Confused

The Blair controversy is kind of interesting. On one hand, of course, only God knows anybody's faith. On the other hand, one is left with the feeling that there is something missing here. Not moral consistency (who can claim that?), but rather a clear link to an authority, to an "other" that makes Christianity an objective reality.

Otherwise...everything will remain at the level of "opinion" and the decisive criterion will always be of their choosing, whereas the drama of conversion is to feel oneself called back to an objective Truth...and to acknowledge the concrete presence of a reality that is Christ's mystery in history, in the Church. (The Journey to truth is an experience, p. 89)

Bigotry

A good rant about anti-Christian prejudice in movies.

No theology

An update on the Pope's attitude in dealing with Islam.

Then, kill yourself!

Sometimes crazy people reveal the logical conclusion of very widespread fallacies, in this case the environmentalist ideology. In truth, nature has value because there are people who can appreciate its beauty. Without people, the earth could turn into a desert tomorrow and it would not make any difference.

Vindicated

The new stem cell discovery is making waves.

Christian, Muslim, Jew

Spengler made it to First Things.

Embarassing

A typical "liberal" predicament: how do you maintain that people are "equal" if you don't believe that they are "created equal?" Perhaps you should not let "science" dictate silly notions of what is important in a human person (in this case, IQ test scores).

Your Eminence?

John Allen reports an interesting discussion among the US bishops that culminates in the following question by Cardinal George:

Is religion an independent variable? Or is it simply reduced to a cultural reality that can be explained in terms of something other than religion itself?

The most striking part is that Cardinal George says that he "does not know the answer." Not even regarding Christianity? Clearly, he was just being very diplomatic, but he should be careful lest people think that this kind of question can really be settled by the sociologists...

Looking for mercy

This essay makes some valid points. First, that some of the responses to the abuse scandal in the Church have been driven precisely by the same (non-Catholic) mentality that made the scandal possible in the first place. Second, that the first responsibility of the Church is to be the Church.

The Church failed to protect children from sexual abuse. Bad as that was, there is worse, since protecting children is not an end in itself for the Church. From a Catholic point of view, when people are abused in the Church, they may be torn from the life of the Church, whose teaching and sacraments they need. Disillusioned and alienated, they may take scandal according to Guardini’s definition, and reject for secondary reasons what should be affirmed for primary reasons.

For internet junkies, Ms. Snow is the mother of The Atlantic Magazine's blogger Ross Douthat.

Rage

Peter Berkowitz is correct that there is something strange about the extreme hatred many people feel for President Bush, which cannot be fully explained just by a politician's shortcomings. It probably points to a situation in which many people are not certain and confident about their own ideals and find strength, purpose and psycological reassurance in having some mithically bad person to hate and despise. This dynamics produces the most violent possible people, much more violent than those who are peaceful and secure in their cultural/religious identity.

Still the Church of Jesus Christ

The Pope is coming. The press is busy missing as many points as they can.

Honor

A terrible place. It makes global western culture look like a humanizing force.

The anti-utopian

Rosmini was a great Christian thinker, even if he is unknown in the English-speaking world. He is also a reminder of how the word "liberalism" used to have a completely different meaning in Continental Europe.

Difficult choices

This article by Ramesh Ponnuru on health care policy is interesting.

Indispensable

This week Spengler gets excited about Catholic theology.

Missing the point

The Economist has a long series of articles on "religion" in the contemporary world. They are not terrible, but they lack a unifying criterion in order to judge what's going on. What is universal and explanatory are the religious questions (the "religious sense"), whereas there is not really much to be learnt in general by describing religious answers. But the fact that human beings ARE a need for meaning seems to escape this fine specimen of British empiricism.

The law of existence

Roger Scruton on altruism.

Unmoored

It is true that living only in the present leads to slavery.

“Popular culture” is more accurately a “present-tense culture”: You’re celebrating the millennium but you can barely conceive of anything before the mid-1960s. We’re at school longer than any society in human history, entering kindergarten at four or five and leaving college the best part of a quarter-century later—or thirty years later in Germany. Yet in all those decades we exist in the din of the present.