Even before it began, the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON, as its organizers called it) was dismissed as a failed attempt at schism¯and hailed as a triumphant new beginning¯for the long-troubled Anglican Communion.In fact, however, it’s too soon to tell which it will be, . . . . Continue Reading »
What are you doing looking here on the Fourth of July? Go away. Set off some firecrackers. Recite some patriotic speeches. Watch the rockets’ red glare. Read about how the Peterkin boys , Solomon John, and Agamemnon made their disaster of “fulminating paste” from iron-filings and . . . . Continue Reading »
Last month saw a flurry of interest in the reproductive goings-on in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Time magazine reported a spike in teen pregnancies at Gloucester High School¯from 3 or 4 last year to 17 this year (see June 18, 2008, “Pregnancy Boom at Gloucester High”). That’s what . . . . Continue Reading »
“If he wakes me up today, God has something he wants me to do.” “I’m your sister, you’re my brother.” “We are all the same”that’s why we need to love everybody.” Truisms get their name because they are, well, true. But not the sort of truth that is . . . . Continue Reading »
Scenes from a dinner in Washington ten years ago: Irving Kristol: “What was in the Second Amendment, again?” Paul Cantor: “Irving, you don’t remember? You wrote it.”There has often been a faint recollection of the Second Amendment, because it had rarely been before the courts. The rights . . . . Continue Reading »
An excited group of girls behind me—ages five to eight, I think, walking with their mothers: some of them dribbling, others flinging, handfuls of rose petals drawn from their little white baskets. Next the censers, wafting smoke, and then the Sacrament itself, in its monstrance: a great golden sun . . . . Continue Reading »
Of the writing of books about the Holocaust it seems there is no end. And it is, all in all, a good thing that that is the case. There are other candidates for the dreadful distinction, but it happens that the Holocaust is the only universally agreed upon icon of absolute evil in the modern world. . . . . Continue Reading »
In this hour of “new day” presidential politicking, it is difficult to distinguish prophecy from wishful thinking, especially among those in the electronic and print media. Take, for example, the purported radical shift in alignment among religious conservatives that was reported as a . . . . Continue Reading »
In the late nineteenth century, William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer developed what would come to be known as yellow journalism. By disregarding what had been standard journalistic methods, particularly in regards to the verifying of sources, these two publishers were able both to push their . . . . Continue Reading »
Once upon a time, and a very long time ago it was, Flann O’Brien (aka Myles na Gopaleen, aka Brian O’Nolan, his real name, sometimes gaelicized to Brian “ Nualláin) saw a woman hopping along the road in the Irish countryside. What was interesting about this woman was that she . . . . Continue Reading »
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