Ross Douthat misses the point: the institution of the church is no longer central to the practice of religion It wasn’t long after I entered my doctoral program some 20 years ago that professors and fellow students alike noticed in me a certain proclivity for polemic and outright cage-rattling. My instinctive tendency to leaven insight with attitude was on display
Read moreProgressive reformer can’t be what the College of Cardinals expected… I don’t traditionally care for popes. The Roman Catholic Church has this really long history of promoting oppression and corruption and ignorance, and there’s the whole pedophilia thing, too. I’m hard pressed to think of an organization that done more raw damage in the entirety of recorded history, and that
Read more
In a very real way, the celebration of St. Patrick is a celebration of cultural genocide.
Read more
Back in September Kim Christensen and Jason Felch of the Los Angeles Times broke an absolute blockbuster of a story: the Boy Scouts of America have, for decades, been providing cover for pedophiles in its ranks. Over two decades, the Boy Scouts of America failed to report hundreds of alleged child molesters to police and often hid the allegations from parents and the
Read morePart 2 of 2. (Read part 1…) It’s Time to Separate Church and State, Once and for All If you recall, anti-Catholic prejudice was once a problem for Catholic politicians in the US. John F. Kennedy went so far as to address the issue head-on in his 1960 campaign – probably because he didn’t feel he had much choice. Here’s
Read more
Part 1 of 2. I tripped across a provocative headline in the Wall Street Journal the other day: “They Need to be Liberated from Their God.” Turns out the story was about Mosab Hassan Yousef and his spying on Hamas. Which was a little disappointing. There’s no doubt that Palestinian Muslims need to be liberated from their god, but given
Read morePart one in a series. During its 36-year run, LIFE Magazine traversed a period of technological innovation and peril unsurpassed in the recorded history of humanity. As the first issue was released in November of 1936, a resurgent Germany was constructing the most awesome war machine the world had yet seen, a development that literally threatened the very future of
Read moreUmmm, let me get this straight. The Vatican, having concluded that priests raping children is both a sin and a crime, is now wrestling with whether or not to institute a zero-tolerance policy for child rape? As opposed to what? All in favor of “three-strikes-and-you’re-out” raise your hands? Okay, now everybody that thinks we should pass out seven year-old boys
Read more
lullaby pit 