Category Archives: Catholicism

Godwin’s Scale

Hillary Clinton, frantically flailing to keep her brand fresh until 2016, this week compared Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler and then, having secured the requisite attention, “clarified” her remark, saying she wasn’t comparing Mr. Putin to Mr. Hitler.  Got that? You might say Ms. Clinton was invoking Godwin’s Law, which states: “As an online discussion […]

See You Soon

My mom died last week.  I’m hesitant to write about it because I’ve rarely seen funereal journalism done well, also because my head is in a netherworld and I can’t quite seem to get to it. It’s where my head was when I wrote the last post, you can tell by the fragment that passes […]

Entertaining, Unaware

I read the Bible.  This seems to irritate everyone. My atheist friends don’t get it; many of them fail to appreciate the book at any level.  That’s a pity, because even if the Bible is just a collection of stories, its echoes are heard throughout western culture.  (Is that hegemonic?  Yep, but that’s the culture […]

Sodomizing Jesus

For any parent, one of the scariest stories in the New Testament has to be in the second chapter of the Book of Luke. Twelve-year-old Jesus is separated from his parents on a trip to Jerusalem. They’re halfway back to Nazareth before they realize he’s missing and they rush back in a panic before discovering […]

Two Priests Walk Into….

A chain store? A casino? Two stories in Wednesday’s Washington Post: The first was about Father Tim Jones, an Anglican priest at the parish of St. Lawrence in York, England. From the pulpit last Sunday, Fr. Tim said shoplifting is not a sin, if the act was caused by need instead of greed. He encouraged […]

The Price of a Life

Today is the 64th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Sunday is the 64th anniversary of the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. These detonations are the entire history of nuclear war, so far. Sunday is also the 66th anniversary of the execution of Franz Jaegerstaetter. Mr. Jaegerstaetter was an Austrian farmer beheaded […]

The Nun’s Priest’s Tale

The Catholic diocese of Burlington is litigating a long series of sex abuse cases, in which it is accused of covering up pedophilia by its clergy. I think it’s lost or settled every case so far, but that hasn’t stopped diocesan attorneys from doing all they can to humiliate the victims of abuse on the […]