Dr. Malherbe of Natal University said to Field Marshal Smuts as he left a political meeting, “Why were those two hecklers at the back so bitterly hostile?” Smuts replied, “I understand the feelings of one of them very well indeed. He and I were brought up together in the same . . . . Continue Reading »
Who Closed the American Mind? Patrick J. Deneen, The American Conservative Hospitality and the Great Commission David Mathis, Desiring God Espresso & Everyday Liturgies Michael W. Hannon, Fare Forward The Other Greek Crisis Steve Coll, New Yorker Hyping Stem Cells Like It’s 2004 . . . . Continue Reading »
The Wall Street Journal reports that the cinematic return of the biblical epic is at hand . Russell Crowe will star in Noah , with a 148-foot ark, copious animals, and a $125 million budget. Steven Spielberg is in talks to direct Gods and Kings about Moses, Warner Bros. secured a script about . . . . Continue Reading »
From De Profundis: A sentimentalist is simply one who wants to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it. We think we can have our emotions for nothing. We cannot. Even the finest and most self-sacrificing emotions have to be paid for. Strangely enough, that is what makes them fine. . . . . Continue Reading »
New York-area readers may be interested to know that St. Catherine of Siena church in NYC will be hosting the Amphion String Quartet this Friday at 8 PM . The program will feature Wolf’s Italian Serenade in G Major, Haydn’s String Quartet in D Major, Op. 71, No. 2, . . . . Continue Reading »
When the U. S. Army started employing a marketing motto “An Army of One” in 2001, my friends in the military howled that such a slogan was antithetical to the entire concept of martial teamwork. An officer noted that an army of one was more like a vigilante than a soldier.I thought . . . . Continue Reading »
Betsy VanDenBerghe on Evangelicals and Mormons making peace : We refer to it in our family as the clown episode. Over a dozen years ago our family visited a collection of rare Bibles open to the public as part of a Sunday service sponsored by Salt Lake Citys Evangelical churches, . . . . Continue Reading »
In anticipation of Salvatore Cordileone’s installation as Roman Catholic Archbishop of San Francisco on October 4 (the feast day of St. Francis), Marc Andrus, the Episcopalian Bishop of California, issued what could roughly be called a welcome letter . While he and Bishop Cordileone . . . . Continue Reading »
U.S. News and World Report is reporting that a group called “Catholics for Obama” has been calling voters, asking such questions as “How can you vote for a Mormon who does not believe in Jesus Christ?” (Evidently, the calls also claim that President Obama does not . . . . Continue Reading »
Matthew Boudway, a former editor at First Things who is now one of the best if not, frustratingly, one of the most prolific writers for Commonweal , has the best take I’ve yet seen on the recent death of Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm: Hobsbawm described himself as a Tory . . . . Continue Reading »