I went down to the Institute

And asked the doctor there

In the Department of Blogwatch

“What’s the meaning of this [unintelligible]?!”

He said, “You aren’t crazy,

You ain’t insane,

It’s just you’ve got a Blogwatch in the center of your brain!!!!”

The Cranky Professor finally has a blog!

Michael Dubruiel: Comforting the sorrowing and acknowledging the wrongness, the outrage, of death.

Brink Lindsey‘s reply to the stuff I said in the Blogwatch below.

Charles Murtaugh is unfair to Leo Strauss (who was only intermittently a crypto-Straussian!), but you should read his post on space exploration anyway; and he answers mail about his earlier bioethical musings.

The Old Oligarch: Why monks rock. O.O. is another permalinkless man, so you’ll have to scroll down to the bit where he mentions my “crocuses in December” post.

Karl Schudt: Good post on animal rights.

Mark Shea: Great, quick slap re Original Sin; and the agony of a wack liturgy. I’d like to add: If your parish does not have a large Caribbean population, why are you asking everyone to sing Caribbean hymns? Ditto South African. Nobody knows how to sing them, so nobody sings–unlike ol’ faithful hymns that people basically know and aren’t embarrassed about singing. The music (especially the percussion) drowns out the choir (because nobody else sings!). The words are in another language that isn’t Latin, which means either a) they’re incredibly simple, which is OK but sub-poetic; or b) no one has any clue what she’s singing. And because the music is so unfamiliar, the hymns become focused on the choir and musical accompaniment–the only people who know what’s going on–rather than the congregation, which you’d think would be the last thing the liturgy-manglers wanted. Finally, I’m not sure about the Caribbean ones, but the South African hymn I heard was just excruciating, because the rhythm of the music meant you pretty much had to sing it with an accent. (If you didn’t clip the words off, and sing them in other accented ways, you’d be left behind by the music.) Imagine a church full of white, American college students trying to sound like Soweto choirboys. Make the hurting stop…. Anyway. Many of these hymns are really lovely, but attention to context and concern for what will actually concentrate the parishioners’ mind on Christ would do wonders.

Emily Stimpson: History of priestly celibacy part II. My addendum: Frankly, if we’re going to have married priests, I seriously don’t get why they would not be able to sleep with their wives. The Orthodox (except for monks and bishops) have marriage + booty. (Most of) the Roman Rite Catholics are supposed to have no marriage + no booty. But marriage + no booty strikes me as just plain wrong, and whatever happens with priestly celibacy in the future, I hope it doesn’t revert to that. Muchas gracias to the Department of Doctrinal Development.