I haven’t commented about the creepy “Happy Anniversary Video” celebrating 40 years since Roe v. Wade; the suave African American man, holding a rose and cooing about the wonder of this anniversary really is, as Marc Barnes writes, “the creepiest sh*t…” If you haven’t seen the video, you should go to Marc’s place and watch. One of the truly chilling (and, yes, creepy)things about it is that for African Americans, abortion in America has been a true genocide. As we... Read more
Yesterday saw the release of the Vatican’s new “Pope App”, which is so well-done that even God and the Machine’s Tom McDonald gave it an enthusiastic thumbs up, writing, “I may have to take back all the bad things I’ve been saying about Vatican communications. (Okay, some of them.)” I downloaded the app to my phone last night, and agree that it’s pretty groovy. But right on the heals of that app roll-out, the pope has more to offer on... Read more
So, here is a title, over at Salon: “So what if abortion ends life?”: Writes Mary Elizabeth Williams: Of all the diabolically clever moves the anti-choice lobby has ever pulled, surely one of the greatest has been its consistent co-opting of the word “life.” Life! Yeahhhh, wanting and affirming life over death; that’s…diabolical! Here’s the complicated reality in which we live: All life is not equal. That’s a difficult thing for liberals like me to talk about, lest we wind... Read more
(image courtesy of shutterstock.com) Someone asked me, recently, what I thought the status is of the pro-life movement, and I said, “sort of stagnant.” Different polling shows different data (and as Sr. Mary Ann Walsh noted at the USCCB Media Blog, “it’s all in how you ask the questions”) but whether anything is really changing is anyone’s guess and tactics — on both sides — are awfully stale and predictable. When it is politically expedient for them to do so,... Read more
“Everyone serves good wine first, and then when people have drunk freely, an inferior one; but you have kept the good wine until now.” — John 2:10 Eventually, no matter how much we think we want something — be it a relationship, a child, a job, a vacation, a house, a car — the “new” wears off. Like wine at the beginning of a celebration, we partake deeply of what is new and good; we enjoy it and we give... Read more
Not everyone is into political issues, or keeps up with them, and my husband has a limited attention span for news articles on issues that have promised “nothing new” for the last few decades. For that reason, and although he is strongly pro-life, articles touching on the issue rarely get his attention: there’s a lot of yelling on all sides, but few if any saying anything new. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is helping to change that, by saying something... Read more
Peggy Noonan has a good, insightful column this week touching on how very hostile our president seems to be toward about half the country, as evidenced by the “final press conference” of his first term: [Speaking of evil, dastardly Republicans] “And yet, “when I’m over here at the congressional picnic and folks are coming up and taking pictures with their family, I promise you, Michelle and I are very nice to them.” You’re NICE to them? To people who’d take... Read more
(photosource) A friend of mine sent me this Transcript of Jack Swarbrick Press Conference and another commented, “he’s either a liar or a dupe.” Knowing very little about Manti Te’o or Notre Dame, but something about Mormons, I’m going to go with dupe. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not making a lazy or snarky equivalence between Mormons and the gullible. But I spent my teenage years surrounded by Mormons and I can tell you that the nicest, most sincere of them... Read more
If you are not subscribing to The Catholic Answer, you’re missing a lot of good stuff. My column for the Jan/Feb issue jumps off an interesting piece on the Feast of the Throne of Peter, to ponder why it is that the Vicar of Christ–beginning with Peter, himself–does not swagger: For competitive purposes, our fathers were invested with outsized swagger, but, in truth, we held them in a bit of awe and wonder. If our mothers were so familiar to... Read more
Do you remember how I sang the praises of (and gave near-constant recommendations for) Father Robert Barron’s book, Catholicism; A Journey to the Heart of the Faith, and his Catholicism Series? Do you remember how much you loved the book, and then the DVD series, which was so beautifully shot and so richly informative that PBS eventually picked it up? Do you remember how much you wished the project would keep going, because it fed the faith intelligently and brightly,... Read more
The Anchoress
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In