have imagined the Clarendon Papers of the mercurial Jacobite (1638 – 1709) being eclipsed in social importance by a Hyde from Chicago. In his Irish Catholic family, Henry Hyde had virtually no political option: To … Read more
