A few links to start the day: Get ready: The New York Times has another lengthy article this morning looking at Cardinal Ratzinger’s time as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — “Amid Church Abuse Scandal, an Office that Failed to Act” — claiming that he actually had the authority to … Read more
The Maldavian prince Stephen the Great won his first big victory over the Turks more than 500 years ago, and he celebrated by having a monastery built and hiring artisans to cover it in beautiful murals. According to Peter Wortsman in Sunday’s New York Times travel section, Stephen kept erecting monasteries and filling them with … Read more
Our son Chippy enters 7th grade this year. In fact, at this very moment he is attending summer band camp at the Frost Middle School in Fairfax, VA where he will start his classes in September. He tells me that he “needs” a cell phone because “all his friends” have one. I say, “Forget it, … Read more
Our son Chippy enters 7th grade this year. In fact, at this very moment he is attending summer band camp at the Frost Middle School in Fairfax, VA where he will start his classes in September. He tells me that he “needs” a cell phone because “all his friends” have one. I say, “Forget it, … Read more
You may have caught the New York Times piece last week that made much of the fact that even economically backward Rwanda has universal health care for its residents (unlike the heartless U.S.). Of course, the Times didn’t tell the whole story… Rwanda is so poor, its per capita income is about 1 percent that … Read more
Regular readers of InsideCatholic will know Eve Tushnet for her many excellent articles that we run here regularly. Over the weekend, though, she was introduced to a larger audience via a profile in the New York Times as “a gay Catholic voice against same-sex marriage”: “The sacrifices you want to make aren’t always the only … Read more
Some will say it’s already here, and I wouldn’t argue with them. The first gusts of the anti-Catholic storm have already been resisted, thanks to the courageous vigilance of Bill Donohue at the Catholic League. Now we have The New York Times‘ relentless barrage of reporting and opinion designed to force the type of “reform” … Read more
In his New York Times column this week, Ross Douthat examined the thesis of the recently released book Red Families vs. Blue Families, which argues that, with all their emphasis on no sex before marriage, families in Red States are “trying to sustain an outdated social model” that leads to “teen childbirth, shotgun marriages and … Read more
A New York Times/CBS News poll released yesterday on Catholic opinions about the Vatican, the pope, and the abuse scandal is a mixed bag of results, as you might have expected. Laurie Goodstein summarizes some of the findings: A majority of Roman Catholics in the United States are critical of the way Pope Benedict XVI … Read more
A few links to get things rolling this morning: The Church of the ‘Times’: Kenneth Woodward makes a convincing argument that the New York Times is “an institution with the soul of a church,” complete with its own secular magisterium. ‘An exercise in moral botox’: Mary Eberstadt eviscerates You Don’t Know Jack, HBO’s paean to … Read more
A New York Times story today sheds more positive light on Benedict’s track record against abuse than we’ve seen in that paper of late. The article describes how then-Cardinal Ratzinger attempts to investigate abuse allegations made against an Austrian cardinal were often stymied by political factors inside the Vatican: In 1995, a victim came forward, … Read more
Hans Kung is still alive! He periodically sends out messages to remind us of the fact — kind of Bin Laden-ish of him, which speaks to his ecumenical integrity. Last week he published an open letter to the bishops of the world with one message: Undermine my gracious friend and medieval dictator, your pope. George … Read more
On November 17, 1942, when Operation Torch had secured the Allied occupation of French North Africa, Winston Churchill sent a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt: Very deep currents of feeling are stirred by the arrangements with Darlan. . . . We must not overlook the serious political injury which may be done to our cause, … Read more
I collect illuminating tidbits from Modernity and offer them to discriminating readers from time to time. Herewith are the most recent for your delectation. Â A Parade magazine poll on spirituality reported that “69% of Americans believe in God,” and that “77% pray outside of religious services.” While the article invites us to find encouragement … Read more
Ross Douthat’s column in this Sunday’s New York Times is definitely a thought-provoking one. He notes that, whereas Pope Benedict is repeatedly pummeled by the press, John Paul II was generally well-liked, or at least respected — but that doesn’t mean that he was necessarily the better pope: The last pope was a great man, … Read more
With the upcoming retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens, the media have once again started counting the number of Catholics on the Supreme Court. A recent headline in the New York Times announced, “Stevens, the Only Protestant on the Supreme Court.” Well, so what? The Times article notes that Stevens’ retirement raises the possibility that … Read more
Patrick O’Hannigan over at The American Spectator had an excellent piece yesterday summarizing the various ways the New York Times got its reporting wrong when it published the “Vatican Declined to Defrock U.S. Priest Who Abused Boys” story. He breaks it into four categories. Here’s an excerpt outlining the first two: Issue One: Chronology. If … Read more
I think the thing that is most repulsive about the current media feeding frenzy on Pope Benedict XVI is the appalling combination of slovenly malice with the sheer self-congratulatory demand that Catholics should be gratefulfor their vendetta against him. You know: “Oh, we make some mistakes now and then, but where would you be without … Read more
Last week, hell froze over when America‘s Michael Sean Winters complimented George Weigel’s criticism of the New York Times. Weigel, distinguished senior fellow of Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center, also wrote a defense of Pope Benedict and the Catholic Church in The Philadelphia Inquirer today. Weigel points out that the Church, more than any … Read more
It’s sad to watch the New York Times, Washington Post, MSNBC, and others attack Pope Benedict XVI. The story they have spun over the last week about his supposed mishandling of the case of abusive Milwaukee priest Rev. Joseph Murphy is risibly tenuous. These once-great newspapers trivialize themselves by publishing front-page stories making obvious their … Read more