Catholics are reminded that this is All Saints Day, a holy day of obligation. If you haven’t been to Mass yet, there is still time. You say it’s thirty miles away? Inconvenience does not negate but sweetens duty. So here we go again. This time, however, it seems likely that the great . . . . Continue Reading »
My, my, but aren’t we important. A few years ago a bishop remarked about a Catholic academic who blamed all the troubles of the Church on the fact that the bishops had over the years been ignoring his advice, “Father ________ suffers from a severe case of self-referentiality.” . . . . Continue Reading »
Harriet Miers has withdrawn her nomination to the Supreme Court, which is almost certainly for the best. Her statements in the early 1990s, unearthed earlier this week, drove in the final nail. Until then, social conservatives could tell themselves that, although she may not be possessed of a great . . . . Continue Reading »
Ernest Hemingway was once challenged to write a story in six words, which he did. (I’ll get to what he wrote.) Black Book magazine issued the same challenge to a slew of well-known contemporary authors. Norman Mailer wrote this: "Satan ¯ Jehovah ¯ fifteen rounds. A draw." . . . . Continue Reading »
RJN: The Hemingway is good, but then his prose always did move toward compression. The "short-short"¯a short story of no more than a paragraph, and often only a sentence¯has emerged as a genre in its own right over the last decade, particularly among mystery writers, who always . . . . Continue Reading »
Wellington Mara’s father bought the Giants football team in 1925, and the son stayed with it for eighty years. Wellington Mara died Tuesday at age 89. I did not know him well, but those who did testify to his being an extraordinary gentleman of the kind that seems increasingly rare. He was a . . . . Continue Reading »
John Keegan, the eminent historian of warfare, writes that the trial of Saddam Hussein poses difficult questions of law and morality. Saddam may be responsible, as seems to be the case, for as many as a million deaths. He ordered mass killings of Iraqis, and hundreds of thousands were killed in the . . . . Continue Reading »
I mentioned the annual Erasmus Lecture. This year’s lecture on Monday, October 17, was given by Dr. Timothy George, Dean of Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Alabama. His topic was the men who shaped modern evangelicalism, and it is an understatement to say his lecture was well received . . . . Continue Reading »
I called it quits at midnight but have considerable sympathy for the Astros fans who stayed into the early hours of the morning to see the White Sox win in the longest game of world series history. In response to protests received, my favoring the Sox has to do with a soft spot for Chicago, and a . . . . Continue Reading »
I will be in Minneapolis this Friday, October 28, to give the annual Paul Holmer Lecture at the University of Minnesota. That’s at 7 pm at the MacLaurin Institute of the university. Friday at noon I’ll be saying Mass in the St. Thomas More Chapel at the University of St. Thomas Law . . . . Continue Reading »
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