If you wait long enough on a balcony overlooking the main street of a Turkish village, you might see a convoy of cars filled with exuberant young men honking their horns and shouting. Some will be brandishing small copies of the al sancak, or the flag — blood-red, marked by a star and the waxing moon (the latter, according to legend having first appeared in a dream to Ottoman dynasty founder Osman Gazi). Or maybe an al sancak the size... Read more
From Israel and the West Bank: good news and bad news. First, the good news: Israeli courts have indicted two men for last month’s arson attack on the Church of the Multiplication of Loaves and Fishes, at Taghba. Second, the Israeli government has officially declared a similar attack in the Palestinian village of Duma, an act of terror. The bad news: Swelling messianic fervor among Jewish sedevacantists and crunchy cons on steroids may lead to even more violence. The Duma... Read more
Today at 3:00 PM, Manhattan’s St. Vincent Ferrer Church on 66th and Lexington is hosting a “Holy Hour with Eucharistic Exposition for Mercy, Healing and Reparation.” Following the exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, attendees will pray a Chaplet of Divine Mercy. Those who can’t attend in person can join in the prayers from wherever they are. The Archdiocese of New York’s Pro-Life Commission is sponsoring the event. Though its stated purpose is fairly open-ended, Kathryn Jean Lopez of Patheos and... Read more
Masses: I’ve taken ‘em high, I’ve taken ‘em low. I’ve parked my mortal coil in pews at every stop on the long road from Trent to Broadway and back again. I’ve listened to homilies delivered by mumbling mummies called forth from retirement and young fogies fresh from the seminary and still unsure whether to be John Chrysostom or Jon Stewart. In the process, my ear has had to attune itself to species of English ranging from the Queen’s to the... Read more
As of this writing, tens of thousands of Americans have signed an online petition to extradite a fellow citizen to Zimbabwe. Yes, that Zimbabwe: police state, site of torture camps and forced evictions, a place where – despite its recent adoption of a new constitution – “disappear” can still be used as a transitive verb. Why? The man in question, Walter Palmer, a 55-year-old Minnesota dentist, killed a lion with a bow and arrow. Granted, this particular lion was a... Read more
Since firing religious education department head Margie Winters for being married to another woman, Waldron Mercy Academy has been buried under a mudslide of bad press and consumer ill will. Some parents have withdrawn their children altogether; others are withholding tuition. At $13,500 per year for kindergarten through eighth grade, this tuition represents a sum no school would willingly forego. Nor are parents who can afford to pay it the sort of people any school would willingly tangle with. Waldron... Read more
Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards committed a tactical error when she apologized for the “tone” taken by Dr. Deborah Nucatola in the video surreptitiously shot by members of the pro-life group Center for Medical Progress. From a pro-choice point of view, Dr. Nucatola did nothing wrong by reviewing, in detail, Planned Parenthood’s techniques for ensuring the survival of organs belonging to aborted fetuses. Planned Parenthood has stated that it is not breaking any laws by profiting from the sale of... Read more
In The National Review, David French takes aim at the Washington, D.C. Metro passengers who looked on, mute and passive, while Kevin Sutherland was stabbed to death. “Knowing what’s right,” he writes, “is the first step to doing what’s right, and when it comes to a crisis, a real man’s definition of success is not ‘I lived’ but rather ‘I fought’… And if we keep raising boys to be sheep, no one will fight for the next victim, either.” French... Read more
This is a story about saints and signs, and how the right word to the right person at the right time can change a life. At the beginning of 2011, I was brand-new to Catholic online media and utterly mesmerized by it. Everyone, writers and commenters alike, sounded insane – either ready to slit their bishops’ throats or as though they lived in some timeless paracosm where men wore wigs and scribbled with quills on parchment. I was in those... Read more
It was admirable of South Carolina to remove the Confederate flag from its State House grounds. The act represented the will of the majority and was carried out with all due ceremony. Even the spokesman for the local chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans promised to accept the removal “graciously.” But it’s touched off a process Ian Tuttle calls “disappearing the Confederacy.” Used as a transitive verb, “disappear” is an arch way of saying “kill and dispose of in... Read more
Diary of a Wimpy Catholic
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