Jul
31
Sunt Lacrimae Rerum
July 31, 2006 | Leave a Comment
The first funeral I ever attended was my father’s. I was seven years old and the full magnitude of what I was witnessing didn’t really sink in until thirty years later.
Not so today: I was immediately and profoundly struck–right in the depth of my being–upon viewing the lifeless body of a baby in the vestibule [...]
Jul
31
In Vino Veritas
July 31, 2006 | Leave a Comment
Speaking of anti-semites, Mel Gibson has shown that the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree. Like his father, he will now be remembered for saying crazy things about the Jews. When The Passion of the Christ was in release he was careful to deny charges of anti-semitism, but it’s strange how truthful we become [...]
Jul
30
The Moral Equivalence Fallacy
July 30, 2006 | Leave a Comment
Mike Liccione has a good post up at Sacramentum Vitae on the war in Israel and Lebanon. I’ve never fully understood why it is that some folks are more than willing to heap all sorts of opprobrium on the Israelis while saying nothing at all about the doings on the other side (or worse, making [...]
Jul
29
Lunacy
July 29, 2006 | Leave a Comment
Jim Tucker seems to have forgotten that his own Church officially teaches that Anglican Orders are “null and void”. Even if the bread and wine had been legitimately consecrated, however, one wonders whether Aldrin had official sanction to be totin’ the stuff all over the universe, since his church officially teaches (to the extent that [...]
Jul
29
Burden of Proof
July 29, 2006 | Leave a Comment
In an interesting review in the Times Literary Supplement (21 July) of the re-issue of Anthony Flew’s God and Philosophy, Alvin Plantinga writes:
The thought seems to be that atheism is the baseline or default position: anybody who departs from it labours under a burden of proof. This idea makes sense in legal contexts, and also [...]
Jul
26
Irish Psalter Found in Bog
July 26, 2006 | Leave a Comment
The BBC website has a story today about a 1200 year old Psalter found in a bog in the south Midlands. The Latin text of the Psalter is fairly well established, so the discovery is not important from the point of view of textual criticism; but in the words of Dr. Pat Wallace, director of [...]
Jul
24
James L. P. Butrica, R. I. P.
July 24, 2006 | Leave a Comment
I learned today of the passing of James Butrica, a professor of classics at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Educated at Amherst and the University of Toronto, he specialized in Latin and Greek elegiac poetry, and Latin paleography and textual criticism. I did not know him personally, but he was a frequent contributor to an online [...]
Jul
21
Realism Rules!
July 21, 2006 | Leave a Comment
When I first moved into the house where I now live (it was August of 1997, by the way, for those of you with a prurient interest in the boring details of my existence) my neighbor noticed that we got up en famille on Sundays and went out. She asked me what was up, and [...]
Jul
20
I Know What I Believe
July 20, 2006 | Leave a Comment
I’ve just finished teaching my summer class, an introduction to philosophy in which we read Plato’s Gorgias cover to cover. Although the course went fairly well in terms of covering the content and bringing the study of philosophy to an audience that otherwise would never experience it, I’ve managed to come away with some worries, [...]
Jul
4
Pius XII and Vatican Files
July 4, 2006 | Leave a Comment
The folks at the Society That Thinks Pope Pius XII Rules have given us the text of a story about the status quaestionis in re Pope Pius XII and the Vatican records regarding his Pontificate. Read it here.
