For those wondering what it might take to get swiftly laicized, this story from the NY Times yesterday seems revealing. A parish in St. Louis has been sued by the archdiocese over control of its financial assets, but that's not the half of it:
For more than a century, St. Stanislaus has enjoyed
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In the NY Times this weekend, G. Jeffery MacDonald, a UCC pastor in Massachusetts, responded to an article reporting the high incidence of burn-out among ministers. This report, based on a recent Duke study, will be unsurprising to anyone who has spent any time in the trenches, but what MacDonald
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I just finished reading Stanley Hauerwas’s engrossing new book, Hannah’s Child: A Theologian’s Memoir, which was recently treated by Peter Steinfels in the magazine. As with most things Hauerwas, I am left feeling both inspired and troubled by his account of what it is to be a theologian
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The NYTimes just reported the release of a letter from 1985 signed by then-Cardinal Ratzinger instructing that a known child molester not be defrocked:
The priest, convicted of tying up and abusing two young boys in a California church rectory, wanted to leave the ministry. But in 1985, four years
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A friend alerted me to this interview with John Allen on NPR regarding the abuse scandal. His parting words, which I think are right on: The church has been dealing with its priest problem, but the issue going forward is what is Benedict going to do about the bishop problem
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I realize that it is proper etiquette to respond to posts in the comments section, but I feel compelled to offer these thoughts on the vacuous nature of civility as a virtue. Basically I agree with Bob Schwartz who wrote in response to David's post that civility is "subterfuge" used to
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The NYTimes reported today on the latest version of "muscular Christianity," which apparently pictures Jesus as an Ultimate Fighting Champion:
MEMPHIS — In the back room of a theater on Beale Street, John Renken, 42, a pastor, recently led a group of young men in prayer. “Father,
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Recently, on this blog, David Gibson has suggested an interpretation of Obama's Nobel Speech in light of Niebuhr's Christian realism, which I pointed out is also a favorite trope of George Weigel. In the NYTimes today, David Brooks also reads Obama in connection with Niebuhr and ties both to &
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From the NYTimes today, Obama accepts the Nobel "evoking 'Just War'":
OSLO — President Obama, accepting the Nobel Peace Prize here on Thursday, acknowledged the age-old tensions between war and peace but argued that his recent decision to escalate the conflict in Afghanistan was
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My class and I are finishing the semester with a reading of Augustine's Confessions, and I always have found amusing, troubling, and insightful his discussion of the selfishness of infants. He writes:
"Thus, the infant’s innocence lies in the weakness of his body and not in the infant
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This came to me while I was jogging today and thinking about the piece Cathy Kaveny posted on from Rev. Know-It-All:
The twilight is hard On an old idolater. But he should have another look At that tattoo on her lower back. Granny should too, For that matter. Along with the contraceptive patch
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As Catholics consider the consequences of more Anglicans entering into full communion with the Church, Cathy Kaveny raises some interesting questions below with regard to how well the strictures on contraception will sit with these newly minted Anglo-Catholics. These questions are made even more
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Since I recently questioned the consistency of Notre Dame's policy on contraception and the paucity of parental benefits offered by the University to its employees, I thought it appropriate to share this most recent email message from President Jenkins to the ND community:
On campus, I have
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I was just recently oriented to my new health insurance benefits by the human resources folks at Notre Dame, and oral contraception is not covered by the prescription drug plan:
Oral Contraceptives: Drug treatment for correction of existing pathologies of the reproductive system only.
• To
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For the last few months, Katie, my wife, and I have included as part of our spiritual practice reading together (hopefully) edifying books that we take turns selecting. This week, we just started reading Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory, I am embarrassed to say, for the first time. I
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I just read a very interesting article by George Weigel assessing the "damage" that remains "After Notre Dame" in the dicesan newspaper of Fort Wayne-South Bend. In it, Weigel argues that the main problem with the whole debacle was the blurring of lines between the political and
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Echoing Taibbi's skewering of Goldman Sachs, the real economist, Paul Krugman, has a pretty damning op-ed in the NY Times today:
Goldman’s role in the financialization of America was similar to that of other players, except for one thing: Goldman didn’t believe its own hype. Other banks
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In this month's issue of Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi has a scathing piece on Goldman Sachs, in which he shows how the investment giant has contributed to and profited from inflating and deflating every major market bubble since the Great Depression. Now, the NY Times reports that Goldman Sachs,
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When the Obamas went out on their highly publicized "date night" a month ago, they probably didn't realize that they were a walking economic stimulus package. Or did they?
