thoughts in and out of season
James Kalb We were told that if we’d be rational about sex, get rid of moralistic hang-ups, and accept individual differences, then joy, health and freedom would reign. Apparently, that hasn’t happened: New Anglican Sex Scandal. A number of women are claiming that they were terribly damaged by sexual contact with Anglican clergymen who were either … More ...
Thoughts on reading Veritatis Splendor:
The attitude that puts social justice at the center of moral life is anti-Catholic.
One of the special strengths of Catholic Christianity is that it deals unflinchingly with the problem of evil. The visible focus of every Catholic church is the Crucifixion—God abandoned and tortured to death. The point of the image would be lost … More ...
“Mainstream” has become the term for things that don’t seriously oppose contemporary advanced liberalism. The current situation regarding “gay rights” shows that there’s some point to the expression: advanced liberalism dominates public discussion so thoroughly today that you really do have to go out on a limb to oppose its most radical demands.
That situation … More ...
The freerepublic “latest threads” on religion are worth a visit now and then. One amusing bit I just picked up there is a collection of short pieces from http://www.theoniondome.com/, the EO answer to The Onion. I thought they were hilarious but it could just be me. (It helps to know just a little … More ...
Oriens, the journal of the Ecclesia Dei Society of Australia, has a worthwhile website with a good selection of articles, reviews, and other materials connected to the restoration of the traditional Latin Mass and its bearing on the situation in the Church generally. Among the articles I particularly noticed were The Papa Luigi syndrome… More ...
The strong Church support for the United Nations and the international human rights movement has always seemed odd to me. The UN and human rights movement want to do more than promote within limits a few universally-recognized goods like peace and prosperity. What they want is to establish an effective system of universal governance that … More ...
Some comments I made on the problem of evil in alt.religion.christian.roman-catholic:
… More ...Peter> one could ask, if one believes in the traditional idea
Peter> of an omnipotent, omniscient, loving God, how does one
Peter> reconcile that with the fact that this God, allows
Peter> innocent children to be periodically killed by natural
Peter> disasters?You’re asking
Another book finished: Michael Rose’s Goodbye, Good Men. It’s not a must-read, and I didn’t read the whole thing. It’s an accumulation of horror stories tending to show that many Catholic seminaries in recent decades have been dominated by homosexual cliques, heretics or both, that responsible officials have been disinclined to do much about … More ...
I just finished Ralph Wiltgen’s The Rhine flows into the Tiber. There was nothing very surprising in the book—to my mind it reaffirmed what I’ve thought before, that it’s an odd idea to call an ecumenical council to have open-ended discussions on what to do in general and make universally binding decisions. It’s … More ...