My friend adopted a little girl from China. She says that she and her husband had waited for years for a chance to adopt even though they gave birth to their son. They had wanted a sibling for him. The day finally happens and they fly to China to pick up their beloved, much awaited little girl. When they got there and began to read up on their daughter, they began to get really uncomfortable. For starters, the little girl... Read more
This speaks for itself. Ordinary people were doing pretty well until the 1970s, and the Reagan era benefitted only the rich. Read more
Something that is true that will probably surprise you is that television stations and radio stations can deny political advertising, even based on content. As licensees of the FCC they are required to make equally available airtime for purchase by candidates, but they do not have such an obligation to third party groups. For those subscribing to cable or satellite, I’m pretty sure, but not positive, that advertising for candidates isn’t even required to be made available. As unpopular as... Read more
Bill Donohue really can’t help himself. Michael Sean Winters wrote some posts on how the Acton Institute’s Fr. Robert Sirico was one of the first people to preside over a same-sex wedding, back in the early 1970s when he was a Protestant minister. True to form, Donohue throws a petulant hissy fit, as he often does when defending his friends when unsavoury aspects of their life are made public. True, this fit wasn’t as bad as his attempt to blame the girl in Deal Hudsongate, but he... Read more
One of the things which amuses me is to watch online commentary on liberation theology by people who obviously have not studied any of its major texts. You will find people assuming liberation theology has been condemned by the Church. It has not. Officials have questioned some forms of liberation theology, criticizing some ways liberation theologians have engaged liberation theology. In the 1984 Instruction on Certain Aspects Of The “Theologies of Liberation, the Vatican stated: Faced with the urgency of... Read more
Daniel Larison writes at The American Conservative: The Christian equivalent of [the Hindu concept of Karma] is not a work ethic, but rather the conviction that the righteous will receive their reward in the kingdom of heaven and that the wicked will suffer damnation. … To put it a bit crudely, it is the Santellis of the world who make people want to believe that there is some higher moral law or some divinely-instituted justice that holds everyone accountable, because... Read more
Part I. Part II. Part III. From the Form which transcends all forms, Love which transcends creaturely love, Sophia in creation performs, According to her prototype above. She forms the great chain of being, Reflecting all that is in divinity, Actualizing what she has seen, Into her own integral unity. Uncreated Sophia is revealed to us as the tri-personal Godhead of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That which God is, with all that God is, is this Uncreated Sophia. This... Read more
The word is conservatism. I’ve been over this territory before – the dominant strand on the American right that dubs itself “conservative” is not only liberal, but a pure form of liberal that goes straight back to the Enlightenment. With the rise of the tea party, this disconnect is getting worse, not better. Here we go again. This person has written a post that almost says black is white, that the modern American liberal movement that fancies itself “conservative” is deeply... Read more
I hope I shall never tell any child of mine that “sticks and stones may break his bones but words will never hurt him!” It is a wicked lie; but it is a lie that was told to me in my own childhood more than once, when I required to be fortified against some dreaded interview or other. Generally speaking, it is the meanings of words and the tone in which they are spoken which are the cause of pain.... Read more
First of all, read this. All the way through. I advise finding a box of Kleenex before you do. Then read his follow-up post, here. I will post some of my own story soon, but I need to find a place of balance from which to post it. For now, let me offer a couple thoughts. That second post is what I’ve been trying to get at with some of my previous reflections here at VN: it is when we... Read more
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In