Roundup for Noontime Reading

Busyness has made me remiss in letting you folks know about Patheos’ Religion and Faith Book Club, which is currently discussing Stephen Prothero’s God is Not One, with a nifty tie-in to the PBS-series, which is also looking at the book. Sadly, neither the book nor the series has crossed my path, simply because of [...]

Beatifying Newman, Neri & More

One of the books I’ll be trying to read while in Rome is John Henry Newman; Prayers, Verses and Devotions, from Ignatius Press. Just as it seems like St. Philip Neri, my Patron for this year, may have had a hand in making Rome a suddenly reality (when I discovered that our lodgings are very [...]

The Elite Magic Circle – UPDATED

Check out Michael Liccione’s latest on the falling of the Catholic Church from the magic circle of the elite. Whatever the ideological coloration, if any, of a magic circle might be, just being part of a magic circle is usually bad for peoples’ souls. It constitutes a culture of privilege that insulates them from the [...]

The Wussification of the Workplace- UPDATES

:::WARNING: The very funny and insightful essay and link I am about to present to you contains a variation of the “S” word and several renderings of the “F” word. If you cannot handle the “F” word in any context, please do not follow this link. Go write me a letter about how scandalized you [...]

The New Celibates

How ironic that in a year where religious, and especially priestly, celibacy has been put under a microscope, debated and often excoriated, the secular hipsters in New York City are discovering the power that comes with celibacy: “I had man whiplash,” [Julia Allison] says. “I needed to put my neck in a brace.” She issued [...]

John Allen; definitive on Benedict, Scandals

The great John Allen, perhaps the best English-language reporter on the Vatican beat, does yeoman’s work in three different articles, to which I am linking today. Allen takes knowledgeable, sometimes devastating but always fair looks at Pope Benedict XVI and the crisis that has engulfed him over the past few weeks and has come to [...]

Sex Abuse is about Control and Power

The Catholic League has taken out a full-page ad in the NY Times that tries to be a point-by-point rebuttal to the Times’ reverberating prelude to Holy Week. As rebuttal it is a tad weak -that’s what happens when your answer rightly requires 10,000 words and 350 is all you can manage in 18 pt [...]