My column at First Things this week takes yet another stab at discussing the idols some of us are (of have in the past) made of our ideologies, and how damaging it is becoming to our mental and social health, and more importantly to our spirits: In 2012, there are still some puffs of Obama-fervor to be found amid the members and burning-out embers of the mainstream press; here and there you may find someone on the right launching a... Read more
I’m going to write more about the Catholic New Media Conference a bit later, but this is one part of the conference that I just need to give a space of its own. You know what these conferences are like, right? There’s a thousand people milling about, and after a while one feels lost amid a sea of new faces, but then something stands out. For me, it was a young, tousled-haired man wearing a tee-shirt showing a monstrance and... Read more
“Sometimes it may seem to us that there is no purpose in our lives, that going day after day for years to this office or that school or factory is nothing else but waste and weariness. But it may be that God has sent us there because but for us Christ would not be there. If our being there means that Christ is there, that alone makes it worthwhile.” — Caryll Houselander, Reed of God, Page 60 Julie Davis quoted... Read more
Hey there folks, blogging will be light (but I will never say “non-existent”) while I am attending the Catholic New Media Conference in Dallas, where I will be a lesser light amongst such major-league hitters as Bishop Christopher Coyne, Brandon Vogt, Jennifer Fulwiler, Lisa Hendey, Fr. Roderick Vonhögen, our own Julie Davis, and Sarah Reinhard, Matt Warner, Dorian Speed and — as they say — a host of others, really great speakers, all. Check out the site — check out... Read more
Via First Things: Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York, has accepted an invitation to deliver the closing prayer at next week’s Democratic National Convention. As was previously announced, he will also be offering the closing prayer at the Republican Convention on Thursday of this week. It was made clear to the Democratic Convention organizers, as it was to the Republicans, that the Cardinal was coming solely as a pastor, only to pray, not to endorse any party, platform, or... Read more
For those who have been wondering why Rocco Palmo’s Whispers in the Loggia has been so quiet, recently — and I know you have been wondering, because some of you have been emailing me asking if I “know” anything — the answer is finally revealed and it is at once a “triumph” and a heartbreaker. Rocco’s beloved grandmother, whom he called “The Boss” has passed, and his grief is a terrible beauty: By seniority – an important thing in a... Read more
photosource Today is the feastday of Saint Monica, mother of Saint Augustine, whose tomb I meant to visit on my last trip to Rome, but got sidetracked, because I am an idiot. As the mother of two young men, I need her help! Her feastday has Fr. Michael Duffy thinking about his mother and the mothers of priests and the manutergium: In recent years many newly ordained have carefully set aside these purificators in a bag with their name on... Read more
Over at Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds posts, amid a wall of discouraging stuff, two especially grim bits: FOLLOW-UP ON FOOD PRICES: I just wanted to weigh in on the food inflation issue with a local data point. I live in Southern Iowa and have a small flock of sheep (12) that I use for weed control in my vineyard. I feed grass/alfalfa hay in the winter months (roughly early November through mid-March), and typically start planning in early summer . .... Read more
In the post below, one of the links embedded with in the text takes you to a piece by Leah Libresco, wherein she lets loose a bluebird’s yawp about Hanna Rosin’s celebration of the hook-up culture as “an engine of female progress”. [writes Rosin:] Single young women in their sexual prime—that is, their 20s and early 30s, the same age as the women at the business-school party—are for the first time in history more successful, on average, than the single... Read more
In light of ongoing headlines concerning Rome’s correction to the leadership of the LCWR, their response, and a recent report on the bare numbers of women entering religious life, Dave Gibson has written a really good piece in which he takes a look at a more “traditional” sort of religious order and how they live out their vocations. It was five o’clock on a hot August afternoon, and vespers, the traditional evening prayer of monastic life for centuries, had begun... Read more
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