“Here before us are the relics of St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus, universal patroness of missions,” he said. “It is good that this happens while we are reflecting on the passion for evangelization, on apostolic zeal. Today, then, let us allow the witness of St. Thérèse to help us. She was born 150 years ago, and I plan to dedicate an apostolic letter to her on this anniversary.
With 57 genders, coloring books and crying rooms for election results, endless crusades against “whiteness” and “heterosexism,” and the like, the notion of deferring to the educational seriousness and expertise of those in charge of the asylums of higher ed seemed much less appealing. Whom the gods would destroy, they first make ridiculous. But higher education has supplied the ridiculousness itself.
The
… has there ever been – in my lifetime at least – a time when a single set of rules and the attitudes and behaviour that goes with them has had such an iron grip on polite society? I don’t think so. Nor can I remember a time when people felt such a reproachful urge to correct and if necessary punish, or to see that others did.
Today in Philadelphia we see a new take on the broken windows theory, and that is the broken windows of parked cars after thieves have broken it and stolen the car owners’ valuables
The sheer volume of evidence for survival after death is so immense that to ignore it is like standing at the foot of Mount Everest and insisting that you cannot see the mountain.
… when we think about the presence of all these poetic books in a work in which we expect to find doctrines, and about the turn to poetry in so many of the historical books of the Bible, it gives us reason to think again
…. a liberalism which can go “this far but no farther” is the only way to resolve this question in a free society, and always has been. The alternative to permanent, toxic culture war is a live-and-let-live society, in which science is never “settled” but always open to empirical revision; in which the law can account for varying gender identities without replacing the central reality of binary biological sex; in which public education about homosexuality and the trans experience should be as neutral and factual as possible, and begin in high school, not before; where experimental medical treatments for childhood gender dysphoria are allowed only in clinical trials, and with plenty of counseling (where Europe now is); and where the core morality of homosexual and trans experiences are forever open questions. Why? Because they remain mysteries of the human experience which we will never fully understand (and I hope we never do).
Andrew is, I think, one of the wisest people around. If memory serves, we exchanged emails when I worked for The Inquirer.
To propel Christians back to this love, Reading for the Love of God examines historic reading methods in church tradition and well-known readers who are worthy of imitation. It contains a wealth of time-tested reading practices, including four ways gleaned from Jesus’ mode of reading: literal, figurative, moral, and anagogical. Hooten Wilson draws on theological as well as literary works to demonstrate various approaches to a text, leading to the contemplative mode, which she asserts should be “the end of all our reading.” She explains, “whereas the world trains us toward a utilitarian vision that is consumerist and destructive, the contemplative remains open to mystery and enchantment” and “is ultimately life-giving.”
My dear friend and neighbor, Bill Mattioli, is scheduled for back surgery tomorrow morning. For those so inclined, I ask you to pray for him. For everyone else, a sense of good will will serve.
… one of the defining characteristics of normal people is that our empathy machines, fortunately for society, are not so singularly transactional. We care about people even when it isn’t immediately obvious that there is something in it for us.The normal people on Monday did what the normal people do. But the abnormal people didn’t do that.
They heard the news, read the stories, took in all of the information that made you sad, and their first reaction was: anyone who can afford a $250k tourist trip deserves to die.
… if we we don't punch back hard against this destructive nonsense we are 'screwed,' all of us, and that includes the wokesters themselves, and their usefully-idiotic fellow travellers. The DEI agenda with its erosion of standards and assault on merit can get you killed.
In the concluding section, “Justice before God,” he explains how Christianity radically re-situates the virtues. From a Christian perspective, general ethical principles and virtuous habits, useful as they are, achieve their full purpose only in the graces that flow from Christ: “we must do what the Christian always has to do, change the order of things, give up the old starting-point and seek a new one, put away our old measures and learn to use the new.”
It’s no wonder that the public has lost trust in government across the board. Federal agencies are corrupted by bureaucrats with political agendas, pursued at all costs. Kerry is using hyperbole to scare his audiences into accepting his activist rhetoric. It’s not real.
Stage Fright
The world curves. “Go
Straight,” he told himself,
“And you’ll be back planting
Ageratum and marigolds,”
As he and his mother had, once
Upon a time. Only now he is
Grown old, catching up with
Those who went before.
To think his mother was only fifty
The year he finished college.
Even his grandmother was
Younger then than he is now,
When the only questions are
When exactly does the curtain fall,
The lights go out, the theater close?
And where do we go from here?
What exactly’s going on outside the theater?
Since when do you have to agree with people to defend them from injustice
For many years now, I’ve been teaching a course at my undergraduate institution on marriage – really, on the meaning and purpose of human sexuality. Most of my students arrive totally on board with the culture on sex and marriage. Yet, by semester’s end, they’re struck by the intellectual coherence, the moral clarity, and the beauty – yes, beauty – of the Church’s vision of human sexuality (even if they hesitate to commit to it).
Professor Marion Turner, Chair of the English Faculty Board at Oxford, said, ‘Poetry is the heart of the English Faculty and other Humanities Faculties in Oxford. Poetry engages and excites children before prose does. Poetry crosses cultures and time: in the pandemic many people realised anew its power and importance. I am delighted to welcome A.E. Stallings as Oxford’s 47th Professor of Poetry, confident that she will bring something new and thrilling to the role, as her predecessors have done.
