If you happen to live in or near northern New Jersey, there’s an event coming up this Saturday that you’ll want to catch. Talented young Catholic singer/songwriter Tim Margiotta is holding an album release concert in celebration of his debut CD, “Make a Venture.” If you enjoy neo-folk or alt-country, but wish you could find … Read more
Nicole Neroulias of the Religion News Service has an interesting column this morning at Christian Century. She wonders if religious believers are more susceptible to cons and scams than are those without a faith tradition. While there’s no hard data on the phenomenon and her piece is based largely on anecdote, she makes some good … Read more
Is marriage obsolete? According to a new TIME/ Pew Research Center poll, 40% of Americans believe it is. What we found is that marriage, whatever its social, spiritual or symbolic appeal, is in purely practical terms just not as necessary as it used to be. Neither men nor women need to be married to have … Read more
Insofar as it touches on questions of ethnic origin and national identity, archaeology can be a contentious field. Nowhere is this more true than in present day Israel/Palestine, where every new discovery or theory must travel through a political filter that often does more to shape a scholar’s opinion than do the cold facts of … Read more
If you thought Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke hated testifying in front of Congress before, it’s about to get a lot worse. Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) — author most recently of the best-selling End the Fed — is about to become chairman of the House Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy. That means he’ll have oversight … Read more
I can’t believe this video has been out for a year, and I hadn’t seen it before yesterday. Some fiscally-sensible film makers at the Commonwealth Foundation created a heart-pumping (honestly) look at the history of federal spending in the 20th and 21st centuries. It’s the best overview of the issue I’ve seen anywhere. Turn the … Read more
The Catholic Church in America is short of exorcists — there may only be 5 or 6 in the entire nation. While the office had been all but forgotten in the years following Vatican II, contemporary need is bringing it back in a big way, and some of the bishops are responding: Bishops in America … Read more
Mollie Ziegler at GetReligion fisked through some of the mainstream press accounts of the pope’s homily at the Sagrada Familia, and noticed that none of them actually seemed to have… uh… listened to it. At least, that’s what you’d conclude from their coverage. In a homily that is almost entirely about the theology and architecture … Read more
Dan Burke at the Religion News Service reports that the Democratic religious outreach that worked so well in 2008 was largely abandoned in 2010. In previous elections, the Democratic National Committee hired staffers for Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, and evangelical outreach. This year, those jobs are not filled, said the Rev. Regena Thomas, the DNC’s director … Read more
In a must-read morning Wall Street Journal op-ed, Senator Jim DeMint offers some advice to the incoming Tea Party candidates: The battle with your Democratic opponents is over; your war with Republican insiders is about to begin. Many of the people who will be welcoming the new class of Senate conservatives to Washington never wanted you … Read more
I just returned from my polling place — things were awfully quiet in this corner of Baltimore — and thought I might do an Election Day roundup. First, if you’re looking for an interactive election map to keep track of results, the Huffington Post has a good one. * * … Read more
If you’re tired of hearing Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh described by media pundits as a “Christian terrorist,” Jeremy Lott has you covered. McVeigh has become part of the PC balancing act that analysts are expected to perform every time they are confronted with evidence of Islamist terrorism. Witness the flap over National Public Radio … Read more
With Pope Benedict XVI’s Anglicanorum Coetibus clearing away the obstacles for Anglicans to reunite with Rome, some Episcopal parishes are doing that very thing. This past Sunday, Baltimore’s Mount Calvary Episcopal Church voted to join the Catholic Church, making it the first congregation in Maryland to do so. The small Anglo Catholic parish at Madison … Read more
Edward Larson, former Fellow at the Discovery Institute and current professor of history at Pepperdine, attended the recent Council for Secular Humanism’s annual meeting as a correspondent for Religion Dispatches. (If you’re unfamiliar with the publication, RD Magazine covers religion from the Left.) Richard Dawkins was the main draw of the evening, and was there … Read more
Jeremy Warner, assistant editor of The Daily Telegraph and prominent British economics journalist, has a message for liberal economist Paul Krugman: Please shut up. The occasion for the remark — and come on, we’ve all been thinking it — was Krugman’s recent and wholly unsolicited criticism of Britain’s deficit reduction plan. Professor Krugman suggests that … Read more
Peggy Noonan says that far from being a nuisance, the Tea Party saved the Republicans. She also has a few words for the GOP establishment: The tea party did something the Republican establishment was incapable of doing: It got the party out from under George W. Bush. The tea party rejected his administration’s spending, overreach and immigration … Read more
Popular NPR and Fox News Channel political analyst Juan Williams lost his radio contract late last night after making a controversial remark about Islam. Williams appeared Monday on The O’Reilly Factor, and host Bill O’Reilly asked him to comment on the idea that the U.S. is facing a dilemma with Muslims…. Williams responded: “Look, Bill, I’m … Read more
The Vatican released its list of new cardinals today. There are 24 total, including two from the United States. Two Americans are on today’s list, and neither a surprise, considering the positions they hold: Donald Wuerl, the Archbishop of Washington, D.C., and Raymond Burke, the former Archbishop of St. Louis. Burke is the head of … Read more
On Saturday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel became the latest European politician to declare the end of multiculturalism. She was blunt: “Immigrants should learn to speak German,” she said. “We kidded ourselves a while, we said: ‘They won’t stay, some time they will be gone,’ but this isn’t reality. And of course, the approach [to build] … Read more
Archbishop George Lucas of Omaha has been forced to suppress the Intercessors of the Lamb, a formerly-Catholic association of the faithful in his archdiocese. After the group requested recognition as an official Catholic organization, the archbishop undertook a canonical visitation: “It was my hope from the beginning that the Intercessors and the archdiocese would move … Read more