But, come on, you do anyway. I mean, this is freakin’ hilarious! Here’s Chesterton with his typically counter-cultural insight into the current vaporings about obesity from the apostate Puritan ascetics who now teach us to worship the body instead of God: I remember that Mr. H.G. Wells, in arguing for the relativity of things (a subject over which even the Greek philosophers went to sleep until Christianity woke them up), pointed out that, while a horse is commonly beautiful if... Read more

…the notion that if you use the name “Allah” you are not praying to the “real” God. Maronite Catholics have been praying to Allah since forever. It’s just Arabic for “God”. I can understand an American Evangelical not, perhaps, knowing this. But what amazes me is American Catholics who, in rejecting the word as “syncretism” are effectively saying that Maronites are worshipping a false God. It’s like Greek-speaking Christians saying that we can only pray in the name of Iesous... Read more

The ever-thoughtful and interesting Steve Greydanus weighs in on the hysteria. And the invaluable Rod Bennett offers a series of typically insightful reflections on the movie fueled by all sorts of good stuff from Chesterton, Belloc, Lewis and Tolkien. In particular, I found this fascinating: Like Pixar’s recent WALL*E, Avatar depicts a cautionary imagined universe which might almost have been dreamed up by Hilaire Belloc, G.K. Chesterton, or Dorothy Day. These 20th century Catholic “Distributists” as they were called, prophesied... Read more

Frank Beckwith, former prez of the Evangelical Theological Society who returned to the Catholic Church a short while ago, reports that Joshua Betancourt, who co-authored Is Rome the True Church?, has made up his mind on that question and entered into full communion with the Catholic Church. In other news, another Evangelical is feeling the strange sense of elation and dread which comes of being deep in history. He asks a reasonable question, since it is, in fact, the case... Read more

Make no mistake. What is being attempted by the gay “marriage” movement is *primarily* about making traditional Catholic views on marriage, family, and homosexual acts punishable by law. Tolerance is not enough. You. MUST. Approve. And thought crime will (Ganymede willing) be savagely put down in the coming regime. The happy thing to see in this is how very, very dead the hostilities of the 16th century are for virtually all Protestants outside the James White bubble. Note the source... Read more

…separation of Church and hospitals. Quite right! I mean, what did Catholics ever do for medicine besides invent the hospital and found thousands of them around the world. Clearly, this superstitious lot has given no thought to medical ethics like some wet-behind-the-ears Lefty committed to the sacrament of abortion and the “Consent is the Sole Criterion of the Good” ethos of the Pepsi Generation. I have a priest friend who worries, not the that Church won’t survive the US, but... Read more

Abp Niederauer (finally) takes La Pelosi to the woodshed. Or, more precisely, to the barn with the doors standing wide open and the horse gone. But he did close the door! I can’t help feeling like statements like this are followed by the sotto voce whisper, “There. I said something. Now can I go back into hiding?” Read more

by continuing to use the word “neoCath” in a way that only he and his immediate circle seem to do. For him, it simply seems to mean “any conservative Catholic I dislike” or, more briefly, “all conservative Catholics”. His most recently targeted “neoCaths” are people who would not be caught dead associating with the likes of me or Scott or Jimmy or other people whose “enthusiasms and opinions are mostly defined by John Paul II’s papacy” (as was defined for... Read more

…joins the pro-abort Left in the ongoing societal struggle to define deviancy down. After years of pretending torture is not torture, some on the Right are moving to the next phase of saying, “Hey! What’s so bad about torture anyway?” Read more

A reader writes: I am trying to get the word out for the first annual Tulsa March for Life, which will be held in downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma on January 22, 2010 starting at 6:00 p.m. The purpose of the march is to show our support for life and our solidarity with those marching in Washington, D.C. We have a website with the march route, which will be followed by a short rally at Centennial Green park in downtown Tulsa (tulsamarchforlife.wordpress.com).... Read more