Where I live, it’s another lovely Saturday. The kids slept in, the lawns are being cut, Father’s Day barbecues are being planned. Comparatively speaking, all is well. That is not the case in Iraq these days. And even if it only seems that all is well where I live, it is a paradise compared to Mosul, Iraq as marauders from ISIS rove the countryside, gunning people down. Innocent people are being terrorized. Families that happen to also be the minorities... Read more
Over at First Things, Matthew Schmitz shared a video, and transcribed a rough draft of an interview that noted theologian, and retired Anglican bishop, N.T. Wright gave with J. John , of the Philo Trust, back in February. John asks questions to his guests, see, from his notes, and from his friends, and from the studio audience, on a program he hosts that is awesomely titled, Facing the Canon. BOOM! I like that title. (more…) Read more
As everyone waits to see how the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the Hobby Lobby case, the U.S. Sixth Circuit handed an unfavorable decision yesterday. LANSING — A federal appeals court has denied the Michigan Catholic Conference’s request for a preliminary injunction to exempt Catholic charities from the contraception mandate of the Affordable Care Act. (more…) Read more
And I mean incredible in the following sense of the word. Unbelievable, beyond belief, hard to believe, unconvincing, far-fetched, implausible, improbable, highly unlikely, dubious, doubtful, etc. Here’s a snippet of Phil’s editorial over at Catholic Culture. (more…) Read more
I came upon these lines while researching St. Ephrem the Syrian, the Deacon, and Doctor of the Church, whose feast day is today. As it turns out, St. Ephrem wrote almost all of his homilies in verse or as hymns that could be sung to the same tunes that the Arians were singing at the time. What follows are words of wisdom he offers for us to consider as we journey along The Way. On Reproof by St. Ephrem the... Read more
…rolls of the presses of The Irish Times. Writing therein, Rosita Boland teases out more truth from the story by interviewing Catherine Corless, the local historian whose patient, self-funded, efforts to commemorate these children’s memories, got unwittingly added to the spin-cycle part of the news. ‘I never used that word ‘dumped’,” Catherine Corless, a local historian in Co Galway, tells The Irish Times. “I never said to anyone that 800 bodies were dumped in a septic tank. That did... Read more
Pope Francis remembers, and is grateful. Francis praised “the numerous soldiers who left their country to land on the beaches of Normandy to fight against Nazi barbarism and free occupied France”. The Vatican said Francis “also does not forget the German soldiers dragged into this drama, like all victims of war”. Though written long before the invasion of Normandy, G.K. Chesterton’s thoughts from his book, Orthodoxy (1908), captures the paradox faced by the soldier, and why gratitude for their courageous... Read more
What follows is from Thomas Merton’s translation of sayings from the Desert Fathers, The Wisdom of the Desert . An elder said: Here is the monk’s life work. Obedience, meditation, not judging others, not reviling, not complaining. For it is written: You who love the Lord, hate evil. So this is the monk’s life – not to walk in agreement with an unjust man, nor to look with his eyes upon evil, nor to go about being curious, and neither... Read more
Now why didn’t we think of that?* A billboard at the Village Mall in Auburn, Ala., features five smiling kids beneath a quote from Adolf Hitler: “He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future.” (more…) Read more
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