Gerry Garibaldi, a teacher at an inner-city school in Connecticut, talks frankly in an article for the City Journal about why his kids are failing in school — and why the problem won’t be solved by more money: Thanks to the feds, urban schools like mine—already entitled to substantial federal largesse under Title I, which … Read more
Why doesn’t the Latin Rite Church just start ordaining married men again? If men can’t or won’t stay celibate, then why force the issue? Well, I peeked into the future, when married priests are commonplace, and this is what I heard in the pews: “Well! I see the pastor’s wife is pregnant again! What is … Read more
In a recent article at Salon, writer Katy Read admitted something that raised some maternal eyebrows: She regrets having left a respectable job and steady paycheck to be an at-home mom to her two sons for ten years. It’s not the quality time with her children she regrets, but the financial toll she’s now paying … Read more
Everywhere except in the field of jurisprudence, the reductio ad absurdum is accepted as a logical argument. The reductio always takes this form: If you can show that a certain premise leads to an absurd conclusion, then there is something radically wrong with the premise, and you then either have to reject the premise or at least … Read more
Nicole Kidman and her country music star husband, Keith Urban, welcomed a second child into their family last month. If you didn’t know she was pregnant, don’t worry — she wasn’t. Nor did she and her husband adopt. Here’s the statement they released to TMZ: Our family is truly blessed, and just so thankful, to … Read more
This piece by Joe Carter at First Things prompted me to think about hillbillies. It cites some studies in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology which found “that atheists and agnostics report anger toward God either in the past or anger focused on a hypothetical image of what they imagine God must be like.” … Read more
I have often cited Evelyn Waugh’s solution to living in socialist Britain. Life was possible there, he decided, only on the condition that he think of himself as a tourist. Was this ruse or realism? In a deep sense we are all tourists here, even when trodding the green, green grass of home. Travel is … Read more
I don’t know if you’ve seen this story out of Queensland, Australia, but it’s about a 13-year-old hero named Jordan Rice. With flood waters about to wash them away, Jordan was stuck in a car with his mother and 10-year-old brother: Warren McErlean, a passerby who tried desperately to save the family when their white … Read more
Years ago, when Russell Kirk wrote The Conservative Mind, he defined the towering problem of our time as “the problem of community lost and community regained.” It is natural that we crave community, which is the union we have with others through common affection and spiritual and practical interest. To desire community, especially the primary … Read more
My husband and I were recently inspired to pack ourselves, our eight kids, and 13,000 Capri Sun juice boxes into our twelve-passenger van and drive more than 1,500 miles to spend Christmas in south Florida. It was epic — if by epic you mean a wildly memorable trip that was “so perfectly worth doing” but also … Read more
The Independent has a story about one mom’s decision to bar the use of technology in her family’s house for six months. Susan Maushart was becoming anxious about the amount of her time her three children spent transfixed by technology. Her son was hooked on his gaming console, one daughter was addicted to social networking … Read more
I was just told about www.spokeo.com, a new “white pages” service costing (I believe) $2.95 annually. For free, I accessed my own name, approx. age, address, map location, house photo, phone number, and family members’ names (two of them, anyway), as well as how long I’ve lived in my house. If I were to pay the … Read more
Has there ever been a season that has stood by Hollywood longer or more faithfully than Christmas? From Clarence’s Twain-wielding celestial bumbler to Wallace and Davis dancing their former commander back to relevance; from leggy lamps and BB guns to John McClane’s profane holiday jingles — the list of memorable Yuletide moments is almost endless. Nearly … Read more
I don’t know if you’ve ever run into Rose Is Rose, but it’s a fairly long-running strip about a married couple (with a delightful, romantic relationship), their young son, and often his guardian angel. Imaging–a funny strip that doesn’t descend into cynicism and sarcasm! Amazon.com has lots of collections of the strip, and our family … Read more
Anyone looking for a last-minute Christmas gift for those notoriously hard-to-shop-for friends and family members should consider picking up a copy of Anthony Esolen’s latest book, Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child. Tony, a regular contributor at IC, has written many beautiful reflections here that comment thoughtfully on the sorry state of … Read more
This year, many people will be celebrating Christmas alone.Whether single, married, or divorced — or simply far away from family and friends — facing the holidays alone can be a daunting experience. And no wonder: Everywhere we look there are reminders that the season is for being together with loved ones. An inevitable onslaught of … Read more
Some clichés, like some books, seem wise when we are young. Most of the D. H. Lawrence I admired when I was twenty sounds pretty silly to me now. I remember embracing the cliché about the inferiority of institutional religion as opposed to personal “religiousness.” In those days, I bought the assumption that institutions necessarily … Read more
Fr. Philip Bloom of Washington state has a special mission to the people of Peru: He’s teaching them Natural Family Planning. The Mary Bloom Center, in the highlands city of Puno, near Peru’s Lake Titicaca, is named after Fr. Bloom’s mother. He began the center’s work during his years as a Maryknoll priest associate in … Read more
The law protects children outside the family much as it protects adults. In addition, children, have special rights appropriate to their age: The state forbids their neglect and guarantees them education, medical care, and the like. The crucial right that society denies to children is that of autonomy — the right to decide for oneself. … Read more
Given my usual tendency to (over)indulge in a bit of “tin-foil-hattism,” it’s hard for me to read this sort of thing without freaking out: A special team will monitor 9-1-1 calls about people in danger of dying and they will travel directly to a person’s home without being summoned. … The team — composed of two … Read more