Oh, some will say, there they go again, riding their hobby horse. In today’s column, David Brooks argues that things have never been better in the world. In America, for example: Compared with all past periods, American cities and suburbs are sweeter and more interesting places. Of course there are the problems of inequality and poverty that we all know about, but there hasn’t been a time in American history when so many global cultures percolated in the mainstream, when... Read more
“In the year that we are now parting with, 5774, it became dangerous once again to be a Jew,” writes Jonathan Sacks, and in many parts of the world to be a Christian, a Bahai, a Yazidi, Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, and even atheist, and even a Muslim if you’re the wrong kind of Muslim. Sacks, former chief rabbi of the United Kingdom now teaching at NYU and Yeshiva, offers an answer to our fear in the high holy days, the ten days of... Read more
Cardinal Kasper wants to have his cake and eat it too, is Father Joseph Fessio’s take on his response to other cardinals’ publicly challenging his public comments on marriage. they did so in, among other places, a book published by Ignatius Press, which Father Fessio founded, Remaining in the Truth of Christ: Marriage and Communion in the Catholic Church. Writing CNA in response to an interview the cardinal held with the Italian newspaper La Stampa, Father Fessio does not find the cardinal’s complaints persuasive.... Read more
All right, after a few days not posting anything, to post a critical remark on commenters seems cranky and lazy, but: this is really good: Why We Don’t Allow Comments from Mark Jones, posted on Reformation21. His remarks to the troll and to the retired person are especially good. Jones concludes: [A]s a pastor, I love questions and discussions with my people. I know who they are; they know who I am. We can usually talk face to face, and progress is... Read more
When covering the Catholic Church, the New York Times reliably gets it wrong. The newspaper has a narrative that its writers serve faithfully, which requires, to put it as nicely as possible, a shading of the facts. Here are paragraphs two and four from today’s story on Joseph Biden speaking in Iowa for the “nuns on the bus.” Last year, Mr. Biden seized on an audience with Pope Francis as another opportunity to praise the sisters who remained the target of a Vatican crackdown for... Read more
Now the End Begins, the website mentioned in the previous item, really doesn’t like the Catholic Church. It’s an organ of the mean snarling wing of anti-Catholic fundamentalism. I normally don’t pay any attention to such groups, because why would you, but this, having read it while writing the other story, I pass on because it’s a scream: Pope Francis Invokes Lucifer During Easter Mass 2013. Another thing that the Catholic Church is fond of doing is to invoke the name of... Read more
As a friend put it. The International Business Times seems to be a respectable newspaper, and it still publishes this: “Pope Francis Supposedly Claimed Virgin Mary Is Second Trinity, At Godhead Level.” The headline hints at how bad the story will be. I mean, “supposedly”? Who puts “supposedly” in a headline? And what the last six words mean is anyone’s guess. The story begins: Pope Francis, with his open-mindedness and more humanist approach to Catholicism reportedly promoted that the Virgin... Read more
He’d been surprised, wrote a friend, when a DNA test came back without any Native American DNA, because his family had rather detailed traditions on both his father’s and his mother’s side family of Native ancestry. My family has them too, though I’ve never investigated them. The American Indian scholar Vine Deloria (whose father and grandfather were Episcopal ministers) wrote in Custer Died For Your Sins that white families tended to think they had some Indian ancestry. He said (if I remember right, having read the book as... Read more
“You put me in charge of Medicaid, the first thing I’d do is get [female recipients] Norplant, birth-control implants, or tubal ligations. Then, we’ll test recipients for drugs and alcohol, and if you want to [reproduce] or use drugs or alcohol, then get a job,” said the Arizona Republican Party’s first vice chair a few days ago on his radio show. Russell Pearce, a former state senator, and one with a $85,000 a year state job as well as $76,000 a year in... Read more
What one pub did in response to an Indiana regulation requiring it always to serve food because it served drinks by the drink, as reported by Consumerist, Consumer Report‘s website. Among the items on its menu, satisfying the state’s requirements, is powdered milk, with or without water. Read more
David Mills
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