May 2009

There are two powerful sobering elements to the slaying of the doctor who performed late-term abortions in Kansas The first is that he was gunned down in his church shortly after the service had begun in front of his wife The second is that it happened on Pentecost Pro-lifers have rushed to co

How nice this side of the Atlantic to awake to Fr Jim on the BBC speaking of the appointments nominations of Sotomayor and Diaz Catch it here sliding almost to the end of the program at 22 55

While way too many people in the Catholic blogosphere were way too concerned with whether Father Alberto nbsp Cutie should have left nbsp Holy Mother Church nbsp so quickly or whether Judge Sonia Sotomayor was sufficiently Catholic Massgoer or just occasional Massgoer or just how much of a lib

In his book The Future of Liberalism Alan Wolfe posits that in addition to philosophic and procedural liberalism there is such a thing as a liberal temperament an openness to debate an inquisitiveness and curiosity about the world a horror of bigotry and an optimistic appraisal of human possibil

Father Alberto Cutie sorry I can t figure out how to do accents but he gets one on the e has left the Catholic church and has been received into the Episcopal church in Miami after having decided that he could no longer live nbsp the nbsp promise of celibacy he made at his ordination nbsp

The newly nominated U S ambassador to the Holy See Miguel H Diaz a nbsp superb choice a Latino Catholic a recognition of the enormous influence of Latinos in the U S church a professor of theology with terrific credentials St Thomas Notre Dame Collegeville and a Rahner scholar to boot

I certainly had not planned on spending my evening nbsp with Miguel Diaz rsquo s book On Being Human U S Hispanic and Rahnerian Perspectives But then word came that he was about to be named the U S ambassador to the Vatican and so I had to turn off Law amp Order and read this exercise in

–When I waxed enthusiastic to a friend about seeing this movie she said ldquo How can you be so rapturous about a film about a suicide rdquo But suicide is not what the film is about Nor does one come away from the film feeling depressed mdash just the opposite The goodness of Solo and his

nbsp It is so kind of George Will to explain Judge Sotomayor rsquo s beliefs to the rest of us And like conventional liberals she embraces identity politics including the idea of categorical representation A person is what his or her race ethnicity gender or sexual preference is and membe

nbsp nbsp nbsp When we were newlyweds my husband and I played a silly game that we called Life is a Musical We d make up dramatic arias and ballads and rhymes about the most mundane parts of our daily lives Then we d sing to each other about doing the dishes or sweeping the porch or slicin