Opinion
COMMENTARY: Let my people go
By Tracy Gordon — March 26, 2009
(UNDATED) My favorite holiday is the eight-day festival of Passover that begins this year on April 8 at sundown with one of the world’s oldest continuous religious rituals: the annual Seder meal. The celebratory Seder features holiday prayers and songs, the recounting the ancient Hebrews’ exodus from Egyptian servitude, and of course special foods like […]
The Vermonter
By Mark Silk — March 26, 2009
Vermont Republican governor Jim Douglas’s decision to veto the state legislature’s impending bill permitting gay marriage has been taken by the bill’s supporters, including the Burlington Free Press, as some kind of violation of legislative due process, a bombshell defacing the gentle lawmaking landscape of the Green Mountain State. Sure, it’s a departure for Douglas […]
Rushdoonyite Democrat
By Mark Silk — March 26, 2009
So Southern California moneybags Howard Ahmanson, the Christian Reconstructionist supporter of the Discovery Institute and Proposition 8, has withdrawn the hem of his garment from the Republican Party and joined the Democrats. “The Democratic Party in California,” he writes, “is now so big and diverse and all-inclusive that it has ABSOLUTELY NO PRINCIPLES WHATSOEVER.” Dismissing […]
COMMENTARY: Where the boys are
By Phyllis Zagano — March 25, 2009
(UNDATED) To scorekeepers in the Catholic excommunication derby, it looks like it’s Men-3, Women-0. Here’s a recap: 1. A rogue bishop named Richard Williamson has his excommunication lifted — before the world, and the pope, learns that he denies the Holocaust. 2. A 9-year-old Brazilian girl has an abortion. A bishop says her mother and […]
OFANP Redux
By Mark Silk — March 25, 2009
Whatever happened to the president’s Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships? After being created with considerable fanfare and three-fifths of its outside advisory council on February 5, it retreated into the White House woodwork. Director Joshua DuBois, administration factotum for all things religious, was charged with helping the First Family find a church. (Still waiting […]
COMMENTARY: Say no to Sundays
By Tom Ehrich — March 24, 2009
(UNDATED) For five decades and in growing numbers, American Christians have been saying no to Sunday church. I think it is time we listened. We have labeled them “unchurched,” “nonbelievers,” “former Christians,” “happy pagans,” “lost,” and a “mission field” that’s “ripe for harvest.” These negative terms imply that the absent have a flaw that needs […]
Obama honoris causa
By Mark Silk — March 24, 2009
I’ve always thought it was dopey for Catholic institutions of higher learning to bar on-campus appearances by prominent people who are pro-choice–sort of the spiritual equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting la-la-la-la. But it’s not clear to me that giving President Obama an honorary degree, as Notre Dame proposes to do, […]
Science and Plan B
By Mark Silk — March 24, 2009
In his order reversing the Bush administration’s restrictions on federal funding of stem cell research earlier this month, President Obama received some undeserved criticism for minimizing the role of moral values in shaping science policy. Yes he did, in his signing statement, insist that promoting science “is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted […]
Did he or didn’t he?
By Mark Silk — March 23, 2009
When the pope, ah, misspeaks, the Vatican press office will adjust his remarks to express what it was that he really “said”–a move facilitated by the fact that it’s often possible to claim that the translation from whatever language he happens to be speaking at the time was not quite right. Such an adjustment was […]
Volunteers
By Mark Silk — March 22, 2009
In an interesting and possibly consequential move, the Obama administration is working to get its campaign volunteers to re-up for the coming struggle over the president’s budget as well as to work, as today’s WaPo story puts it, “for legislative reform on health care, climate change, education and taxes.” But what about the less politicized […]
Huh?
By Mark Silk — March 21, 2009
Newt, partying like it’s 1980: “I am very sobered that my grandchildren might live in a secular society that might drive God out of public schools in such a way that they are now antireligious centers of propaganda.”
From our friends at Zenit
By Mark Silk — March 20, 2009
The customary way to read the headline, “Cardinal George Meets With President, Gives Message on Conscience,” would be that the cardinal gave the president his message (on the conscience clause) at their meeting. But the conservative news service knows no such thing. The meeting and the message were two separate events.
COMMENTARY: The source and cure for what ailes us
By Tracy Gordon — March 19, 2009
(UNDATED) For more than a decade I hosted a nationally syndicated talk show. I read five newspapers a day, 30 journals a month and a few books a week. All of that helped me learn to spot certain trends, and all of them, I think, contribute to our nation’s current crisis. I’ll mention just three. […]
