Georgetown: Conversions Down

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 3:04 pm By Max Lindenman

We’re not hitting our numbers. That’s the gist of the latest report from Georgetown’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. Numbers of non-infant entries into the Catholic Church have nosedived from a high of 172,581 in 2000 to 111,918 in 2010. Interestingly, there’s no obvious correlation between the decline and the clerical sex abuse scandal. The year 2002, when the Boston Globe first reported on abusive priests and indulgent superiors, actually saw a slight increase over the previous year.... Read more

In Defense of Bloomberg

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 3:04 pm By Max Lindenman

With no clergy officiating, New York City’s 9/11 anniversary ceremony is going to leave many people feeling deeply dissatisfied. And those people will have a point. When mourning the dead, it’s natural to call on professionals — people who speak to and about God for a living. This is particularly true when the lives of the departed weren’t lost but stolen in a calculated expression of hatred. Somebody needs to put the horror in perspective, if such a thing is... Read more

Happy Strangers’ Day

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 3:04 pm By Max Lindenman

New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast has declared today, August 24th, to be Strangers’ Day. The idea, as you can see below from the cards she’s created, is to tell complete strangers how little they mean to you: I myself have improvised a few couplets on that subject: We both breathe air; we both have navels. That and $1.50 will buy you a bagel. Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, Anything you like — it’s no affair of mine. Two... Read more

Messy Eaters, Unite!

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 3:04 pm By Max Lindenman

Can you not stand the smell of lamb vindaloo coming from the next cubicle? Does the sight of a masticating neighbor chafe your eyes and ruin your mental feng shui? According to the Wall Street Journal, you’re not alone. In fact, you and your more fastidious colleagues may even be able to form — and here, at last, the metaphor becomes appropriate — a tea party: Becki Holmes especially hates the fumes of artificial-butter flavoring in microwave popcorn that pollute... Read more

The Joys of Energy Self-Sufficency

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 3:04 pm By Max Lindenman

This week in America Magazine, Thomas A. Massaro calls on his fellow American to lay down their car keys and get in line for a Metro Card. He concludes: I hesitate to recommend breaking entirely with the automobile. But to avoid the folly of getting stuck in unsustainable patterns of living, we must face up to the imperative to renegotiate the relationship. Since our reliance on gas-guzzling vehicles is not serving us well, it is time to challenge our overly... Read more

For the Love of Living Latin

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 3:04 pm By Max Lindenman

Here’s a perfect gift for the Latin scholar in your life: a whole summer resurrecting the dead language of the Caesars in the very shadow of the Colosseum. Today in Slate, Ted Scheinman reviews the Padeia Institute’s Living Latin — an eight-week “immersive” program in spoken Latin run out of Rome’s St. John’s University. As might be expected, the program owes its inspiration, ultimately, to a Catholic — an American Carmelite named Fr. Reginald Foster, who served for over 40... Read more

Wanted: World Youth Day for Introverts

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 3:04 pm By Max Lindenman

It’s hard to imagine Flannery O’Connor at World Youth Day. As a child, she marked the jacket of her journal with the warning “MIND YOUR OWN BIDINIS.” As an adult, she thrived in places like Yaddo and Andalusia, where people, by and large, did exactly that. Of the crowds on the New York City subways, she wrote, “Although you see a few people you wish you didn’t know, you see thousands you’re glad you don’t know.” It would be unwise... Read more

Ralph Branca: Remembering Jerusalem

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 3:04 pm By Max Lindenman

The athlete whose career seems in retrospect to have been defined by an instance of decisive failure can be forgiven for imagining himself accursed, particularly if the failure itself looks wildly anomalous. When the Red Sox’s Mike Torrez gave up a pennant-winning homer to Bucky Dent — normally one of the most harmless batters in American League history — he could at least remind himself that the whammy was on his team, not on him personally. Harry Frazee had earned... Read more

Rick Perry and the Politics of Treating ’em Ugly

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 3:04 pm By Max Lindenman

Even conservatives are coming down on brand-new presidential candidate Rick Perry for accusing Ben Bernanke of treason and declaring that Texans would treat the Federal Reserve chairman “pretty ugly.” “That is not…a presidential statement,” Karl Rove told Fox News. In Tuesday’s column, Ross Douthat called Perry “the conservative id made flesh.” It’s a brilliant turn of phrase, and nails Perry between the eyes. Douthat errs, however, in using it as a criticism. In this upcoming election, iditude — unbridled passion,... Read more

A Thundering Squadron of Cassocks

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 3:04 pm By Max Lindenman

This title barely qualifies as a pun. Cassock, the name for the clerical garment with the 33 buttons, may share an etymological root with cossack, the name for the Ukrainian horse-soldiers who took a famously unsportsmanlike approach to warfare. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, cassock comes from the French casaque, meaning long, coat. Casaque, along with cossack, may come from the Turkic quzzak, meaning “nomad, adventurer.” Nomads and adventurers wore long coats to protect themselves from the biting steppe... Read more