thoughts in and out of season
James Kalb Get government out of the bedroom! So went the rallying cry of the movement to abolish public standards of sexual morality. It didn’t work out as planned. Like other traditional standards, customary sexual morality made it possible for people to live together and cooperate in stable productive ways without the intervention of public authority. If … More ...
What does it mean that our society has officially rejected the notion of a common moral reality in which all participate? (See, e.g., Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992): “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the … More ...
Victimology is as American as leprechauns: Historian challenges ‘No Irish need apply’ myth. There’s no evidence such signs ever existed, although Teddy Kennedy claims to have seen them in shop windows as a boy. Boston was more than a third Irish then. Maybe they were souvenir shops?
Here’s a revealing account by an English MP of negotiations with The New York Times over an op-ed piece. The Times wanted to change “Guinea” to “Chile” in a reference to a bribe to the president of Guinea, and get rid of the interjection “Gee” because it means “Jesus” and might offend Christians.
The concern … More ...
Diversity is our strength: young Arab men riot in Australia over Iraq war. Immigration policies there seem to be importing not only ethnic and religious conflict but also other Middle Eastern habits like denial of obvious reality: “Australian Arabic community leaders condemned the violent clashes but rejected police claims the perpetrators were Middle Eastern men.”… More ...
A traditionalist rant on why it’s OK to denounce heresy and also find fault with the Pope, Vatican II and what not else:
… More ...Today people lump all disputes with superiors together and call them “dissent.” That’s a mistake because it confuses questions of truth and obedience to rightful authority with the question of whether one
The Pope says that violence cannot be invoked in the name of God. Cardinal Ratzinger adds that “God is reconciliation and peace. He must be seen as the one who unites us and not as the one who separates us and justifies violence.” [The quotation is from an emailed Zenit.org story that I can’t find … More ...
Here’s an initial draft of my letter to Cardinal Arinze (see previous entry). Any comments would be very welcome:
… More ...Your Eminence:
I write to urge you and other responsible officials to be as generous as possible in making the traditional Latin mass freely available to the faithful.
I am a very recent convert to Catholicism.
Michael Davies has written a letter to member associations of Una Voce asking for letters to be sent to Cardinal Arinze in support of the Tridentine mass. It appears that Rome is considering something major, possibly a public statement confirming that every priest has a right to use the traditional rite when he chooses. It … More ...
Whither traditionalist Catholicism? One answer is that if God thinks it’s good it’ll end up doing OK, and if He doesn’t it won’t. It’s also possible to view the thing from a strictly human standpoint, though. And from the latter standpoint traditionalism does have certain strengths: