It always tickled me that Oscar Wilde and Maria Goretti share a birthday. (It’s October 16, which makes them both Libras — horribly fitting when you consider how both of them, in their various ways, ended up in court.) The two make such a study in contrasts as to beggar the imagination: one sprawling, sensual and and voluble; the other tiny, fastidious and reserved. I like to try to picture them celebrating jointly at Toots Shor’s: Heaven (Oscar slugging down... Read more
If you’re theologian Alice von Hildebrand, the answer is obvious: delicately, if not sparingly. Sex and sexual pleasure, being gifts from God, represent a “sacred sphere” deserving of every defense against profanation. To explain her operating principle, she uses the French pudeur, meaning a healthy sense of shame, a quality she finds in short supply. In the essay I’ve linked to, Hildebrand makes clear that pudeur isn’t lacking only in the World. It’s also missing from certain segments of the... Read more
Imagine a nation’s armies have suffered the most catastrophic and humiliating defeat imaginable. Generals once thought to be geniuses prove themselves dimwitted, gouty time-servers. Troops expected to fight to the death panic and surrender in droves. The nation becomes the punch line in jokes that go, “I’ve got a great special on some _____ rifles: never fired, only dropped once!” The jokes never get old. Where does the nation go from there? If history’s any guide, the nation makes a... Read more
This weekend at the Catholic Media Conference in Indianapolis, Bishop Christopher Coyne, who once served as spokesman for the Archdiocese of Boston, offered some advice to folks in my line of work. Point one: Take the high road. Point two: Stay on message, meaning, the Good News. Point three: Build up, rather than tear down. It does sound a bit like a recipe for editorial blandness. It definitely sounds like an invitation for us pundits to re-direct all our naturally... Read more
Fr. Jim Martin is a brave man. He has made a personal crusade of re-interpreting and revivng devotions and figures commonly dismissed as mawkish. In My Life with the Saints — and ever since — he’s argued heroically and convincingly that Thérèse of Lisieux was more than a sickly gamine with a flair for melodrama; she was a woman of mature faith whose fondest wish was to get greased in ‘Nam. Last week, in America, Fr. Jim makes his pitch... Read more
You know you’re hopelessely out of touch when a blog post manages to go viral without containing a single word you can make sense of. At a tender age of 24 hours, former atheist blogger Leah Libresco’s announcement that she’s joined an RCIA class in preparation for baptism is standing on 12,700 Facebook shares. Plus 1,721 tweets. To put this in perspective, “Sorry, Young Man. You’re No Longer the Most Important Demographic in Tech,” which earlier this morning reigned as... Read more
Last week, National Catholic Reporter published an essay by Joe Orso titled “The Power of the Dying Hierarchy Is An Illusion.” With lines comparing the Church leadership to a dying dragon and an impotent old man, it’s a challenging read, and easy to mistake for a rant. But Orso’s main point, that the Vatican and the bishops have only a limited impact on the views and practices of the faithful, is hard to refute. Orso’s own faith journey is a... Read more
Maybe because she grew up hearing the Tridentine Mass daily, my mother has always had a passion for order that verged on the fetishistic. She could no more tolerate chaos than God can the presence of sin. If, say, I plucked her copy of Fear of Flying off the coffee table and failed to set it back down at right angles measurable with a compass, she’d gasp, point with a trembling hand, and cry, “MOVE THAT BOOK! IT’S MAKING ME... Read more
In 2010, InsideCatholic.com director Deal W. Hudson asked, “Is It Time for A Catholic Tea Party?” Whatever the answer might have been then, today it seems to be “Yes,” but on terms very different from those Hudson envisioned. Instead of a grassroots movement pressuring the Catholic bishops to marshal their authority in support of pro-life candidates, we now have the bishops themselves preaching to the faithful in the fearful, combative tones of grassroots right-wing activists. Oh, come on. Yes they... Read more
Some days, you just wake up to a big, wet kiss from life. This morning, when I logged on Facebook, I found a surprise waiting for me. A friend of mine, whom I will identify by his initial, T., had posted a message on my wall. It read: Max, Haha just saw some funny pictures of you so sexy lol you have to see them its here A link to a Twitter page followed. There was nothing implausible about T.... Read more
Diary of a Wimpy Catholic
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