A day after the Germans blitzed their Brazilian hosts 7-1, the Argentines have outlasted the Dutch in penalty kicks. This sets the stage for Sunday, where Germany will face Argentina, in the World Cup final, a clash that surely will be of interest to the Vatican, for obvious reasons. I’ll be rooting for the Americans to hoist the cup. Not only do we live in the a time of two living popes: We now also witness, for first time in... Read more
If being a Christian is to be a follower of Jesus Christ, then it follows to think that Christians ought to be like Christ. In many cases this might prove difficult. We do not know everything Christ did on Earth in the finest detail. In other cases, when overextended, this would be silly. It would be outrageous to say (as some people sometimes imply) that women cannot be Christians, because Jesus Christ was a man. Here we see that even... Read more
This is part of the Patheos Catholic summer symposium, anticipating the Church’s “Synod for the Family” in October. * I write surrounded. By boxes. We are moving into our new place in Vancouver, British Columbia. This is the 14th move of my 31 years of life, excluding small and transitional moves. I have now been a resident in three countries: the USA, Mexico, and Canada. There is a process of thinking and way of being, an attitude and approach about the... Read more
During the month of July I will try to blog more and less: I will try to blog more frequently, perhaps even posting several posts in a day, but I will limit my posts to five-hundred words or less — which is significantly less than the usual fare. (Yesterday’s post doesn’t count because I starting writing it in the wee hours of June.) If this “works” (whatever that means), I may halve the word count for August. The reasons behind... Read more
I love reading Supreme Court decisions and dissents. They are without rival in US public discourse. Even though the court is polarized in many ways, even their predictable decisions must come with reasons. Good reasons, bad reasons, odd reasons, but reasons nonetheless. That alone makes these things an all-too-rare treat. The headlines and spectacles of coverage mostly miss the ways that these decisions not only set legal precedents, but also (and many times more importantly) advance public philosophical and conceptual... Read more
I think PEG really hit one nail on the head in his last post of our ongoing discussion on education. He understands, and sympathizes, that social scientific research used to bolster policy and curriculum for schooling today is, mostly, garbage. This fact, he rightly intuits, forces me into a defensive attitude about any unqualified appeal to science. He goes on to present his most careful and thorough to date explanation of what he means by ‘science’ and shows that there... Read more
PEG has penned another fine rejoinder to my last, rather tedious, reply. I appreciate his patience and willingness to add details and nuance that, in many cases, have convinced me that my initial critique was, in some ways, unwarranted or aimed at the wrong side of the argument. For instance, I am no longer concerned about PEG’s insistence on method. He has swayed me with his appeal to holism. I would only add the following: holism as a method is... Read more
“I folded my hands, leaned my head forward, and poured out the most sincere prayer I had ever said, for the soul of Tupac Shakur.” This final line of chapter 21, marries the searching and often broken spirituality of hip-hop, in the tragic life of perhaps its greatest and most tortured genius, Tupac Shakur, with the soteriology of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. This is not a slick book of cultural theory, bringing together wild combinations for shock and... Read more
My latest and longest reply to my esteemed Patheos colleague, Pascal Emanuel Gobry. My doctoral adviser and I finally realized, after years of careful but polarizing arguments, that perhaps there was more to our collegial quarrel than the arguments presented. His Mormonism and my Roman Catholicism were, in certain respects, irreconcilable—or at least would prove much more difficult to unravel. I suspect, to a far lesser extent, that some of this might influence the very rich discussion PEG and I... Read more
Your regularly scheduled weekly apocalypse, in points: 1. Soccer is Read more
Sam Rocha
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