I got to know Alicia at the West Chester University Poetry Conference. Delightfully brilliant.
We don't agree on things that a few years ago all would have agreed on, e.g., that the national borders need to be secured.
The technology was still pretty new at the time (the book was published in 2000). Social media did not even exist; Mark Zuckerberg was a junior at Ardsley High School in New York.
Nobody now goes to an airport for fun. Consider Heathrow Terminal Three, where every day is a busy day. Along with megahubs like Atlanta and Shanghai, Heathrow ‘handles’ – le mot juste – more than 50 million passengers a year.
Iranian women face daily threats of violence. More than 50 girls schools across Iran have suffered from apparent poisonings. Just last week, Iran put on trial the brave female reporters who visited Mahsa Amini in prison and told the whole world what the regime had done to her.
Under Nero’s predecessor Claudius, Seneca was exiled to the island of Corsica. It was a generally miserable experience, but Seneca apparently made use of his enforced leisure by writing plays, likely including one entitled Hercules furens, or The Madness of Hercules. Poet Dana Gioia has published a new translation under the general title of Seneca: The Madness of Hercules. It’s an excellent work, not only for the quality of the translation but also for the outstanding introduction to Seneca, his life and work, and his lasting influence.
In the spirit of Father’s Day, and in honor of a remarkable man who impacted not only his children but an entire nation, Plough’s Chris Zimmerman spoke with Daniel Ellsberg’s son Robert Ellsberg, author, editor, and publisher of Orbis Books.
“If the world can still be saved, it will be saved by the amateurs. The experts are more than most other people responsible for the mess in which we find ourselves. They know too much about too little, but each knows something special.”
Once before, Chicagoans came together to fight gangsters. Prohibition-era gangs had the city in their pocket. Police, aldermen, and even the mayor — Big Bill Thompson — did the bidding of the gangsters. The myth that Eliot Ness came to town and cleaned up the city is hardly accurate, but the methods used to fight and defeat the gangsters aren’t a myth. The city’s elites came together and, along with some courageous prosecutors, eventually got the worst of the gangsters off the streets and sent them to prison.
Used to be one of my favorite cities.
… Here is what wrote for the centenary (it was nominated for a Pulitzer):
“What! You gotta be kiddin’!” was the reaction of the inmate who had asked the question. By now, a tiny crowd of other women surrounded me—all with a similar reaction. “You’re in here for that? Why is that a crime?” And: “That’s ridiculous!” One inmate asked: “And how much jail time did you get for that?” I responded: “Forty-five days.” “Wow,” said one inmate, “You got more time than I go—and I’m here…well, never mind that!”
“
A proposal: let’s bring back the distinction between climate and weather. Climate regards patterns across hundreds if not thousands of years. Check out the graph of global mean temperatures for the last 500,000 years, which resembles an ECG. With a periodicity of approximately 100,000 years, the planet’s mean temperature has steadily dropped to about 5˚C (41˚F), then swooped up to between 10˚C (50˚F) and 12˚C (53.6˚F), rising on virtually identical gradients each time (without the help of a single coal-fired power plant). We’re now atop another 20,000-year upward swoop — thankfully, since my forehand would be really crap if I had to chase the ball on a glacier. Industrialized modernity since 1880 takes up so little space on this graph that it’s indiscernible. That is “climate.” Accordingly, I even dismiss climate skeptics’ observation that, according to satellite readings, warming has nearly flatlined for the past 20 years, because in climate terms 20 years is meaningless
The supposed “nonsense” of Carroll’s work is actually nothing of the kind. He employs an especially beautiful, tough English which, like the King James Bible, rarely uses words of more than two syllables and conjures up expressions in the reader’s mind (if he reads it silently) or in his tongue, (if he reads it aloud). Nobody now remembers the poems he satirizes in “Jabberwocky” and “You Are Old, Father William,” because the parodies are so much better than the originals, no doubt classics of their time.
Martinez, 53, a mother of four, claimed school staff told Yaeli not to speak to her mother about transgender issues, but secretly had her join an LGBTQ group that persuaded the girl that the only way to be happy was to transition.
Anyone who knows me knows that I am neither homophobic nor transphobic. I used to hang out in gay bars with gay friends. But I don’t think kids should be propagandized about it. People find out they’re gay on their own. I discovered I was straight very early in life. Well, I was raised by women. And don’t pick on any gay person if I’m around.
Philo was brought up in a pious Jewish household and would have studied the Bible and Jewish scholarly works. Alexandria was, at the time, a cultural melting pot of Greeks, Jews and Egyptians. Thus, Philo was deeply influenced by Greek culture and was a student of Hellenic philosophy. He could speak and read Greek, as was the case with St. Paul, with whom he has some affinities. He was a Roman citizen as well, as was granted to his father or grandfather by none other than Gaius Julius Caesar.
Much has been made of LaBeouf’s conversion to Catholicism as a result of appearing in Padre Pio. It’s not for me to doubt his sincerity, although I think it sensible to offer caution.
I ask every reader of this very negative review of a movie, that’s not about what you think it should be about, to pray for Mr. LaBeouf – that his conversion has come from the Holy Spirit and will sustain him all the days of his life.
“This report reveals what we feared most,” says Sean Vitka, a policy attorney at the nonprofit Demand Progress. “Intelligence agencies are flouting the law and buying information about Americans that Congress and the Supreme Court have made clear the government should not have.”