Although I use it during the day mostly to promote Patheos writers, after hours I consider Twitter to be something of a virtual pub; it’s a place to wind down, engage in some casual conversation, yell about baseball and then say goodnight. Last evening, I tootled in to find the tweets flying fast and um, furiously. “Wha’d I miss?” I asked someone. It seems lobbyist and Dem operative Hilary Rosen had gone on CNN last night and spoken unwisely not... Read more
Thank you for your prayers for Kitty, and also for Gracie, Elizabeth and Jerry. I don’t yet have any information on the last three, but Kitty went home last night — the first time she’s gone to the ER and not ended up admitted — with some pain killers, some reassurances that her situation should resolve itself and the usual, “but if you start spiking a fever or vomiting, come back!” We are, as ever, exceedingly grateful for your prayers... Read more
Andrew Malcolm slipped this into twitter last night and it just completely charmed me. Young Caine is a small businessman within his community; he’s got a dream, a clever head and an open heart. He has everything he needs to succeed in America: curiosity, imagination, vision, ambition, energy, optimism and openness. He also has a “government” (in the form of his father) that is happy to see him dream and explore ideas and avenues, one that’s willing to let him... Read more
Some of you may remember that about six months ago my son’s fiance “Kitty” dealt with a burst appendix and many complications. She’s been having increasing pain and discomfort for the past few days, and today it reached the point where she really couldn’t function, so they are waiting for doctors to tell them whether they can do an office visit or must go back to the ER. I haven’t spoken to Kitty, but I can imagine she is feeling... Read more
I have received probably three dozen emails over the past two days tipping me off to “a new priest video” or asking me to please post the video, or demanding to know why I have not yet posted it, as is my duty as a Catholic blogger. But I don’t want to mischaracterize the emails. Most people are very nice, and they just want to make sure I am aware of this new video that advocates for the priesthood. Well,... Read more
Over Easter, I chatted with someone who currently works for a network news outlet and naturally NBC New’s epic editing fail, and the subsequent fallout came up. My companion, who has spent time in the editing booth, said he doubted the edit was accidental, and added, “We’re forgetting our job — it’s only to inform.” A press meant to inform, not inflame. What a concept! Our conversation spun all over the place, until someone at the table said, “if you... Read more
Last night, after Easter entertaining, my husband and I collapsed on the couch and, flipping through the channels, found a re-broadcasting of Pixar’s wonderful short film, “Partly Cloudy”, which you can see here. Enjoying it again, I told my husband I had actually written about the short, tying it into Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical, Caritas in Veritate. The piece was lost-in-transit from First Things to Patheos, but I was able to reconstruct most of it — the internet is a... Read more
In my First Things column of last week, I quoted a small portion from Ross Douthat’s remarkable book Bad Religion; How We Became a Nation of Heretics, which will be released this week. I plan on writing a fuller review of the book, but one of my concerns with my column was that I’d inadvertently given the impression that Douthat spent a lot of time discussing the issue of sexual morality, hypocrisy and homosexuality. In fact, he spends very little... Read more
On Good Friday I posted a plea for prayers for friend Sarah, whose kidneys seemed to be shutting down. A few hours later, everything seemed to turn around. Sarah writes: “It seems to me a very large coincidence, yet, I hesitate to call it a miracle. Who am I God would do even a small miracle for?” Who are any of us? Who were Peter and Andrew that Christ should call them? Who was the adulterous woman that Christ should... Read more
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