I’ve had this experience a few times and it feels, I must say, predatory. You feel like a target, a prize to be won, an it. And yet. “As I was walking from the restaurant to my car,” writes Leon Brown, I had one gospel tract in my pocket. I had purposed to give it to someone in route to my vehicle. Literally, that was my plan. I wanted to place the tract in someone’s hand, continue walking, get in... Read more
“Politics belongs to the sphere of reason, the reason common to all, natural reason. Politics is therefore a work that involves the use of reason and should be governed by the natural virtues, so well described in Greek antiquity, the four cardinal virtues: prudence, temperance, justice, fortitude,” said then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, speaking in 2003 at a round-table sponsored by the Pontifical University of Santa Croce in Rome. The report appears in 30 Days. He is introducing The doctrinal Note about certain... Read more
Much commended: Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig’s Suffering and Suffering-With from Ethika Politika. It begins: When I was 10 years old we lived in Connecticut for less than a year. One otherwise unremarkable day I trudged home though the snow and found boxes in the entryway of our house. I stood in a kind of stupor, with the bright winter whiteness behind me and my things stacked in the still dark of my house. That night my mom told me that my... Read more
A new Shabbos app lets observant Jews use their cell phones on the Sabbath. Which is not that good a thing, really. It’s not like the devices that let them ride the elevator on the Sabbath, because by stopping at every floor it saves them the forbidden work of having to push the button. It’s a device that lets you be un-Sattathian on the Sabbath. At least that’s what I think, as does Eliyahu Fink, writing in the Forward. To me, it’s... Read more
The article is titled The Shallowness of Men Who Won’t Sit by Women, but comes close to talking at the same time about the shallownness of women who complain about men who won’t sit by women. Writing in the Forward, Simon Yisrael Feuerman observes that Today, customs and sentiment have disappeared and hardened into rigid belief. For some of us, one is either “allowed” or not “allowed” to sit next to a woman. One is expected to quote this halachic source or other... Read more
Raschad Jennings, the starting running back for the New York Giants, is writing a book. The book started, in a way, as writing often does, with a good teacher. When Jennings was in high school, he says, he turned in a research paper in which he quoted himself instead of quoting experts on his topic. His teacher, Ms. Hudson, gave him an F. When he asked why, she said, “Because you’re not a credible source.” “So I said, ‘So I’ve... Read more
Cohabitation is a smack in the face . . . and for these reasons, explains the always good value Katrina Fernandez., writing on parents who pay for their children to live with their boy- or girlfriends. She works in real estate and cannot even begin to count the number of bright young girls who’ve sat at this desk across from me dumbly smiling because they believe they’re taking their relationship to the “next level”. As a former dumb girl, their... Read more
Last night I quoted Rocco Buttiglione on St. John Paul II and Father Gustavo Gutierrez. Among the other good things in the interview was this advice on marriage. At the beginning he’d talked about how he returned to the Church as a young man through a group of young people who were always together and very good friends with one another. I thought that my life was boring, but with them life was more interesting. They said that prayer was the... Read more
When John Paul II first went as pope to Latin America, he told their bishops, in Rocco Buttiglione’s summary, “We want a theology that is from the point of view from Latin American people. Fine. We want a theology that is written from the point of view of the Latin American poor. Even better! You think that you can produce this theology by using Marxism? That’s wrong. You need a different instrument to approach socio-economic realities from a point of... Read more
“There are a lot of things different about Prince. For one, he’s married, so he’s [enjoying some things he wasn’t experiencing before he was married]. For a man, that could definitely help him out,” New York Giants safety Antrel Rolle said of his teammate, cornerback Prince Amukamara, who is playing better than ever this year and is the third-ranked cornerback in the league. In an interview with Muscle and Fitness magazine last season, Amukamara revealed he was still a virgin,... Read more
David Mills
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In