There was a welcome report on Wednesday that Italy had stepped into the vacuum created by the balking French, offering to serve as the lead country in supplying troops to man the multinational Lebanese peacekeeping force. This act of Italian leadership (two words you don’t often see together) . . . . Continue Reading »
In a recent article in the Christian Century , Jason Byassee tells the stories of theologians who recently left their Protestant denominations and were received into the Catholic Church ( "Going Catholic: Six Journeys to Rome," August 22, 2006 ). Byassee does a fine and sympathetic job . . . . Continue Reading »
Recent reports of scientists creating "ethical" embryonic stem cells are false or misleading. And there is reason to be very concerned. Forbes described it as a "medical milestone" and a scientific "breakthrough" with a headline "Scientists Harvest Stem Cells . . . . Continue Reading »
A while back, I referred here to a lengthy article in the Dallas Observer about Ole Anderson and asked prayers for that apparently driven and unhappy Christian leader. I received a thoughtful message in response from Douglas Duncan, who was involved with Anderson’s organization for many long . . . . Continue Reading »
One of the great delusional fictions that bloggers operate under¯something I have discovered only when I started contributing to this page¯is that there are people out there who actually care what a blogger has to say! Speaking personally, I am not so naive as to think that, if I had the . . . . Continue Reading »
The year 2006 may for most people mark the tenth anniversary of the 1996 Welfare Act, signed by Bill Clinton, after he had vetoed two previous efforts, and just before crucial midterm elections that November. Some supporters apologized for him before his Democratic critics that he was forced into . . . . Continue Reading »
Given our continuing disagreements about human equality, Wesley J. Smith asks what general moral value or principle I think would work better than equality in promoting moral public policies, given our morally and culturally diverse society. Recall that my disagreement with Smith began when, in . . . . Continue Reading »
Assorted tech-savvy wags have created blogs for major literary figures ( G.K. Chesterton , for example), so it was inevitable that someone would create a blog for perhaps the most prolific diarist in English literary history. Samuel Pepys (pronounced Peeps) was a successful seventeenth-century . . . . Continue Reading »
Devoted readers of this page already know that in hot weather I have energy only for aphorisms , not novels or larger works. Admittedly, when the weather cooled off, I managed to dip into a few weightier tomes¯novels, biographies and the like . But now, a mere week before school starts, the . . . . Continue Reading »
Mary Ruiz’s amusing post on Samuel Pepys and his “towsing” of “ladies not his wife” puts me in mind of that most intelligent and charming of English monarchs, Charles II, who was famous for his dalliances with the ladies. (G.K. Chesterton, in a ballad from his . . . . Continue Reading »
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