When I was young I reflexively told people I liked poetry. I hardly knew any poets and barely understood those I had read, but poetry seemed to be a necessary affectation for the burgeoning literary snob that I was. I read randomly: Blake and MacLeish, Poe and Dickinson, Whitman and Carroll. I memorized The Tiger because I had to, The Raven because I was bored in class, and Dickinson because I was bored while sneezing… . Continue Reading»
We have a cardinal nesting just outside our upstairs back door. Step out on the landing and there she is in a bush, not three feet away at eye level. She built it while we were on vacation, otherwise our constant coming and going surely would have discouraged her. It is a nest composed, I note, of eclectic materials but a good part looks like a plastic grocery bag. Recycling has reached the animal kingdom… . Continue Reading»
One of the great bits of repartee in The Kings Speech comes as the maverick Australian speech therapist, Lionel Logue, is just getting to know His Royal Highness Prince Albert, the stammering Duke of York… . Continue Reading»
Imagine if the great Dominican theologian and philosopher Thomas Aquinas were to come here to Charlottesville to meet another great thinker whose given name he shared. What if these two Thomases, Aquinas and Jefferson, were, through some suspension of time, to dine together? … Continue Reading»
It was just about a year ago that Anne Rice”who two years earlier had chronicled her return to the Catholic church in the best-selling Called Out of Darkness; A Spiritual Confession”announced via Facebook that she was quitting Christianity:
I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being Christian or being a part of Christianity. Its simply impossible for me to belong to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen… . . Continue Reading
In 1939, on the eve of World War II, Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain published a book stating that anti-Semitism had become a pathological phenomenon.
Maritains warning was welcomed by concerned believers, and even the secular press. The New York Times praised Maritains insight that hatred of Jews and hatred of Christians spring from a common source; and the same men who began persecuting Jews are now persecuting Christians, and more or less for the same reason.… . . Continue Reading»
In an article for Haaretz (subsequently picked up by the über-aggregator The Huffington Post), Mira Sucharov reopens the particularism vs. universalism debate, arguing the utter superiority of universalism and the foul depravity of particularism in strident terms“even to the extent of invoking everyones favorite debating tactic: tying the other side to Hitler. Surprisingly, this is the smaller of the two major problems with her argument.… . . Continue Reading»
One night, not long after we learned of our daughters Down syndrome diagnosis, my wife and I were lying in bed when she pointed to her pregnant belly and said, You know, weve been talking about this child as if she were imaginary, but shes here in the bed with us now. It was a powerful moment for me. I believe I became prolife right then and there… . Continue Reading»