In college, I used to go drink Guinness at a nearby Irish pub, where traditional musicians played, and we clapped and danced and sang along –  songs about love, songs about drinking, songs about killing the English. Anti-English sentiment in this type of pub culture is usually a trope, not an emotional reality. It’s a way of keeping solidarity with oppressed people, connecting with history, maybe of catharsis. I’ve got English and Irish both mixed up in my heredity, and... Read more

  “Diabolical Narcissist Peronist-Fascist.”   “The massive crime against humanity … will carry on utterly unchecked and uncontested through time until Our Blessed Lord and Savior Jesus Christ returns in glory… UNLESS positive, proactive, countermeasures are taken.” “Satan has made his move… and his tool…has a new diabolical meme or soundbite nearly every day – something to disorient, confuse, mislead or repulse human souls AWAY from the Truth of Jesus Christ and His Holy Catholic Church.” “Because the good German... Read more

A wind storm last night took our power out, so this morning I made coffee in the French press after heating water on the grill, and started a fire in the woodstove, and did paperwork by candlelight while waiting to use my computer again. Any time this happens I am reminded that I need to come up with more self-sufficient methods of living, since as it stands just about everything in our home depends on electricity. I know how to... Read more

This does mean putting up with some grossness, and with some inconvenience. The Christian life is gross and inconvenient, however - look at a Grünewald crucifix. But it is also filled with wonder, and when we give ourselves over to wonder we will think less about what we can kill, and more about how we can keep alive. Read more

It is our Christian obligation, then, to attempt to understand female experience, what it means to be a female human person, with recourse to reality instead of to pre-existing prejudice Read more

  Articles like this from The Atlantic, and this from Huffington Post, expounding on the value of a philosophy degree for the job market, leave me feeling a little bitter since my philosophy degrees have never equipped me to earn more than a fast-food worker might. Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield is quoted in Huffington Post: “I think if you have a good background in what it is to be human, an understanding of life, culture and society, it gives you a good perspective on starting... Read more

  As Catholics it is understandable that we often find ourselves taking a defensive position. We’re the weirdos who pour water on our newborns, smear ashes on our foreheads, and worship a Jewish carpenter executed for sedition two thousand years ago. At times we’re handy for our aesthetic appeal when filmmakers want to capitalize on the numinosity of liturgy or the carnivalesque of festivals. At other times we are dangerous revolutionaries standing against the violence of earthly powers. (But often,... Read more