thoughts in and out of season
At bottom, the “culture war” is a war between subjectivism and realism: does the world we experience get its order and significance from human thoughts, feelings, intentions and actions, so by choosing our thoughts and actions properly we can bring about a new Creation, or is it what it is largely without regard to … More ...
“Faith schools”—those with a definite religious orientation—have been something of an issue in England the past several years. The issue comes out of the secular and multicultural commitments of the British state. The problem is that secular multicultural education is always bad, at least on any large scale, because schools of that kind can’t … More ...
This stuff deserves an entry of its own. Here’s the latest story in the saga of New Age liturgies among the Episcopalians. I’ll try to move the comments here.
Further to my previous forum topic on this (back in the old forum, here), where I mentioned the increasing incidences of neoconservatives regarding Bush or America itself as the Messiah (such as in this image or the image described here), now some neo-cons have taken Johnny Cash’s song about the Second Coming of … More ...
Steve Sailer’s done the research, and it appears likely that Kerry’s IQ is actually lower than Bush’s. In itself the point isn’t particularly interesting, but as Sailer points out it gains some interest from the insistence of the Left that (1) “IQ” is an absurd concept that means nothing, and (2) lefties have higher … More ...
Here’s some background on how the American Catholic bishops came to sound collectively like standard-issue leftists, except on the issue of abortion: Social Teachings at Risk in the American Catholic Church. The piece is a collection of notes and snippets from a book by Michael Warner, Changing Witness, Catholic Bishops and Public Policy, 1917-1994… More ...
Here’s an interesting analysis of the outlook behind recent Vatican policies regarding Church, state, democracy, human rights and whatnot: What Kind of Caesar?. According to the author, Russell Hittinger, traditional Catholic teaching assumed that the state has a necessary sacral dimension—all authority, after all, is from God—and naturally wanted that dimension to be Catholic. … More ...
Mark Richardson, in [url=http://www.ozconservative.com/arewomenbetter.html]commentary[/url] on a Vatican position paper dealing with central issues of women’s lib, expresses appreciation (which is persuasive and gratifying to read) and also undertakes highly intelligent critique.
Mr. Richardson’s essay analysing this Catholic document serves, for me, not only its stated purpose but an additional very different purpose. To me, it … More ...
(Linked at RelCath: this story.)
So this is what pluralism has brought us to; where we can’t find anyone in authority with the cojones to just flat-out say certain beliefs are wrong, period – you’d think they’d be able to justify it on the basis that Satanists are too individualistic, and focused on self-gratification, … More ...
