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What Did Stupid People Ever Do To You?

Economist Bryan Caplan pushes back against the high-IQ misanthropes : Out of all the reactions I’ve heard to  Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids , the most disturbing are all variations on “Except stupid people.  They shouldn’t have kids.”  I could snark, . . . . Continue Reading »

Nose-rings as Religious Expression

Another apparently unsolvable conflict of church and the state in the guise of public schooling: a girl in North Carolina has been suspended from school for wearing a (very small) nose ring, which is against the dress code, unless the child has a religious reason, which this child claims to do, as . . . . Continue Reading »

Beautiful and Stirring

Pope Benedict’s extraordinary celebration at Bellahouston Park in Glasgow was one for the ages. The liturgy was beautiful and stirring, the people’s faith obviously heartfelt, and Benedict’s homily —recalling Scotland’s Christian heritage, and the true destiny of . . . . Continue Reading »

Selling Confession

At Inside Catholic, David Mills explains how the Church can interest believers in confession : Confession ought to be a great selling point for the Catholic Church. Years ago, I saw some young Evangelicals ask an older Catholic convert about confession, with the guarded but lurid interest of . . . . Continue Reading »

The ‘Sanctification Gap’

In 1973, Richard Lovelace penned an important article detailing the causes of an acute problem that persists in the lives of many evangelical Christians. He calls it the “sanctification gap” and zeros in on the history of Protestantism to explain why evangelicals have so many problems . . . . Continue Reading »

A Graceful and Elegant Beginning

The graceful and even elegant beginning of the state visit has only been made trying by the incessant banter of commentators who think themselves obliged to fill in every second of air time with streams of talk, occasionally informative, but mostly banal. “When I met the Holy Father . . . . . . . Continue Reading »

Modern Historians on Pope Benedict

Eamon Duffy of Cambridge University is one of the church’s great historians . He is also, at times, one of its most disappointing. The problem with Professor Duffy—maddening, to those who admire his books—is that he has no feel for contemporary Catholicism. As long as he is writing . . . . Continue Reading »

Dispelling Fear By Expelling Faith

Last week, Rick Santorum, former Senator of Pennsylvania, gave a rousing speech on faith in the public square : Three pictures hung in the home of my devoutly Catholic immigrant grandparents when I was a boy and I remember them well — Jesus, Pope Paul VI and John F. Kennedy. The . . . . Continue Reading »

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