“The Eye of a Samurai Knows No Tear”
The cruelest, most violent Samurai in Japan decides he wants to become enlightened. He bursts into the home of an esteemed Zen Master and demands that the Master teach him how to become enlightened....
View ArticleMrs. Obama is ProChoice, Except for Schools, Lunches — UPDATED
Look, I am not a big detractor of Michelle Obama. I mostly like her fashion choices, and I think her mission to encourage garden growing and healthy food choices is, on its face, an excellent focus for...
View ArticleA Value of a Sickly Pope and 5 Other Thoughts
1) Over at his new blog, David Mills (who appears to be having quite a jolly time of it, over here, and we had him first!) responds to Marc Barnes’ notion that Popes should resign more often. Writes...
View ArticleLife Hack Tips Number 1 and 2 from the Anchoress
I have decided, since it’s so easy to do and the internet can’t get enough of it, that I am going into the advice-giving business: Life Hack tip #1: Buy a pack of spearmint gum that you will never use...
View ArticleBefore October’s Synod on the Family, Read this Book!
When the Patheos Book Club told me they were going to be featuring the paperback release of Mary Eberstadt’s How the West Really Lost God, I wondered what else I could possibly say to recommend the...
View ArticleThe Carmelite Nuns of Compiègne Wore Priestly Collars
As with the Martyrdom of St. Charles Lwanga and his companions we today remember a group of martyrs whose story is not nearly as well-known as it should be. And as with Lwanga and the Ugandan martyrs,...
View ArticleSometimes you just have to say, “okay, fly away…”
So, Max Lindenman, one of our earliest bloggers here at the Catholic channel, has folded up his tent, for now. He’s gone all Bedouin on us, and is going to be wandering the heated deserts of the...
View ArticleConfirmed: Yes, the “Fire Challenge” IS Real!
So, the other day, I posted here about this “fire challenge”, wherein teenagers set themselves on fire for fun and Facebook Fame. And then I learned that the page I’d linked to calls itself a satire...
View ArticleAnn Coulter’s Strange God Renders Her Blind
Others tell me it is “schtick” meant to “make us think” but if that’s what Ann Coulter is serving up with her “charity begins at home” number, she’s doing it badly. Leading people into productive...
View ArticleThe West Lacks One Essential Tool to Defeat ISIS
In an article covering President Obama’s reluctant decision to begin limited airstrikes against the so-called Islamic State (IS), New York Times writer Peter Baker quoted Ambassador Ryan Crocker, who...
View ArticleEditorial: “The World Can’t Afford US Gov’t This Bad for So Long!”
Wow, first Dana Milbank, then Richard Cohen, then New York Magazine and now this*: After [the president's] truth-challenged oversell of the Affordable Care act, the unconscionable overreach of his CIA...
View ArticleCan Finding Peace and Joy in Life Really Be This Simple?
Not easy, mind you, but simple? As in not overburdened with worldly reason and trendy thought; as in intuitive, rather than taught; as in off-the-grid, beyond the collective and as singular as you and...
View ArticleUnhappy Nation America: Not a Family, Not a People
America is not happy. However it might look on paper, in reality we are not getting along. We are e pluribus unum, no more. I wrote that, and later struck it as being too harsh, for my latest column at...
View ArticleDo The Rapes of Rotherham Tell a Tale of Conquest? UPDATED
For days I avoided the story, as I know many others have. Coming on the heels of the atrocities of the Islamic State, the take-over of Mosul (now a holding camp for kidnapped Yazidi “brides”) the...
View ArticleConsigning Joni Mitchell to the Prayers of Dorothy Day
Very likely due to being ill for nearly four months, I’m in a bit of a work-and-spiritual funk just now. I’ve got the blues and am hauling out all the usual prescriptions to try to help myself along. I...
View ArticleThe Great Unraveling: A Necessary Look at Reality
This morning, the New York Times published an exquisitely-written dose of reality via Roger Cohen. If “only Nixon could go to China” then perhaps only a NYT columnist could spell this out and thus...
View ArticleBurke’s “Exile” to Malta**: What if Everyone is Wrong? UPDATED
The rumors appear to be true, and it looks like Pope Francis is “demoting” Cardinal Raymond Burke from being prefect of the supreme tribunal of the apostolic signatura to “cardinal patron” of the...
View ArticleWhy Dolan, and Francis, and Benedict are Right
Do you know why, as Pope Francis rightly noted, proselytizing doesn’t work? Because it is not Incarnational. It has nothing in common with the example set by the Word when he condescended to join...
View ArticleThe Burke and Kasper Videos: Epic Fail All Around – UPDATED
If you’re not already fully repelled by everything in our world being politicized, this might do the trick. Seriously, when I watched these two CNS-produced videos — which take a page from the...
View ArticleAnchoress Blog Hits the Big 1-0!
This morning I realized that it was just about ten years ago that I was ignobly kicked out of a political discussion forum and found myself needing to opine endlessly, without a vehicle for blabbing....
View Article
