Herewith a potpourri of reflections on the Regensburg lecture by Pope Benedict and reactions to it, intermixed with a bit of my own commentary. As many commentators, Muslim and other, do not know because they manifestly have not read the lecture, it was not chiefly about Islam. It was a considered . . . . Continue Reading »
No, not that Ronald Dworkin, the legal philosopher at New York University. This Ronald Dworkin is a medical doctor and political philosopher who has written an informative and provocative book, Artificial Happiness: The Dark Side of the New Happy Class . He and I discussed his book at an event at . . . . Continue Reading »
Heather Mac Donald’s defense of “skeptical” (i.e., atheist) conservatives against the Religious Right has by now been widely disseminated. It first appeared in The American Conservative and drew a response , on this blog and in The National Review , from Michael Novak who (very . . . . Continue Reading »
On August 24, Bob Herbert of the New York Times addressed the debilitating popular culture embraced by many black Americans, and especially by young blacks. He now returns to the subject, prompted by the appearance of black "felon" magazines that exult in the self-denigration of blacks as . . . . Continue Reading »
I don’t agree at all with Gary Francione , the Rutgers University law professor who seeks to abolish all human use of animals, no matter how humane and beneficial to us¯including seeing-eye dogs. But I do respect him because of his integrity in advocacy¯he doesn’t pretend to be . . . . Continue Reading »
I recently posted on this page concerning Fr. Alberto Bonandi’s article in Teologia , reported on by Sandro Magister. Bonandi argues that Catholics, married in the Church but subsequently divorced and remarried civilly, may be readmitted to Holy Communion, even while they continue adulterous . . . . Continue Reading »
“There will always be an England,” as the saying goes. That may well be true, but the eternal perseverance of its Church, unfortunately, is somewhat more in doubt. As nearly all interested observers know, the Anglican Communion has been tottering on the brink of implosion for quite some . . . . Continue Reading »
Robert Royal, who runs the Washington-based Faith & Reason Institute, has a new book out from Encounter, The God That Did Not Fail: How Religion Built and Sustains the West . The argument of the title and subtitle is persuasively set out, and we will be giving the book more attention in the pages of . . . . Continue Reading »
I was hunting this weekend for a line from James Farl Powers¯J.F. Powers, as he signed himself¯and got caught again in the strength of his prose. Powers is such a curious figure: the greatest of the writers in the 1950s American Catholic renaissance, and the most faded. After his death in . . . . Continue Reading »
It is not exactly wilderness, although the word applies if by wilderness one means, as no doubt some today would mean, any place that does not have access to the Internet. While I was at the family cottage in Quebec for several weeks I was serenely unaware of what was happening on this website, . . . . Continue Reading »
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