Daniel Cere's review (link for subscribers only) of Andrew J. Cherlin's The Marriage-Go-Around: The State of
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A short piece went up on the NY Times website last night in which the author describes her journey from a repressive Catholic upbringing, which seems to have ended in a falling away from the Church, to a rediscovery of her faith in the form of a progressive "Catholic under protest.&
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A couple months ago, Cathleen Kaveny offered a brief plug for the HBO show Big Love, which portrays the life of a polygamous Mormon family (the Hendricksons) trying to live their religious commitment to "the principle" of plural marriage in mainstream society. Following Cathy's
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Well, at least that is what Archbishop Henry Mansell wants Connecticut parishoners to believe. A letter was read in parishes across the diocese this morning encouraging the faithful to take action. From what I hear, bus trips to Hartford are also being organized to protest state legislature
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This past week, I had lunch with one of my Philosophy professors, Karsten Harries, who does not self-identify as a Christian, but given his specialization in nineteenth and twentieth century German thought, is quite familiar with the tradition. Our conversation veered onto the topic of the
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A while back, I posted a thread on Maureen Dowd's reading of Obama through the lens of Jane Austen. Last week, Stephen Colbert, with the help of Harvard scholar Stephen Greenblatt, offered this Shakespearean read of McCain, casting him in the role of Macbeth. Enjoy:
[video][/video
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In the last post on Palin's interview with Gibson, Bob Nunz pointed us to this episode of Bill Moyers' Journal. I was originally just going to respond in the comments, but I thought the piece was worthy of its own post. Here's the video:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUTmsHe36do[/
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Following Jean Raber's suggestion, here's round two of Gibson with Palin on domestic issues:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBA-obGXEec[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPmjhVg1YJ0[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTMiXoZZBEk[/youtube]
[youtube
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Anybody watch this? I can't believe she can give these answers with a straight face!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwhO8a1PLMQ[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cba-VU13Bsg[/youtube]
Two glaring issues: 1. In the first video, I think we've had enough "
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The New York Times has made available on their website a preview of this weekend's magazine with an article by David Leonhardt attempting to clarify Obama's economic ideology, which Leonhardt sees as a new synthesis of Milton Friedman-style, market driven solutions and New Deal-type, welfare
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In today's New York Times, Michiko Kakutani takes Thomas Frank to task for the cynical position he takes toward what he sees as an increasingly intimate entanglement of American politics with business in his new book The Wrecking Crew. In the book, Kakutani reports, Frank chronicles the GOP's
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In the interest of journalistic fairness, I thought it only proper, after offering a couple of posts on Obama, to cast a light on McCain. Rolling Stone's resident angry political commentator, Matt Taibbi, has had a couple of incisive articles this summer profiling the GOP's presidential candidate
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An interesting op-ed on New York Times.com today has Maureen Dowd comparing the 2008 presdiential race to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice casting Obama as Darcy, McCain as Wickham, and the American people as Elizabeth Bennet. Check it out:
The odd thing is that Obama bears a distinct
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I have been in a genuine struggle over the past several months to put my finger on the reasons for my decreasing hope in Obama's campaign. What is wrong with me? Am I just hopelessly hopeless? One friend dismissively suggested that I'm "just a system guy." But, I don't think that's it. I
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As Obama turns to address economic issues this week, David Brooks has an interesting column that suggests that the most important factor in improving our economic future is education, which research shows has steadily declined since 1970:
In “Schools, Skills and Synapses,” Heckman probes the
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I've never been a big fan of comic book movies, or the fantasy genre in general. There is enough drama and suspense in the banal evil and heroic good of regular humans not to need my stories super-sized. But it is true what they say: The Dark Knight is no ordinary comic book flick. This is not,
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I have been loath to write about The Hold Steady, even though I think they are one of the most significant bands working today, mostly because I fear that often more is concealed than is revealed when mixing criticism with art. I also wouldn't want to force a religious, and more specifically,
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Most of our political discussion on how to improve public education seems to focus on ways to encouraging excellence in teaching (merit pay, better training and continuing education credits, and rewards for student achievement on standardized tests), but after reading this story from Monday's New
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A friend recently sent me this piece from the Wall Street Journal. In it Alan Jacobs takes on atheists of the Hitchens/Dawkins variety for their unfounded assumption that a world without religion would be better. He argues that "the dark forces in all human lives" move under the guise of
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Last week found Michelle Obama attempting to re-introduce herself to the American public with a New York Times article as well as an appearance on The View. The Times article presented Obama as an accomplished lawyer, mother and civil rights crusader and ended with her saying that she would "
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Stanley Kurtz treats Obama's relationship with black churches in Chicago in a recent piece in the June 30 issue of The National Review, which relies heavily on an article Obama wrote in 1988 entitled, Why Organize? Problems and Promise in the Inner City. Kurtz attempts to skewer Obama on his
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The June 7th issue of the Economist contains a very interesting article on the philosophy of Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales. In it, Wales describes his early interest in Ayn Rand's brand of hyper-individualistic capitalism, which understood reality as "fixed and objectively knowable."
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Last Thursday, the New York Times reported on the controversy surrounding British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's "Terror Bill," which extends the time that the government is able to detain terrorism suspects without charges. In protest, at least one Member of Parliament has resigned.
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The May 1 issue of Rolling Stone contains an excerpt from Matt Taibbi's new book, The Great Derangement. In the excerpt, he recounts his experience undercover at a retreat with John Hagee's Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas. The bitingly satirical tone of Taibbi's criticism of what he
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The June 9 issue of Time Magazine contains a lengthy article on Tony Blair's new "Faith Foundation." Time reports that the purpose of the foundation is "to prove that collaboration among different religious faiths can help address some of the world's social problems." Blair is
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