From today’s Gospel: Jesus said: “I am the good shepherd. A good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. A hired man, who is not a shepherd and whose sheep are not his own, sees a wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away, and the wolf catches and scatters them. This is because he works for pay and has no concern for the sheep. I am the good shepherd, and I know mine and mine know me,... Read more
Raise your hand if you’d be surprised to find anti-Semitism in the supposedly secret Facebook troll group “Banned By Mark Shea.” Yeah, me neither. Which is why I was not surprised when a couple of my concerned friends sent me screengrabs of the delightful members attacking my friend Rebecca Bratten Weiss for her ancestry here on the weekend of Hitler’s birthday. Here’s a close-up of the ending here, since it’s blurry. This was all apparently occasioned by a typically... Read more
A surprising number of people have responded to the story about the sexual harassment at Franciscan University by asking me, “So how do we get women to dress modestly?” as if that was the point. I really don’t know how you look at a story like that one and see modesty as the takeaway. It starts with a professor insisting that female students dress a certain way in the classroom and then writing a horrendous op ed justifying sexual... Read more
I’m not one to criticize people for buying coffee at a coffee shop. I don’t go around grumbling about young people who can’t afford houses because they eat avocados and go to fancy newfangled coffee bars instead of using a percolator and a big drum of Choc Full O’Nuts. That’s something curmudgeonly baby boomers do. If that’s how you choose to spend your time and budget, cool beans. I also am willing to pay extra for convenience if I can... Read more
Lately, some very interesting folks have reached out to me with concerns. I would like to address them publicly right here on the blog. First of all, I have been accused of being a hypocrite and threatened with screenshot shaming, because I stated on Facebook that Kristen Hatten‘s crackpot husband ought to be dishonorably discharged from the army for threatening cannibalism when he got back from Africa. A tenure-track professor, who was very proud of being a tenure-track professor and... Read more
There is a weird attitude I’ve encountered all around Steubenville, that defending Franciscan University is somehow the same as defending Catholicism– as if every criticism of the university and its surrounding culture is a criticism of the Church. You just have to look at my combox some days to see it in action; these people think any negative word about the University or the culture that surrounds it here in Steubenville is pernicious heresy against Catholic teaching. This association... Read more
Yes, I’ve seen the clip. As many of you already know, Raymond Arroyo, a man whose television program I avoid like the plague, was griping about today’s youth this week. He was offended that the Pope– or anyone, for that matter– was listening to youths from all over the world, instead of to important people like Raymond Arroyo. I decided to ignore him, until I found that even people who like Arroyo’s show were chiding him, so I decided... Read more
It was time to organize the Beautiful Corner. I call it the “Beautiful Corner” because that’s its name; if I were to describe it honestly, I suppose I’d call it a tacky corner– or maybe the Sticky Tack corner, since that’s what I use to hold all the icons in place. There are so many colorful icons on those two walls it looks like a patchwork quilt, but it just keeps growing. Today, a friend sent me a big package... Read more
As I write this, on a Friday night during prime time while our president is being investigated by the FBI, the United States is lobbing missiles at Syria. This bombing is in response to the horrendous gas attacks that killed sixty last week . According to Reuters, the president said that France and England intend to continue bombing Syria until Syria stops using chemical weapons. We are joined in this attack by Britain and France. This is normal, and has... Read more
There’s been a bit of a kerfuffle. Kristen Hatten, the ethnonationalist writer who publicly calls herself an ethnonationalist on Facebook and Twitter and is deeply proud of her ethnonationalism, is upset that people keep calling her an ethnonationalist. She feels she’s been treated unfairly. She doubled down on her ethnonationalism on Facebook, and then got miffed that Facebook deleted her post for containing ethnonationalism. She referred to concerned people sharing and commenting on her public tweets as “Doxing” and... Read more
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