This thorny topic dovetails nicely with Jeff Tucker’s morning piece about transparency, leaks, and the new Missal… Bill O’Reilly recently called for the head of WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange — or at least life in prison. Sarah Palin says he should be hunted like Bin Laden, and Hilary Clinton says he and his organization have endangered many … Read more
Newly elected USCCB president Archbishop Timothy Dolan gave an interview with the New York Times where he spoke about his surprise election, the pope’s recent comments on condoms, and what he sees as the biggest obstacles facing the Church: He said the bishops would not stop speaking out on political issues like abortion, same-sex marriage and immigration. … Read more
An article in the New York Times explains the risky business of scientific research, where “there are far fewer hits than misses” when it comes to research grants ever paying off. One of the biggest offenders? Embryonic stem cell research. Stem cell researchers have created an illusion of progress by claiming regular advances in the 12 years … Read more
Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York City is not happy with the New York Times. In a post from his personal blog yesterday, he bemoaned “the common, casual way [the paper] offends Catholic sensitivity, something they would never think of doing — rightly so — to the Jewish, Black, Islamic, or gay communities.” He cites … Read more
Each month, to test our courage, my wife Lisa and I stand before an auditorium full of couples about to marry in the Catholic Church and explain to them the Church’s teachings about sexuality. The crowd is generally not happy to be there. Many are not Catholic and few, needless to say, want to hear … Read more
Watching the trailer for the recent documentary Waiting for Superman, about our floundering public school system, is enough to make a school-choice activist out of anyone: [video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKTfaro96dg 635×355] Ross Douthat, writing in the New York Times, says the movie is right to highlight the benefits of school choice, but that choice alone won’t fix the … Read more
You’ve probably seen stories about the collapse of the honey bee colonies in the United States over the past few years. Somewhere between 20 and 40 per cent have disappeared and scientists have been frantically trying to discover why since thriving bee colonies are vital to agriculture. Experts theorized about causes… pesticides, perhaps? But according … Read more
This week I will take up the cudgels in defense of G. K. Chesterton, after reading Austin Bramwell’s acerbic article that dismissed my beloved bard as philosophically unserious and rhetorically annoying. I’m probably not the man to take up the task, since I’m way too attached. Twenty years ago, I teased Robert Spencer, who wages … Read more
Hardly a day goes by when I fail to see some news report or op-ed on the advisability of the Catholic Church to end the male-only priesthood, the mandatory celibacy requirement, the ban on contraception and abortion, or its view of homosexuality. Usually, the story is set against the backdrop, imagined or otherwise, of declining … Read more
If you want to write satire nowadays, you should give up on publishing books and even articles. Reality outpaces parody so quickly that you’re better off sticking to Twitter. If you take the time to write your dyspeptic warnings of the future into a polished, final form, chances are that, before they are even copy-edited, … Read more
In Ross Douthat’s Sunday New York Times column, he explains why — despite the insistence that the Church today is irrelevant for failing to keep up with the times — hundreds of thousands of Catholics came out for the UK papal visit: [I]n turning out for their beleaguered pope, Britain’s Catholics acknowledged something essential about … Read more
“Environmental stewardship” is a concept that has grown more important in Catholic political discussions over the past few decades. Our rights and responsibilities with respect to the natural world have been addressed in many recent social encyclicals, including Pope Benedict XVI’s Caritas in Veritate. While the pope is quite clear that we are to respect … Read more
The reaction to my “coming out” as Jolly last week has been huge. It turns out that we are larger than we realized! (That’s Jolly in-joke humor. We can say things like that. If you say it, it’s oppressive, obesophobic hate speech, and I will have your butt in court faster than you can say … Read more
In the coming decades, India is expected to surpass China as the most populous nation on earth. Worried local Indian governments are using soft sell tactics to reduce family size, according to this article in the New York Times. Previously charged with coercing women to sterilize themselves in some regions, government officials are using new … Read more
If the Third Reich did not style itself after the Babe of Bethlehem, Dr. Goebbels proposed some fugitive cheer in a radio broadcast on Christmas Day by changing the subject of the feast. He hailed the Japanese for being free of the remnants of Christianity that he regretted in his Fatherland: It is our national misfortune … Read more
Danny Seidemann is an Israeli attorney and the region’s leading expert on land and property rights. An immigrant to Israel as a young man and a committed Zionist, Seidemann insisted to me today that the only real pro-Israel position is one that fully supports a two-state solution to the conflict with Palestinians. “There is still … Read more
The Associated Press reported yesterday that only two weeks after BP finally put an end to what seemed like an impossible oil gusher, most of the oil seems to have…disappeared. So where did the oil go? “Some of the oil evaporates,” explains Edward Bouwer, professor of environmental engineering at Johns Hopkins University. That’s especially true … Read more
Since at least last March, the New York Times has been obsessed with a question: “What did Joseph Ratzinger know, and when did he know it?” At issue, of course, is the role played by Cardinal Ratzinger — now Pope Benedict XVI — in relation to the scandal of clergy sex abuse. It’s a fair … Read more
Every year, as the country works its way through the Dog Days of Summer, I find my attention drawn more and more inextricably to baseball. Perhaps it’s because early July is about the time the races really become interesting, or perhaps it’s connected to the weather. Maybe it’s just a fortuitous combination of an increased level of daylight in the summer evenings … Read more
When I saw Laurie Goodstein and David Halbfinger’s 4,000-word article on Pope Benedict and the sex-abuse scandal in the New York Times this morning, I knew it would be a big story — but I didn’t have the time then to do anything other than link to it in my morning round-up. Since then, others … Read more