Something I wrote a couple of years ago readers may find useful. Here are John Henry Newman’s rules for writing sermons, which I would commend because I’ve read Newman and you’re probably (no offense) no Newman. They appear in the second volume of Wilfrid Ward’s The Life of John Henry Cardinal Newman. 1. A man should be in earnest, by which I mean he should write not for the sake of writing, but to bring out his thoughts. 2. He should never... Read more
Not unsurprisingly, Pat Buchanan has teed off on Pope Francis, and he has done so dishonestly. His latest column will stand for many others of the same sort that mix distortion, assertion, misleading rhetorical questions, dishonest extrapolations, and selective quotation to attack the pope. These writers want to hit him and they don’t seem concerned to hit fairly. People who complained of how the media misrepresented Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI have no problem using the same methods on... Read more
My friend Father David Poecking writes, in response to a Facebook exchange being me and a Patheos colleague with a strange and disturbing affection for cats: On dogs and cats, I am a moderate: Dogs manifest the loving communion God intended for all his creatures. Cats manifest the threat of Judgment against sinners: Just as your cat doesn’t have any emotional need for you, so also God could raise up children of Abraham from these stones. Read more
Years ago I mentioned to an Evangelical friend over coffee at church that my then-fiance and I were going that evening to to hear the Boston Symphony Orchestra play Mozart. “Was he a Christian?” the fellow asked. I said yes, and didn’t bother to explore the limits of that answer, and he nodded, satisfied. “Good,” he said. If I had said no, he would have thought I was wasting my time. The non-Christian Mozart would not be worth listening to, while... Read more
Cheated of victory, I mean. I have no dog in this hunt, except for a general Catholic cultural preference for Notre Dame (or Boston College, or any other Catholic school with a decent football team) to win, especially over Behemoth U. Various friends have been lamenting the university’s loss to Florida State Saturday and having out of sympathy watched the play, linked from one of my friend’s Facebook laments, think the team really was robbed. You can find the play here. The writer gets... Read more
It is good to be reminded that there are heroes in the world, and a lot more of them than we might think, and that their heroism expresses itself in all sorts of ways. In yesterday’s Heroes: Wide-eyed But Successful I put up a description of Reha Freier from Karl Stern’s The Pillar of Fire. Here’s another, Father Jerzy Popieluszko, whose death is described by Paul Kengor. The article begins: It was October 19, 1984 — 30 years ago this week. A... Read more
Last night, spurred by the opening of the new Karl Stern archives at Duquesne University, I started The Pillar of Fire, the autobiography of Karl Stern, the Jewish psychoanalyst who entered the Catholic Church. In the beginning he tells of his childhood and youth in Bavaria, and describes some fascinating people. His friend Reha Freier, for one. Reha (short for Rebekka) was, when I first knew her, quite young. She was married to a Rabbi. She was beautiful, of a simple... Read more
From the learned Father John Hunwicke, one of those learned people who turn his learning to insight, the story of the demivirgins of Oxford (read that first) and then an application for the present. He contrasts their defense of their virginity with our culture’s “own novel superstition: that everybody is inevitably going to express genitally the sexuality in which they say ‘God has created them’.” He explains: The point which these Armoured Virgins — even the mythical as well as the historical ones — make... Read more
A respondent to Cardinal Kasper meets an untamed journalist sends a good question from Matthew Archbold of Creative Minority Report. Archbold notes that Edward Pentin had taped the interview in which the cardinal said what he later denied saying and asks: But here’s my question. If he hadn’t, Pentin’s career would’ve been harmed. Possibly irreparably. Would Cardinal Kasper have admitted to the interview or simply watched another man’s life be possibly destroyed? There’s no answer. But perhaps we have our... Read more
In Kasper’s Bad Excuse, I quoted the German website Kath.net’s report on Cardinal Kasper’s implausible excuse for the derogatory remarks he made about his African peers. Why would he lie about this when he should know how easily his lie could be exposed? He’s a pro. He knows that loose lips sink ships, not least his own. There are reasons. For one thing, figures like Kasper are used to being favored and protected by the press and are shocked when... Read more
David Mills
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