Religion
The question of papal infallibility has probably been on the minds of conservative Roman Catholics since the publication of Caritas in Veritate. Not surprisingly, the encyclical’s controversial pararaph declaring an “urgent need of a true world political authority” has dominated coverage and conversation. Some on the right, perhaps having not had a chance to digest…
Michael Hanlon does raise the ethical hurricane that spins at the end of the effort essentially to create a human brain with computer technology: Well, a mind, however fleeting and however shorn of the inevitable complexities and nuances that come from being embedded in a body, is still a mind, a ‘person’. We would effectively…
For some Sunday reading, you indubitably would profit from a visit to the Portsmouth Institute’s Web site, where the diligent administrators have been posting transcripts of the talks given by the various speakers. For anybody with an interest in a particular speaker, Mr. Buckley, Catholicism, or conservatism, the offerings amount to a literary collection. My…
It’s not quite explicit, but one gets the impression that Deal Hudson, director of InsideCatholic.com, likes the short stories of my friend, Andrew McNabb, because they’re gritty for a Catholic writer: Every now and then the real thing comes along: a Catholic writer who writes well enough to satisfy literate readers who judge fiction by…
By way of pausing in the middle of the workweek for a breath of fresh air, take a moment to ponder the thoughts of Christina Puchalski, professor of medicine and health sciences at George Washington University School of Medicine and executive director of the George Washington Institute for Spirituality and Health, in a short interview…
Stephen Kent makes a poignant point that extends well beyond the borders of Christianity: The cross is the symbol of Christianity. The asterisk is the symbol of 21st Century conditional cultural Christianity. … Marriages vows now seem to read As long as you both shall live.* *or until either party becomes bored, tired or attracted…
On the whole, there’s nothing in what Stephen Hawking is reported to have said at a recent lecture that is incompatible with theism broadly or Catholicism specifically. Human beings are part of nature, and our actions affect the course of the universe to some extent. Theologically, we are called to make of ourselves God’s instruments…
I’ve yet to trace the history sufficiently to form a strong opinion about the Robert McNamara, although I do generally distasteful to snarl at the dead on the occasion of death. The remarkable chill, though, emanates from the comments to the post at that link, beginning with the following unobjectionable suggestion from Lee Rosten: I…
The performance of Fauré’s Requiem, Op. 48 with which the Portsmouth Institute ended its conference on “The Catholic William F. Buckley, Jr.” doubled as a celebration of the completed restoration of the Church of Saint Gregory the Great, in which the concert took place. This particular requiem is among my favorite works in the classical…
Kathryn Jean Lopez, of National Review Online, began her speech — beginning day three of the Portsmouth Institute’s conference on William F. Buckley, Jr. — by stating that she would not have described WFB as a “Catholic journalist,” because both descriptors were so thoroughly integrated into his persona, and she seemed genuinely awed that he…