Melinda Selmys asks, “Is Contraception the New Usury?” and poses a variation on an old argument. In her view, the Church’s teaching on usury has faded out of memory or practice because it’s just too difficult to obey; she forsees the Church’s teaching on contraception going the same way. She isn’t original in this line of thought, and Catholic Answers treated the question back in 2006 in “Did the Church Change Its Stance on Usury?” For a summary of the... Read more
Several friends shared this sad but inspiring story of a heroic French police officer who freely gave his own life for another hostage. NPR has details on the story here. Updated to add: He was Catholic. 2nd Update: More details on Beltrame’s faith. What can every Catholic take away from this incident? I think only that heroism is valiant, and we should all strive to live a life of self-sacrifice. *** What doesn’t work is trying to use this story,... Read more
Over the past five or six years I’ve gone from barely using Facebook at all to using it as a major communications portal. I use it professionally, to share my work, keep abreast of what others are doing, to chat with colleagues. Forming a Facebook group is my current go-to when I have a group of people I need to all get in a room to chat with each other, but they never get in the same room in regular... Read more
One more to file under “This is not a gun blog, but . . .” a public school teacher in California pulled the trigger on his firearm and was surprised to discover a bullet came out. Guys, this is how guns are designed to work: Pull trigger => Series of deadly events ensues. What happened in this classroom was not an “accident.” What happened is that the weapon did exactly what it was supposed to do. For those of you... Read more
A seventeen year old girl in Texas gave birth at home alone, stabbed the baby, and stowed it the neighbor’s shed. She faces possible charges of capital murder. But really? Just practicing medicine without a license. If, say, Congress passed the Born Alive Abortion Survivor’s Protection Act, things might be different. Then we’d have a law saying that you absolutely must finish stabbing your baby before it comes out of the womb. But for the moment? What this girl did is... Read more
So this was my online experience of the most recent school shooting: One of my Facebook friends was providing live updates from the site, relayed from her daughter who was getting the news from friends at the school. Meanwhile, three other of my Facebook friends, from three different parts of the US, were providing updates from their on-going efforts to get their children’s schools to finally do something about their kids being bullied. It was surreal and depressing and has... Read more
Up at the Times is an article on how to fall in love. The author used the technique developed in a laboratory study on whether it was possible to create emotional closeness between two people intentionally. Anecdotally, some people who have used the method have in fact fallen in love with each other. You don’t need science to know this, but it’s good that science is confirming what your grandmother could have told you: Spending time getting to know another... Read more
Last night the kids were up watching figure skating when the new 50 Shades movie trailer came on. I stood there astonished as the words “50 Shades” flashed on the screen of an otherwise innocuous-looking trailer, but since it started out clean I hoped they’d manage to skip the BDSM visuals and leave the kids in the dark about what the movie was really about. Nope. No such luck. Nice. Good ol’ family viewing. And before NBC gets all “but... Read more
One of the knee-jerk reactions to the Turpin family child abuse case is to call for closer scrutiny of homeschoolers. Otherwise, how will anyone be able to know if these children are being neglected or abused? Let’s see what the Washington Post has to contribute: Not long after the family arrived in Fort Worth, an older girl tried to run away but was returned by a local resident, Vinyard, the Turpins’ former neighbor, told the L.A. Times. He said he and his... Read more
For those just joining this discussion (as I am): Elizabeth Bruenig at the Washington Post argues against a GOP proposal to raise the work requirements for receiving government benefits. There are many plausible reasons for making such an argument, but . . . Darwin Catholic observes that her justification is not a sound one. I’ll pause here and say that I find this argument from Ms. Bruenig to be entirely true: The lion’s share of poor people are elderly, children... Read more
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