My RCIA class held the three-hour retreat that preceded Easter Vigil, and our admission to the Sacraments, at a Montessori school, whose grounds spilled back from the street over a couple of grassy, well-shaded acres. The day being Saturday, no students were present, but judging by the height of the tables and chairs, the youngest of them must have been in kindergarten and the oldest scarcely older. Though the retreat organizers were good enough to furnish us with chairs fit... Read more
Of all the responses to Joe Biden’s alleged comparison of Tea Party Republicans to terrorists, I like Rand Paul’s the best. The Kentucky senator tweeted: “I would prefer to be known as a freedom fighter.” That’s my idea of taking ownership. Under scrutiny, the truism that one nation’s terrorists are another’s freedom fighters turns out to be, well, true. Anyone condemning Hamas, the IRA, the Irgun, Shining Path or Organisation de l’Armee Secrete won’t have far to look for an... Read more
Ross Douthat is a good sport. In today’s column, he dissects President Obama’s mistakes with an objectivity, even a sympathy, that few conservative commentators would bother to muster. Indeed, the project doesn’t seem to have taken much brain sweat at all. In each of the year’s crises, from Libya to the debt ceiling, Douthat sees the same pattern at work: staking out a patch of safe middle ground, Obama manages to skirt catastrophic failure, but only at the expense of... Read more
The Chicago Tribune is reporting that Buddhist monks are facing allegations of sex abuse; that monastic authorities have established no system for tracking the movements of the accused, and appear in some instances to be stonewalling investigators. According to Meghan Twohey, in 2000, a 12-year-old girl accused a monk named Camnong Boa-Ubol of assaulting her during a “tutoring session” at Chicago’s Wat Dhammarang temple. Temple administrators sent her parents a letter, assuring them that Boa-Ubol had “accepted what he has... Read more
Readers have noted, with varying amounts of good and ill-will, that some of my blog entries are afflicted with typographical errors. It’s true, and there’s a good reason for it. My contact lenses, which I cannot at the moment afford to replace, are finely coated with what a friend says is protein — not the good kind that builds muscle, but the bad kind that…well, makes a person feel like he’s peering out of a frosted-over windshield. Each lens has... Read more
A certain daydream comes upon me whenever some ranking churchman makes a sally in the culture war that leaves me stranded behind enemy lines. I am lying in a hospice, days or hours from death. A priest comes to my bedside and offers to anoint, absolve and feed me the Blessed Sacrament. Without rancor, and even with a touch of humor, I inform him that I am no longer in communion with the Church, and suggest he save his sacraments... Read more
Did you hear about the bishop who was so conservative that he wanted Congress to investigate corruption in the hypostatic union? Okay, I made that joke up. But if any lizard in an all-Catholic lounge were to tell it, his audience would probably imagine The Most Reverent Charles J. Chaput, OFM Cap, who is preparing to succeed Cadinal Bevilacqua as archbishop of Philadelphia. Whatever else can be said for Chaput, he gives a good interview, as he did yesterday, with... Read more
It’s rare that any institution shows signs of having a heart. Across America, certain jurisdictions are struggling to graft one on, experimenting with special courts to try veterans whose alleged criminal offenses appear to have been triggered by post-traumatic stress disorder. Today’s Times reports on the case of Brad Eifert, an Iraq War veteran and former U.S. Army recruiter. Last August 9, Eifert fled, armed, into the woods. Surrounded by police, he trained his .45 pistol on himself, before lowering... Read more
This past week, Deacon Greg Kandra announced that he’s closing down comments on his site for an indefinite period. As his junior colleague at Patheos, I want him to know I understand that move and support it wholeheartedly. It’s amazing to see the things Greg goes through over at the Deacon’s Bench. In my month and a half of blogging, I’ve tended to choose quirky topics over controversial ones. As a result, I’ve built up a relatively small but invaluable... Read more
One Friday evening when I was about eight, my mother came home and announced that Disney’s Alice in Wonderland, recently re-released, had opened at a theater on 57th street, a little over a mile away. If we started walking that very minute, we could just catch it. It was an indescribably tense moment. On one hand, the idea seemed a mortal insult to what I already considered my manhood. On the other, money and leisure time being tight, it was... Read more
Diary of a Wimpy Catholic
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