Columns
Moving ahead with same-sex marriage in D.C.
By Mark Silk — December 2, 2009
Yesterday’s 11-2 vote on the first reading of the D.C. City Council’s same-sex marriage bill makes same-sex marriage inside the Beltway all but inevitable. Neither Catholic Church nor black clergy nor Congress is going to stop this train, and everyone knows it. Under the circumstances, it looks like Archbishop Wuerl has decided to dial back […]
Rev. Huckabee; or, The Pardoner’s Tale
By Mark Silk — December 1, 2009
The quality of Gov. Mike Huckabee’s mercy was not strained. It dropped like a gentle rain from heaven, upon just about any convicted felon who claimed to have found his way to Jesus. This was well known among the incarcerated class in Arkansas and so, it seems, more than the usual number of felons included […]
Bruskewitz v. Morin
By Mark Silk — November 30, 2009
Ronald Reagan was famous for invoking the GOP’s so-called Eleventh Commandment; to wit: “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican. These days, to be sure, it’s a commandment often honored in the breach. And maybe the same is becoming true for the equivalent Catholic commandment; namely, “Thou shall not speak ill of any […]
Huckabee Pardoned Christian Terrorist Cop-Killer
By Mark Silk — November 30, 2009
Just in case you were wondering how Anti-Fox News would play the story. As for FoxNews.com itself, it has this: Responding to his critics, Huckabee said, “Politics is the last thing on my mind. It should be the last thing on anybody’s mind. To me it’s repulsive that people are trying to bring something like […]
Jenny Sanford, Media Darling
By Mark Silk — November 30, 2009
With her estranged husband facing impeachment proceedings in the South Carolina legislature, still First Lady of South Carolina Jenny Sanford proved over the weekend that her status as media love object is as exalted as ever. “From Shadow to Limelight,” Robbie Brown’s front-page profile in Saturday’s NYT, enumerates the ways she’s turning herself into the […]
A Happyish Thanksgiving
By Mark Silk — November 25, 2009
This is how we Nutmeggers used to do it: That is: ALTHOUGH, Considering the Judgments of GOD, which are on the Earth, in the great Distress & Desolation brought upon many Nations, both by WAR and PESTILENCE, AND Considering also particularly, the awful Tokens of GOD’s Righteous Anger against us, Especially in the Contagious SICKNESS […]
Kennedy, Tobin, Matthews, Donohue…
By Mark Silk — November 25, 2009
Reacting to Chris Matthews’ hard-balling of Bishop Thomas Tobin, the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue huffs: No non-Catholic would ever treat a bishop this way. But too many liberal Catholics, especially Irish Catholics, think they are exempt from the same standards of civility that apply to others. Let’s just say that when it comes to the […]
Matthews v. Tobin
By Mark Silk — November 24, 2009
I doubt that Bishop Thomas J. Tobin has received such a dressing down since one of those sisters of St. Joseph caught little Tommy stealing pears from an orchard in Erie, Pa. in 1956. OK, I don’t know this. But Chris Matthews did a Hardball number on him last night that His Excellency will not […]
Purity, Republican style
By Mark Silk — November 24, 2009
The NYT’s Adam Nagourney has been all over the story of a proposed list of 10 GOP commandments that if you only violate two of them, you’re still a Republican in good standing. The list, which will be presented to the RNC for its approval, is apparently the brainchild of James Bopp, Jr., an RNC […]
Yiddish Policemen for Palin?
By Mark Silk — November 23, 2009
For a few days I’ve been meditating on Sarah Palin’s remark to Barbara Walters, explaining why she opposes the Obama administration’s opposition to expansion of Israeli settlements on the West Bank. It’s because, according to Palin, “more and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead.” This […]
Tobin v. Kennedy, round 2
By Mark Silk — November 23, 2009
Apart from that little health care vote in the House of Representatives, the biggest political news over the weekend was the latest back-and-forth between Bishop Thomas Joseph Tobin of Providence and Rep. Patrick Joseph Kennedy (D-RI) over the congressman’s standing in the Catholic Church. On Friday, Kennedy told the Providence Journal-Bulletin that Tobin had “instructed […]
The Relics of Santo Galileo
By Mark Silk — November 21, 2009
Who knew? In 1737, when the remains of Galileo were being translated to the monumental tomb across from Michelangelo’s in Santa Croce Basilica in Florence, some admirers made off with three fingers, a tooth, and the fifth lumbar vertebra, of which the tooth and two fingers were lost, and now they are found. The recovered […]
What do you mean “we,” Manhattan Declaration signers?
By Mark Silk — November 20, 2009
The Manhattan Declaration, the conservative Christian manifesto nailed (metaphorically) with great fanfare to the door of the National Press Club today, ends with this orotund pronunciamento: Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide […]
The Mouse Roars
By Mark Silk — November 20, 2009
Speaking at an ecumenical meeting in Rome yesterday prior to meeting with the pope today, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams threw down a theological gauntlet to Roman Catholics who regard things like papal primacy and the ordination of women as fundamental obstacles to ecumenical progress. Rather cleverly, Williams used the divided Anglican Communion as a […]
Bishops react
By Mark Silk — November 19, 2009
In his RNS report yesterday, Dan Burke got a couple if bishops to comment on the John Jay study de-coupling clerical homosexuality from sexual abuse. Most notable was St. Paul-Minneapolis Archbishop John Nienstedt’s “I wouldn’t put a lot of credence in it.” Nienstedt, as Burke notes, was the guy who led the Vatican’s post-scandal investigation […]