One more contribution to the health care debate in the United States introduces a surprising possibility: Universal health care tends to cut the abortion rate. How so? Britain’s former Catholic archbishop, Basil Cardinal Hume explains:“If that frightened, unemployed 19-year-old knows . . . . Continue Reading »
In light of Rhett Smith’s interesting (and true!) thoughts on what novels do for us, I was intrigued to read Francis Watsons rather critical comments of their form in western literature: The assumption that love (or romantic love) is the primary basis for . . . . Continue Reading »
Here’s a very good message from Russell Moore, author of Adopted for Life, from a conference devoted to the theme:More audio and video from the conference . . . . Continue Reading »
Want to be canonized as a saint? You may want to move to Italy: 46.7 percent of saints lived in that country at the time of their deaths. That is just one of the many interesting tidbits to be gleaned from Barro, McCleary, and McQuoid’s new paper, The Economics of Sainthood (a preliminary . . . . Continue Reading »
Robert Louis Wilken, a board member and frequent contributor of First Things , has a review in the Wall Street Journal of two new books on the Crusades: The recorded past and the remembered past are seldom the same. Nowhere is this more evident than with the Crusades. The Crusades were a belated . . . . Continue Reading »
Twenty-five years ago the first .com Internet domain name was registered. Read the story here. How has our world changed as a result of the Internet? The good, the bad and the ugly. It’s all there/here/out there/on our computers for us to read, interact with, react to, live with, struggle . . . . Continue Reading »
Trouble in US-Israeli relations is real, but is misrepresented in the press accounts. No-one—really, no-one—cares about the Palestinians. The tiff centers on Israel’s plans to attack Iran. And Obama may be in more trouble than Netanyahu.This week’s Spengler essay at Asia . . . . Continue Reading »
The Washington Posthas a story about a pilot program to identify donatable organs from the cadvers of people who die in emergency rooms. From the story:Using a $321,000 grant from the Department of Health and Human Services, the emergency departments at the University of Pittsburgh Medical . . . . Continue Reading »
The American Catholic bishops sent a bulletin to parishes this weekend, urging Catholics to oppose the abortion funding provisions in the current version of the health-care. Unfortunately, Sister Carol Keehan, president of the Catholic Health Association, promptly endorsed the current bill: . . . . Continue Reading »