I WANNA KNOW WHAT LOVE IS: So a couple people have asked when I will post my notes from last week’s Theology of the Body seminar. The answer is that for whatever reason (I blame, in this order, the lack of free coffee and my own crapulence), my notes are sparse and boring, so you don’t get to see them. However, I was thinking today about the differences in approach between TOTB and Deus Caritas Est. These differences, as I... Read more

She [the Church] has to play her part through rational argument and she has to reawaken the spiritual energy without which justice, which always demands sacrifice, cannot prevail and prosper.—Deus Caritas Est Read more

GEOFFREY CHAUCER HAS A REQUEST: …Todaye ys the firste daye of Aprille. Bifor it was the cruellest moneth (quatever that meneth!), it was a moneth of coloures and cries, and pilgrymages. Yt was, I sholde saye, myn favourite moneth. Ich am nat oon to tooten myne owen horne, but todaye ich wolde asken yow to declaymen my tales. To yowrselves, to yowr frendes, or simplye in the marketplace or churchyarde. For charitees sake, yow coulde declaymen them to beggares, leperes,... Read more

“MARRIAGE IS FOR WHITE PEOPLE”: Fr Tucker wanted to know if I would blog about this Washington Post piece, which is very much worth reading. I don’t know that I have too much to add really–here’s a relevant passage from my 2003 Weekly Standard piece on working at the pregnancy center: …Growing up fatherless affects how women view their own relationships and their pregnancies. Because so few of our clients have known men who consistently met their family responsibilities, they... Read more

LINKS…: Christians in Iraq (and elsewhere in the Muslim world): Baghdad’s Auxiliary Bishop Andreas Abouna has given his bleakest assessment yet of the situation in Iraq, speaking of the despair that is driving more and more Christians to leave the country. Describing a worsening of the security situation since last December’s parliamentary elections, the Chaldean prelate told how people were living in fear of their lives. more Fasting and prayer: Chaldean Patriarch Emmanuel III Delly of Baghdad has proposed April... Read more

HA!: Jaroslav Pelikan, from his new book: …Every age has its own heresies, Pelikan says, and ours seems “especially vulnerable to an aestheticism that finds the ultimate mystery of transcendence in the beauty of art and music, which have the magical capacity to transport us into an otherworldly realm without calling us to account for our sins in the presence of the holy God and the righteous Judge of all mankind”. We modern, half-non-believing aesthetes, who ooh and aah over... Read more

Blogwatch makes the bourgeoisie and the rebel… Claw of the Conciliator: He’s started a series of posts on Christianity and science fiction and fantasy; scroll up from here. And this is a really interesting, fun post about how attempting a “view from nowhere” damages one’s understanding (of religion, in this case, but I think the point has wider applicability). Disputations on my post about forgiveness. The Rat on V for Vendetta. Virginia Postrel makes containers interesting: …My column barely mentions... Read more

The love story between God and man consists in the very fact that this communion of will increases in a communion of thought and sentiment, and thus our will and God’s will increasingly coincide: God’s will is no longer for me an alien will, something imposed on me from without by the commandments, but it is now my own will, based on the realization that God is in fact more deeply present to me than I am to myself.—Deus Caritas... Read more

RAHMAN TO BE RELEASED–but that isn’t even close to the end of the story…. Read more

PARIS BURNING, ONCE AGAIN: Claire Berlinski: …”It’s us they hurt,” added the second man. By this he meant immigrants and their children, particularly the residents of France’s suburban ghettos, where unemployment runs as high as 50 percent. And, of course, he was right, as everyone with even a rudimentary grasp of economics appreciates: If employers are unable to fire workers, they will be less likely to hire them. It is now almost impossible to fire an employee in France, a... Read more