Yes, the Golf Channel has called John McCain as the winner in New Hampshire, making him . . . king of New Hampshire or something.

I wonder if that comes with a company car . . .

I don’t know, Nathaniel. I especially enjoyed some of the quirkier pieces in the December issue, now available online to non-subscribers. How about Fernando Gouvêa’s “Faith by the Numbers” review, in which we glimpse how Victorian mathematics and faith intertwined? Fascinating, but hardly your standard dinner-time conversation!

Math can be beautiful, but those who prefer less abstract beauty (and have had their fill of modern art exhibits) will appreciate Matthew Milliner’s “Art of Transgression.” Beginning with a sometime shocking, often humorous, litany of current artistic woes, Milliner concludes by saying that “artists of faith are perhaps the only ones who can still enjoy the thrill of transgression–violating by their existence one of the art world’s last nonnegotiable ordinances.” But don’t take my word on it. Read these articles for yourself. Better yet, read the whole issue.

for Cooperstown and the Baseball Hall of Fame.

And Mark McGwire remains steady at a pathetic 128 votes.

And Clemens remains angry.

And Jim Bouton, author of Ball Four, which exposed players’ abuse of speed back in the early seventies, says ban em, for life.

And if it remains a he said/he said game? Whose “said” wins? And how far back do you go? And can entire teams be punished, if enough A-list players were on the juice?

I’m so grateful for clean, wholesome sports with model-worthy heroes for our young people to emulate.

Since the February 2008 issue went online today, the December 2007 issue is now available for free to all who visit the website. Looking back, my favorite article from that issue was Fr. Neuhaus’s “True Devotion to Mary,” in which he identified excesses of Marian devotion and laid out a path to a healthier love of the Mother of God, a love which in turn leads one to a greater love of her Son. The December 2007 issue covered a panoply of other topics too, from Abortion Politics to Ecumenism to Robert Frost. Now those who do not subscribe to the magazine can enjoy it in full.

Both the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal ran more or less the same editorial today.

“See No Good: Why do the Democratic candidates refuse to acknowledge progress in Iraq?” is in the Post, and “Democrats in Denial: The Presidential candidates won’t admit any Iraq surge success” is in the Journal.

Any chance the New York Times will make it 3 out of 3…

One of our esteemed writers pointed me hither: Uwe Siemon-Netto’s disturbing experience at an English countryside Christmas church service.

It sounds like a Monty Python sketch. The only thing missing is the vicar’s pulling out a set of plates and smashing them on the pulpit to get the congregation’s attention again. (“All right then, as I was saying: ‘Blessed are the clueless, for they shall inherit a goodly pension . . . blessed are the sterile, for they shall keep more for themselves . . . blessed are the apostate, for they will get better seats at the opera . . .’”)

And now for something completely different: Siemon-Netto, a member of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, received Communion in an Anglican church. Shout out to LCMSers in the know—permissible, if no Lutheran church is accessible? I would have thought not, as the LCMS, at least formally, is quite strict about the conditions under which one may—or may not—receive the sacrament. But I may be wrong. And I ask NOT to get Siemon-Netto in Dutch but because my wife and I love to vacation in England, and Lutheran churches are few and far between . . .

This blurb appears in the New York Times today:

Plans to exhume the body of Padre Pio, left, Italy’s favorite saint, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of his death have been met with fierce opposition from followers. . . . Over the weekend, Archbishop Domenico Umberto D’Ambrosio announced his intention to lift the saint from his crypt in southern San Giovanni Rotondo and put the body on display for several months for pilgrims to venerate, starting in April. But other Roman Catholics, among them Francesco Traversi, who heads an association of Padre Pio devotees, are threatening to block the exhumation in court.

So far, not much new. Once again, some people want to exhume a saint, others want to let him rest in peace. No big deal. Then we get this bit of news:

The popularity of Padre Pio, who was also credited with thousands of miraculous cures during his life, is hard to overestimate. A Catholic magazine found that more Italian Catholics pray to him than any other icon of the faith, including the Virgin Mary or Jesus.

I’d heard about the ubiquitous life-size statues, but not this. Either the entire nation of Italy is in desperate need of catechesis (entirely likely) or someone forgot that every mass offered is directed to God through Christ (also entirely likely). It also seems that statistics like this would be a bit hard to compile without direct divine revelation, and the odds of that happening are probably not too good. Nonetheless, it’s a point that I find troubling, even if exaggerated, for devotion to Christ should always surpass devotion to his servants, even if those servants had the odor of sanctity streaming from their stigmata while they bilocated.

The Seattle Times has this about one Lutheran church in a Nairobi slum attempting to cope with the inter-tribal massacres spawned by the recent presidential election.

I couldn’t help but think of this, from Luther’s book of Spiritual Consolations:

“If the devil could keep peace, we too should have more peace and less to do, especially less to suffer. Be this as it may, we have the advantage of possessing the precious Word of God, which comforts and sustains us in this life and promises and gives us salvation in the world to come. Moreover, we have prayer, which . . . we know pleases God and will be heard in time.”

By way of Gene Veith, over at his Cranach blog.