Ayn Rand was an awful, awful human being. Had she not become a guru, she would have had no friends, or been the kind of person no one likes who still accumulates a few admiring followers, whom she would banish for the slightest deviation from total devotion — a particularly mean Mean Girl. But you never know why someone is as he is and if with the same experiences you would have done as badly or worse. I’ve been reading... Read more
The Great Disruptor, by Matthew Boudway of Commonweal, a paper given at a recent conference on Catholicism and Libertarianism, or Catholicism vs. Libertarianism. He distinguishes the two types of libertarianism and then comments on the type that Catholic libertarians favor. It is not an accident that sophisticated Catholic champions of free-market ideology tend to rely less on the work of Rand or Nozick than on that of Hayek and the Chicago School economists. For Rand and Nozick make claims that are obviously at... Read more
A useful resource for preachers and also for those who sit under preachers who are not always so substantive: the Fellowship of Catholic Scholar’s Teaching the Faith. It “makes use of the scriptural readings for a given Sunday in order to provide clergy with assistance in preparing homilies on doctrinal topics, difficult and perhaps controversial subjects of current importance, and themes in Catholic prayer and spirituality.” The writers include Fathers Joseph Koterski, S.J., Francis Martin, and Brian Benestad, Cardinal Wuerl,... Read more
Two quotes posted by friends on Facebook: Douglas Minson points to a short article giving Flannery O’Connor’s opinion of Miss Rand’s fiction: I hope you don’t have friends who recommend Ayn Rand to you. The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fiction. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail. She makes Mickey Spillane look like Dostoevsky. And from Patrick Deneen, a... Read more
Presbyterian Minister to Israelis: ‘Come Home to America’, from The Tablet. The peculiar demand that American institutions disinvest from the only democracy in the Middle East, from people not heard demanding such disengagement from a host of oppressive regimes, continues in the Presbyterian Church USA. In a Facebook posting yesterday that was quickly shared and seconded by other Presbyterians, some of whom are currently attending the Church’s General Assembly, Grimm [Reverend Larry Grimm of the Capitol Heights Presbyterian Church in Colorado] patiently explained... Read more
“The half-informed man is not the man who knows only the half of things, but the man who only half knows things” is one wonderful line from A. D. Sertillanges’ The Intellectual Life. The great Dominican theologian is discussing the limitations the intellectual worker must accept if he is to do the work he’s given to do. It came to mind as I’m helping teach a class for the doctor of ministry students at Trinity School for Ministry and find as... Read more
Lately I’ve run into several articles by Evangelical Protestant that in the course of appreciating the Church Fathers, which is a great thing to be welcomed, appropriate them as if they were modern American Evangelicals or at least not early Catholics. I’ve heard this in conversations with Evangelical friends, and saw a milder version of this appropriation at a conference I attended recently. The assumption seems to be “The Fathers are Ours! except when they’re wrong, then they’re yours.” Apparently... Read more
This seems obvious, but it’s always nice to have a study: People Who Overshare on Facebook Just Want to Belong. People use Facebook to present themselves the way they want to be seen, and to get a sense of belonging, so says a 2012 study. [Albright College’s Gwendolyn] Seidman’s study also measured participants’ motivations behind their posts, and found that they were mostly self-oriented. Posters sought attention and a feeling of inclusion, but were seemingly less interested in expressing caring for... Read more
The Anti-Semitic Hungarian Politician’s Bris, from the Tablet. A leader of Hungary’s Jobbik party discovers that his maternal grandparents were Jewish and changes his whole life, including buy and burning thousands of copes of his just-published manifesto. The Archbishop of San Francisco’s response to an attempted ideological mugging, in which he turns the mugger’s pet phrases back on them, only he means them. For example: Please do not make judgments based on stereotypes, media images and comments taken out of context.... Read more
One doesn’t want to sound like the sensitivity police, but certain p.c. commitments are, whatever their origins, expressions of charity and kindness. You don’t have to believe the multicultural orthodoxy that all cultures are equal to think that you shouldn’t speak sweepingly of a whole racial or ethnic group. You don’t want to encourage a way of speaking of groups that leads to the mistreatment of individuals. The other day I got a fund-raising letter from a conservative enterprise that... Read more
David Mills
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