Puerto Rico 1954 (Click to Enlarge) B/T The Crescat Read more

Ninety-two-year-old Pauline Jacobi had just finished loading her groceries into her car at a local Wal-Mart in Dyer County, Tennessee. She got in her car, and a moment later, a man climbed into the passenger side. He said he had a gun and that he would shoot her if she did not hand over her money. What she did next did not involve pepper-spray or martial arts, but it did save her life and may have saved his. Pauline calmly... Read more

I’ve been thinking about the new atheist advertisements on the London busses which proclaim, “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying, and enjoy your life.” I thought the atheists were supposed to be really smart people. Usually one of their arguments against theism is that believers are all little kiddies who think there is a big sugar Daddy in the sky who will look after them, and that they have wrapped themselves up in a warm comfort blanket and are... Read more

…Underdog is here. Everybody loves an Underdog, vote for Standing on My Head in the Weblog awards. Read more

The Daily Telegraph reports that the atheists have now raised enough cash to buy their own messages on London busses. This seems very appropriate to me. You wait and wait for a bus, and soon you start thinking there is no such thing as a bus. People have told you there are these wonderful things called busses that whisk you off to the land of your dreams, but they are all deluded, sad people who have been brainwashed.  I have... Read more

Pretty hideous crucifix right? This hung outside a 1960s Anglican Church and the vicar has had it removed. Good decision. However, click here for the crazy comments that surround the decision. The vicar took it down not because it was hideously modern and simply bad art. He took it down because it was scaring the kiddies. I admit, it looks like some sort of spooky creature from the Sci Fi movie, Signs, but did the vicar replace it with a... Read more

There are two types of people who are like two madmen strapped together back to back. They are the dogmatist and the doubter. The dogmatist is the person who has reduced his religion to dogma. This person has everything worked out. He has all the rules and regulations and rubrics in place. He knows all the moral regulations and restrictions. Every ‘i’ is dotted. Every ‘t’ is crossed. He not only knows it all, but he knows that he knows... Read more

Mrs. Longenecker has an inadvertently ironic news headline clipped out and stuck to the fridge. It comes from a Catholic paper and says, “Married clergy Argue for Celibacy from Personal Experience”. As a married former Anglican priest who is now a Catholic I sometimes hear Catholics say things like, “Excellent, and it’s about time too! I hope all our priests could marry. That would solve a lot of the problems.” What they mean is that relaxing the celibacy rule will... Read more

Cardinal Cormac  Murphy O’Connor, head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales has said that capitalism has collapsed. Much has been made over the observation from Pope John Paul II that there were two materialistic, atheistic systems in world power: communism and unrestrained capitalism. Cardinal Murphy O’Connor seems to be echoing those sentiments by suggesting that, just as communism tumbled, so now capitalism (because of the credit crunch) is crumbling. The remark has got him into hot water with... Read more

Today is the memorial of St John Neumann, the great Bishop of Philadelphia. Here’s a link to his shrine. Damian Thompson’s blog links to Fr Blake in Brighton who has criticized the English Bishops. After waiting ten years in England to be ordained, and having nothing happen, I tend to be sympathetic. I could say a good bit myself about episcopal incompetence, lack of imagination, mediocrity, corruption and idiocy. Worst of all, (as Fr Blake points out) is what seems... Read more