thoughts in and out of season
Quite a remarkable story that’s worth passing on: How I Was Smeared, by Harry Stein. The man gave a talk in which he told a story about his son and an English teacher who thought Huck Finn “a ‘racist’ book … the word ‘nigger’ appearing with appalling frequency.” Because of the presence of the … More ...
New Labour is New Age, at least in the person of their First Couple: Ev’rybody must get stones (neolithic stone circles, that is). Cherie Blair does come off from the story as a bit of a crackpot. Is this a weakness of women in politics? Saul went off to see the Witch of Endor, but … More ...
I love the Tridentine mass more the more I attend it. In part it’s because of its clarity. If someone who had no idea what was going on saw it the only way he could make sense of what was happening would be to assume that everyone there thought there was something enormously important going … More ...
It does bother me that American Catholics won’t sing at mass no matter what the hymn. A priest I know with Polish and German conections blames the Irish. On the Continent, he says, it’s not like that. I dunno—there are lots of Italian-American parishes in Brooklyn, and so far as I can tell they’re the … More ...
The American Law Institute has urged states to update their family law by abolishing the family. Basically, what they propose is to abolish marriage by treating all “living together” arrangements the same, and to redistribute wealth by treating the breakup of such arrangements as an occasion for equalizing the wealth of the parties. The first … More ...
International politics as therapy: U.S. Pledges to Push Democracy in Muslim World. We’re going to work with the regimes in Muslim countries to help them work through their problems. Am I the only one who finds the language in this article bizarre?
In the course of writing an article on the “human rights” movement I ran into this report from the good folks at Human Rights Watch, a prominent “watchdog” organization: Ignorance Only: HIV/AIDS, Human Rights and Federally Funded Abstinence-Only Programs in the United States. The conclusion of the report: “Federally funded abstinence-only programs interfere … More ...
The Italian publisher of Mother Theresa’s letters and diaries seems to be putting out some teasers: Mother Teresa’s diary reveals her crisis of faith. Still, she became such a symbol that it does seem doubtful she was exactly as portrayed and as people wanted her to be. It will be interesting to find out … More ...
The Pope’s message for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees (“To Overcome Racism, Xenophobia and Exaggerated Nationalism”) is in one sense typical—it follows the line all respectable Christian religious leaders now follow—but in another sense quite extraordinary:
I’m dubious too about the projected war with Iraq, although the reason may be that I know so little about the situation. Still, it’s important to sort through the issues rationally. With that in mind, it seems to me that the definition of “just cause” as a case in which “the damage inflicted by the … More ...