“Liturgical abuse” can be, and sometimes become, normalized. The history of the development of liturgical tradition is filled with such abuse, and many of them have become so normalized in the West, people do not understand how controversial such practices were when they were first enacted (in a part, and not the whole, of the Western Church). Perhaps one of the most important examples is that of the filioque. (more…) Read more
I’ve talked about this before – the level of inequality in the United States today is at its highest level since just before the Great Depression. Since the 1980s, the rich got richer and the extreme rich got extremely richer. This chart was developed by Paul Krugman from an influential paper by Picketty and Saez – it measures the share of the richest 10 percent in national income: Why is this such a problem? I can think of at least three reasons. (more…) Read more
How one defines this will help to shape one’s ideology. Her in the States, we primarily define freedom as lacking impedance from the law. When we think of people who aren’t free, our minds go immediately to prisoners. It is most often the metaphor we seek when describing other things. For example, one might say that he is a prisoner to the sexual norms of a society. Needless to say our country has a very liberal view of freedom, something that... Read more
One of the more interesting traditions, which had been abandoned but seems to have had a revival of sorts in some regions of the world, is the concept of the boy-bishop. It was, in its way, a subversive tradition, because it elevated a boy and made him like a bishop (in as much as was possible), while it made those who were in authority his underlings (in theory, teaching them humility). The Old Catholic Encyclopedia had this to say about... Read more
Whenever I write posts like this one, I often find comments complaining about excess state power interfering in market-driven outcomes. Of course, Catholic social teaching has always acknowledged the role of the civil power in rectifying injustice (including economic injustice), and has done so in especially stark terms since Rerum Novarum. Much of the criticism I see in comboxes and elsewhere derives from the standpoint of liberalism, whether explicitly or implicitly. Liberalism, of course, denies that the state has any duties toward... Read more
This piece is from La Pasión Según San Marcos, by the contemporary composer Osvaldo Golijov. Schola Cantorum de Venezuela. Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar. Directora, María Guinand Read more
I am on the road and forgot to send this personally to my friends here at VN, so I am posting this here as an fyi: My jazz fusion band, Matias-Rocha y Nueva Trova is playing tonight and tomorrow at Twins Jazz on U street in Washington D.C. We play two sets from 9 to a little after midnight. I hope to meet some of you there, if you show up, be sure to come up and say hi. Sorry... Read more
Japanese CEOs do not earn that much. The chairman of Toyota makes $1.5 million, and the CEO makes less than $1.1 million a year. A new law requires the disclosure of executive pay more than $1.1 million. Only 300 people fell into this category. Social norms matter. They used to matter in the US too, before the Reaganite restoration of laissez-faire liberalism. In his last book, Paul Krugman looks at the difference between GM in 1969 and Walmart today. Walmart’s non-supervisory employees receive about $18,000... Read more
An adjunct who has taught classes on Catholicism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign says he lost his job because he explained Catholic teaching on homosexuality. Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, head of the German Bishops Conference, admits he made mistakes in how he handled accusations against a priest who was accused of sexual abuse. CHA praises President Obama’s choice of Harvard pediatrician Dr. Donald Berwick as head of CMS. Catholic aid to Haiti is over 46 million dollars. Guillermo Farina... Read more
The new auxiliary bishop of San Francisco is Robert McElroy. Why is he a great choice? Because he has taken on (i) the distortion of just war teaching by George Weigel and Michael Novak; and (ii) the call for “eucharistic sanctions” on abortion-supporting politicians by a small-but-noisy wing of the American Catholic Church. Here is the essay on the Iraq war. He argues strongly that the just war conditions did not – and still do not – apply. In addressing... Read more
Select your answer to see how you score.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In