“They began to find themselves defending Cahtolic orthodoxy in debate with ‘Christian Marxists’ who knew little about Christianity or Marxism.” (David Paul Deavel, about Eugene Genovese and his late wife Elizabeth, in the Jan/Feb issue of Touchstone)
Monthly Archives: March 2010
Perhaps it’s a new phenomenon, or perhaps I’m becoming more curmudgeonly, but it’s gotten that I cannot abide watching the aftermath of NCAA basketball games. It’s almost a certainty now that, in the event of a close game, at least one player on the losing team will wallow about on the floor, covering his face …
Husbands, for the sake of your wives’ self-esteem, stop taking your kids to the park. That’s one conclusion we can draw from this study. A possible flaw in its design: could it be that many fathers who pick up more slack than their counterparts are doing so in response to actual shortcomings in the care …
Oscar-winning composer Johnny Mandel, on how he arranged orchestral accompaniments for Barbra Streisand: “The only thing the orchestra should do is provide a lovely cushion for her to sing against.” Sounds good to me, Johnny. The NPR piece on Mandel is also worth a read to learn how M*A*S*H director Robert Altman got his untalented teenaged …
“Many things that I would not care to tell any individual man I will tell the public.” (Michel de Montaigne, quoted in Rob Nixon’s interesting essay on the state of non-fiction)
Whenever I listen now to Van Morrison’s “Caravan,” I think of driving with Eli and Isaac in my pickup, the three of us chiming along with the horn section at the end of the song, dot dant, dot dant, dot dant, dot dant . . . their eyes shining and the two of them grinning …
“The Father turns His face away. . .”, goes the song. How comforting, then, to read in the 21st Psalm (22nd in the Protestant Bible): Nor has He turned away His face from me; And when I cried out to Him, He heard me. Which reminds us that Christ on the cross, while fully man and …
Caleb has been on a robotics team. They use Lego Mindstorms equipment to overcome a variety of obstacles laid out for them in an annual competition at Wichita State University. It was his first year, and I think he must have relied on genes from his mother, given that I have the spatial reasoning skills …
From Dietrich Bonhoeffer, by way of Lance Nixon’s piece on Down Syndrome and human worth in last month’s Touchstone Magazine: “The exclusion of the weak and insignificant, the seemingly useless people, from a Christian community may actually mean the exclusion of Christ; in the poor brother Christ is knocking at the door.” Nixon notes a …
Chinese Minister of Industry and Information Technology, in response to Google’s refusal to assist China’s thugocracy in stifling free speech and oppressing it’s citizenry: “You are unfriendly and irresponsible…”
Christian Radio Pirate derives the new Christianity from a sampling of seeker-friendly churches: “Christ Follower: Someone who has made the decision to be an emotionally well adjusted self-actualized risk taking leader who knows his purpose, lives a ‘no regrets’ life of significance, has overcome his fears, enjoys a healthy marriage with better than average sex, …
“Those who love the Lord may be recognized by the fact that because of their hope in Him they bear every affliction that comes, not simply courageously but also wholeheartedly…” (St. Macarius the Great)
In Colorado, a Catholic school has refused readmission to the children of two lesbian parents. “Parents living in open discord with Catholic teaching in areas of faith and morals unfortunately choose by their actions to disqualify their children from enrollment,” explains the Archdiocese of Denver. Now, the conservative in me thinks that it’s entirely reasonable …
John Hinderacker at Powerline (I got there from Instapundit) has this observation about the latest slaughter of Christians in Nigeria: “So where is the outrage? I don’t know what denomination those Nigerian Christians were, but Lutherans are the most numerous Christian denomination in Africa. I’m a Lutheran, but I have never heard a single word …
From Anthony Esolen’s “Filthy Rich: The Unnoticed Gift of Trickle-Down Decadence:” “The poor teach us what our vices mean, because we have not the self-knowledge to see through the disguises we ourselves have given them. When we see the poor doing what we would not, let us not say, ‘There but for the grace of …
The best part of this story about the drastic increase in the average American child’s diet as a consequence of snacking (168 more calories per child a day than kids thirty years ago) is the disclaimer at the end: “The surveys depended on parents’ or older children’s recall of what they had eaten, so there …
Monday was Eli’s 8th birthday, and Wife’s . . . significantly more than 8th birthday. She’s always been gracious about sharing her day. And her life. And whatever’s on her plate, when some hungry little boy asks to sit in her lap at dinner time. Tonight at bedtime I gave Eli his birthday blessing. I …
You would have been fourteen today. Amidst the chaos of cobbled-together derby cars and robot obstacle courses and four sweaty boys we might have made a cake just for you. I would have made you spaghetti, because it is your favorite. We could have walked across the bridge in the late afternoon, to sit on …
From David Bentley Hart’s First Things article, “Tsunami and Theodicy,” rightly called once again to our attention, in light of recent disasters, by Civitate: “I do not believe we Christians are obliged — or even allowed — to look upon the devastation visited upon the coasts of the Indian Ocean and to console ourselves with …
Five year-old Isaac decided that he wanted to ride his bike without the training wheels. “They slow me down,” he explained. If you knew this boy, you would understand why I was reluctant to give him more speed. But there he stood with Eli, who volunteered to “learn him how to ride.” If you had …
The German home-schooling family which fled the government in their country has been granted asylum by a federal immigration judge in Memphis, on the grounds that they face persecution for both their religious beliefs and their social group. The U.S. Immigration and Customs authority is appealing the judge’s decision, reportedly for fear of inviting applications …