A pal of mine, whose political views are to the left of my own, is not very happy with President Obama. He dislikes Obama’s continuation of many of President Bush’s policies and he is disillusioned with Obama’s meager leadership skills, but his criticism is fairly low-key, characterized by a sense of quiet restlessness. Nevertheless, if I dare to criticize the president”on the policies, the passivity, the professorial condescension, the pea-eating lectures or on the general over-ratedness that I and many others counted, in 2008, as weaknesses rendering him unsuited to the Oval Office … Continue Reading»
The Catholic school where I teach has been run by a religious order of brothers for the last forty years. Like many orders, their numbers have been dwindling for some time now, and recently they announced that they would no longer staff the school. As our school approaches life without them, we find ourselves struggling to balance expressions of sorrow and optimism. We’ve dedicated much time over the last year to thanking the brothers and making it known how much they will be missed… . Continue Reading»
The brinksmanship in Washington over the federal debt ceiling caused me to think about our current difficulties. By and large liberals see in the present crisis images of dolorous unemployment lines and want more government spending; conservatives see a bankrupt banana republic and want cuts in spending. Whose vision is clearest? The liberals have history on their side… . Continue Reading»
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 King’s 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. It’s 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.”
Maritain’s warning was welcomed by concerned believers, and even the secular press. The New York Times praised Maritain’s 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 everyone’s favorite debating tactic: tying the other side to Hitler. Surprisingly, this is the smaller of the two major problems with her argument.… . . Continue Reading»
