Heard on the train from New York to Pittsburgh yesterday: A middle-aged and an older woman behind me were talking and got on to Penn State football. The younger one said she had gone to a practice and got a picture with Joe Paterno’s son. The older woman said, “There won’t be another Joepa.” (Of the spelling I am not sure.) The younger woman agreed and said “It’s sad the way that whole thing went down.” The older woman replied:... Read more
Heredi men flying on El Al from the United States to Israel seem frequently to bring things to a halt rather than sit in their assigned seat if a woman is sitting next to them, or to wait until the plane takes off to cause problems, like standing in the aisle until they were reseated. (And this doesn’t include the problem, also reported, of their blocking the aisles to pray.) In the latest incident to make the news, El Al accommodated... Read more
Of the 490 (yes, 490) sisters in Mallersdorf Abbey in Bavaria, Sister Doris Englehard has the coolest job. She’s the abbey’s brewmaster, and the last brewmaster nun in Europe, which must mean the last in the world. “I love to drink beer,” she says. “Beer is the purest of all alcoholic beverages. . . . It is a very healthy drink, as long as you do not pour it down senselessly.” Although there is some evidence that moderate beer consumption could have... Read more
In his writings and talk on marriage, Cardinal Walter Kasper remains ambiguous but, or rather therefore, untrustworthy. He writes like a man trying to pull a fast one. Steven J. Kovacs notes in a New Oxford Review review of Kasper’s book The Gospel of the Family (the emphasis is mine): Cardinal Kasper correctly notes that someone in such a situation requires the sacrament of penance before receiving Holy Communion. Our Lord Himself said, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against... Read more
“Iit’s not that tough, really. I’ll eat dinner at 5:00 Friday, then I’ll go to services and I’ll just basically miss breakfast and lunch Saturday. I get grumpy, sure. It’s not the most fun 27 hours or so. But it’s worth doing. . . . The worst part for me is the no water. I drink a gallon of water per day. So that’s the tough part, wanting to take a sip of water.” The speaker is Geoff Schwartz, the... Read more
“The Catholic Church does incalculable good, providing immeasurable comfort — material as well as spiritual — to so many,” explains Frank Bruni in his New York Times column on same-sex marriage. But it contradicts and undercuts that mission when it fails to recognize what more and more parishioners do: that gay people deserve the same dignity as everyone else, certainly not what happened to the Montana couple. If Francis and his successors don’t get this right, all his other bits... Read more
From Edmund Lester Pearson, a now unknown writer, via the Paris Review, a story of what happens in the next world to people who misuse books in this world. For example: We hurried on to a crowd of men bent nearly double over desks. They were pale and emaciated, which my guide told me was due to the fact that they had nothing to eat but paper. “They are bibliomaniacs,” he exclaimed, “collectors of unopened copies, seekers after misprints, measurers by the millimetre... Read more
According to an Irish scholar publishing in the Journal of Medieval History. This is a story from late 2010, but I hadn’t heard about it, so pass it on. From Discovery News: The great-grandmother of Jesus was a woman named Ismeria, according to Florentine medieval manuscripts analyzed by a historian [Catherine Lawless]. . . . “According to the legend, Ismeria is the daughter of Nabon of the people of Judea, and of the tribe of King David,” wrote Lawless. She married “Santo... Read more
In this case, a guide to reading apartment ads in New York City. This is not, in fact, though you might think so, exaggerated very much. The interesting thing, to me anyway, is that the people who write these things lie, but they try to lie by exaggeration so they can pretend they’re telling the truth, though they often just lie. It begins: Cozy = How attached are you to your full-size bed? Or any bed, really? And includes: Laundry = There... Read more
By law, as they’re employees of the state (who begins tipping the whole thing into absurdity in the first place), Danish Lutheran pastors must marry anyone from their congregation who asks, but when in 2012 the state approve same-sex marriage, it gave pastors who objected an exemption, which it’s now taken away. Kind of. It has, but it hasn’t, exactly, because, well let the very useful Scandinavia House explain: The new law permits any person to change his legal gender... Read more
David Mills
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