Your country *and* your Church are calling. You and you alone can fisk this the way it so richly needs to be fisked. So some Kennedy says Obama represents American Catholics better than the Pope. The thing is, she says it like it’s a *good* thing. What she means, roughly, is that American Catholics agree with Obama about pelvic issues more than they agree with the Pope, which is true. And if the Catholic faith were subject to a vote... Read more

Turns out that if you are willing to lie through your teeth about torture and war crimes, chances are good you will lie about more minor infringements on the common good as well: The Bush administration built an unprecedented surveillance operation to pull in mountains of information far beyond the warrantless wiretapping previously acknowledged, a team of federal inspectors general reported Friday, questioning the legal basis for the effort but shielding almost all details on grounds they’re still too secret... Read more

At JP Catholic, we recently produced a 3 minute video reflection with Prof. Michael Barber on the Mass readings for July 12th. I thought you might be interested in seeing it and in possibly posting it. You can find other videos in the series here. Check it (and JP Catholic) out. Read more

This passage struck me: Charity goes beyond justice, because to love is to give, to offer what is “mine” to the other; but it never lacks justice, which prompts us to give the other what is “his”, what is due to him by reason of his being or his acting. I cannot “give” what is mine to the other, without first giving him what pertains to him in justice. If we love others with charity, then first of all we... Read more

Today, my craven toadies, I think it would be fun if you would all call James White’s radio show and have a total Chris Crocker meltdown on air, weeping and pleading for him and the Fanboys to “Leave Mark alone!”. This would accomplish two things. First, it would fill James with the drug he craves most dearly: the sense that he is the Intellectual Superior of all Mortal Flesh. Two: it would be funny as hell to watch AOMinions all... Read more

The invaluable John Schwenkler has issued a y’all come for a reading group on the new encyclical. I have not time to join it myself, but if you are interested, it seems like a worthy way to spend some quality time with B16’s thought. And with that, I’m outta here. See you Monday! Read more

…because she cares so much about Jesus. It’s not about the itch for power or anything. Read more

To the President who graces other heads of state with recordings of himself, the Pope gives a gift in return: a copy of the Church’s document on bioethics and human dignity. I hope Michael Novak isn’t too disappointed that the Holy Father is continuing to spout that naive Justice and Peace crap about charity instead of just having the Swiss Guard run him through with pikes and defeat the evil of abortion the neocon way. I do have to give... Read more

Get a load of this! Read more

Some of them are non-Christian, and appeal to people who are seeking any signs but the sign of the prophet Jonah. Some of them come from Christians who, cut off from the Magisterium, have invented their own Magisterium compounded of End Times theories, guilty feelings about the Holocaust, and cranky theories about the State of Israel as a fulfilment of “biblical prophecy” that have no standing whatever in the Tradition, but are *highly* amenable to certain political groups: Prophetic Insights... Read more