David Mills

For those of you in the Pittsburgh/Youngstown/Cleveland area: the Society of St. John Chrysostom  is sponsoring a lecture on the Coptic Church in Egypt by Youssef Ragheb, an MD who teaches Egyptian Arabic at the University of Pittsburgh. The lecture will be held on Tuesday, July 10th at 7 . . . . Continue Reading »

I have dealt with this writer and many of his cousins, as described in Randy Boyagoda’s More Soon: A Sampling of Electronic Correspondence with Magazine Editors , and—mark this, those of you who want to write for magazines—it doesn’t make an editor happy. Randy, by the way, is . . . . Continue Reading »

• When I started writing “While We’re At It,” using the anonymous corporate “we,” several friends told me they recognized the writing or the humor. Sitting on the couch one evening reading the latest issue of First Things , my wife looked up and said, “I really like the short items at . . . . Continue Reading »

Two useful articles from the New York Times ’ Opinionator column: Ben Yagoda’s Fanfare for the Comma Man and its sequel  The Most Comma Mistakes . The editors I assume wrote the titles and Yagoda should not be blamed for them, though I fully understand the temptation the editors . . . . Continue Reading »

Speaking of traditionalist Catholics, the subject of William Doino’s earlier post , in the English weekly newspaper the Catholic Herald  William Oddie notes that The SSPX is apparently about to go into schism over its leading bishop’s plan to return to full communion with the . . . . Continue Reading »

“Chuck was not perfect,” said Timothy George this morning in his homily at Chuck Colson’s memorial service at the National Cathedral, “but he was forgiven. He never got over the wonder and surprise of having encountered Jesus Christ as a real person, a living reality; the . . . . Continue Reading »

This is heavy-handed and one’s amusement will depend on one’s views of the target, but some of you will enjoy it: Ayn Randers , an advice column written by one of the last century’s morally coarsest political thinkers. For example: Dear Ayn, I’m dating a man who I think I . . . . Continue Reading »

• As the editor”sorry, The Editor, esteemed and revered be he”mentioned in the last item in “The Public Square,” I am now writing this part of the journal under a byline. Our splitting the founder’s duties reminds me of the line you hear in old movies, when the . . . . Continue Reading »

Not a movie I would have expected to see, but one that looks quite interesting: Holy Rollers , subtitled “The True Story of Card Counting Christians.” One of the young men interviewed in the trailer explains: “It doesn’t seem like one of the most noble things a person can do . . . . Continue Reading »

Fr. James Martin, S.J., offers an amusing, or grimly amusing, example of internet arguments in What’s That  Supposed to Mean?  ”No matter what you write,” he notes in his introduction, there are Catholics ready to take immediate offense, to explode in righteous . . . . Continue Reading »