In Colossians 1:24, St Paul writes: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church…” [From the Catholic edition of the Revised Standard Version as published by Ignatius.] I suspect, partly on the … [Read more…]
Pepe Escobar is a world-traveling journalist who’s worth more than the entire staff at CNN, Fox, New York Times, Washington Post, and most of the others in the American mainstream news-media. He seems to often be in the most dangerous regions of our planet and to have lots of solid information and to be able … [Read more…]
Whatever he means to be saying, Pope Francis sometimes seems to be strongly implying exactly the title of this essay: We Christians Don’t Do Truth But We Do Poor People and Immigrants. He’s in line with a good number of Catholics, including many of the bishops and Cardinals of the West and most certainly the … [Read more…]
A number of those most consistently and honestly upset by Obamacare seem to be libertarians and I’ll side with them on this issue though I consider myself to be what some have called Orestes Brownson—a radical conservative. I’ll ignore the clueless conservatives and liberals who think moral order to be a gloss upon their favorite … [Read more…]
In a typically erudite book review, The barbarism of reason: John Gray on the Notebooks of Leopardi , Gray tells us: With astonishing prescience, [the Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837)] diagnosed the sickness of our time: a dangerous intoxication with the knowledge and power given by science, mixed with an inability to accept the humanly … [Read more…]
In his catechesis for the general audience of 2013/10/02, Pope Francis had this to say: The Church is holy because “she comes from God Who is holy, Who is faithful to her and never abandons her to the power of death and evil. She is holy because Jesus Christ, Saint of God, is indissolubly united … [Read more…]
Conspiracies. Don’t underestimate the number and importance of conspiracies in human history, conspiracies political or economic or even cultural but usually criminal and often highly immoral. Don’t overestimate their importance in the general scheme of things but don’t forget their sheer abundance indicates they play a role in God’s story—I’ll pass over a discussion of … [Read more…]
What is a male? Is any human being with XY genes a male—the `Y’ chromosome being the carrier of genes which mostly lead to male development and the maintenance of male characteristics? (There is a recent discovery that the `X’ female chromosome actually can play a role in the development of males; this might greatly … [Read more…]
In a short article, What Does Memorization Have To Do with Learning?, Marina Olson addresses what I consider one of the greatest failings of the American educational system and, more generally, of American attitudes toward human culture and, indeed, all of Creation. Ms Olson’s article deals with one educator who seemed to attack memorization (Orlin) … [Read more…]
My understanding of communal being is more exact and more explicit than the traditional understandings of our social natures. This is to say that traditionalists are vague enough about their understanding of our communal ties that they sometimes speak as if not so far from various sorts of radical individualists. No matter how committed to … [Read more…]