Dec
31
My Kinda Town
December 31, 2005 | Leave a Comment
I suppose there may be one or two people who noticed that I was away for a week–I noticed it, for example, and that’s one person right there. And given one’s views about personal identity, since I am now a full week older than I was last time I blogged, I may be a different [...]
Dec
21
Thou Shalt Not Kill
December 21, 2005 | Leave a Comment
Well, here’s a puzzle. Jamie over at Ad Limina Apostolorum has a post up on Joseph Bottum’s First Things article on the death penalty from a couple months back. Jamie strongly endorses Bottum’s conclusion, but he also endorses Bottum’s argument for that conclusion.
It is not necessary to do both, of course. I fully agree with [...]
Dec
21
Sinta Claus
December 21, 2005 | Leave a Comment
Since today is the winter solstice, I got to thinking about some of the wackiness by which I am surrounded in these here hills of Athens County. There tends to be a rather good-sized population of folks in these parts who think of themselves as “neo-pagans” or something like that, people who appear to believe [...]
Dec
19
Must Reading from Mike Liccione
December 19, 2005 | Leave a Comment
Wow. Another home run as far as I’m concerned. Have a look at Mike Liccione’s discussion of “God the Killer” over at Pontifications.
Dec
19
Courage and Faith; Doubt and Fear
December 19, 2005 | Leave a Comment
The Gospel reading for Mass yesterday is one of those texts that simultaneously comforts and discomfits. On the one hand, it tells a story about the precise sort of self-abandonment that is required of the Christian disciple: Our Lady’s fiat is the model for all Christian prayer and every proper response to God’s presence in [...]
Dec
16
The Consolation of Philosophy?
December 16, 2005 | Leave a Comment
There’s an interesting interview with Harold Bloom now available from the archives of NPR. He doesn’t say anything that hasn’t already been said by many others of his ilk. He talks in a general and superficial way about the texts of the Old and New Testament and the ways in which modernist textual criticism has [...]
Dec
14
The Last Battle
December 14, 2005 | Leave a Comment
The November 21 issue of The New Yorker has an interesting essay on C. S. Lewis by Adam Gopnik (pp. 88-93, available online here). In light of the intense interest that Christians take in Lewis, it is interesting to read the impressions of somebody who appears to be an outsider. The most salutary element of [...]
Dec
14
Again with the Science and Design!
December 14, 2005 | Leave a Comment
As I mentioned just the other day, I’m a huge fan of First Things, and so I was standing at my mailbox like a kid or a puppy yesterday when the January issue was delivered into my hot little hands. Alexander McCall Smith has a series of books about a German philologist, Professor Dr. Moritz-Maria [...]
Dec
13
More Dennett Bashing
December 13, 2005 | Leave a Comment
Stephen Barr has a great piece on the ignorance of the fundamentalists of scientism at First Things. One would almost feel sorry for poor old Dan Dennett, if it weren’t for his hubris. There’s a followup at Philokalia Republic.
Dec
11
Where Else Shall We Go?
December 11, 2005 | Leave a Comment
A story at CNS about women who question Church teachings yet remain in the fold reminds me of a conversation I had last night with a colleague in the history department who is also a member of my parish. According to the story, which is reporting on a study conducted by Michele Dillon, a professor [...]