A While We’re At It in this month’s edition of The Public Square, the popular column at the end of First Things:Intelligent and entertaining are two adjectives that go together far too rarely, but they belong in company when speaking of our contributing writer Alan Jacobs. He has in this . . . . Continue Reading »
Leave aside for the moment, if possible, the moral and legal debate surrounding the release of the top secret Justice Department memorandums on interrogation. What effects will their release will have on national security, or more particular our ability to collect human intelligence (HUMINT) in . . . . Continue Reading »
The day may be coming, and it might not be that far away, when doctors who are asked to help kill a patient—that is, to intentionally cause the patient’s life to end—will be forced to either do the deed or refer to a doctor her or she knows will do the deed.We are seeing this . . . . Continue Reading »
What happens, I think, is that the Pastor pulls back on the Cross with his thumb. That opens the lid, and then the Pastor can pour out a glass of cool lemonade for Mrs. Fitzpatrick, the head of the parish chapter of the Church Mission Society, who’s stopped by the rectory to complain about the . . . . Continue Reading »
Hugo Chavez is a murderous kleptocrat who has bankrupted his country, condemned tens of millions to malnutrition despite the country’s (stolen) oil wealth, spied on the United States in cahoots with Fidel Castro and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, given a helping hand to terroristsand unleashed the . . . . Continue Reading »
This short video says a lot about human exceptionalism—imagine conceiving even doing this performance art much less pulling it off—the wonder of dogs, which we intelligently designed, and the concept of sheer fun that brings so much joy to life.No, this isn’t sheep abuse. . . . . Continue Reading »
So I spent a few days this week attending a conference at Berry College in Rome, Georgia hosted by Peter Lawler and Eric Sands. It was a terrific and well organized series of events capped off by a thought provoking presentation by our own Jim Ceasar on Tocqueville, his consideration of the . . . . Continue Reading »
. . . ways of not playing out in quite the way you’d envisioned sometimes. At least, that’s one way to put it. A friend once told me the story of a play he’d been in, or seen, or heard about, or had a friend who had a friend who had heard this story from someone who was in it, or . . . . Continue Reading »
You realize that while you were experiencing this lifetime of Catholic practice, I was on the Junior High Sunday School Retreat at Panacea Falls. My technical and canonical knowledge about relics would not fill a thimble. Still, there are two in my house. Both of them came to us on the day we were . . . . Continue Reading »