Buried in all the other excitement this week was the announcement that Chelsea Manning, the transgendered Wikileaker, is running for the Senate in Maryland as a Democrat. This announcement has gotten a great deal of adverse press from the right, but I think we need to stop and look at this in more detail. First, …
The Oyster and the Flying Fish
There are many ways of expressing the idea that you should be content where you're at, but my favourite is this one, from Kevin Ayers' 1970 album Shooting at the Moon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOMS4Zs6PtM The lyrics are as follows: An oyster was a'travelling Along the ocean road He'd been some time preparing And now he'd left the …
Drift, Like Real Estate, Is All About Location
It's almost like the Illinois Family Association overlooked the most important detail in their lament over the course of at least one Evangelical Covenant Church: There’s something rotten in the Evangelical Covenant Church (ECC). It’s rotting from the inside due to the presence of wolves in sheep’s clothing like Peter Hawkinson, pastor of Winnetka Covenant …
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Catholic and Christian, the Sweet Combination
Evident in the obituary for a Texas A&M classmate (we both were engineering majors) of mine: Thomas Craig Kohutek, 63, was called home to be with the Lord January 1, 2018...A faithful servant of the Lord, Tom was an active member of St. Catherine of Siena Catholic Church as well as the Knights of Columbus. …
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Sometimes Science Takes a Detour
And it's not the detour we're told happens, either. Consider this example from J.E. Gordon's Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down, during a discussion of Robert Hooke and the development of the theory of elasticity: In fact, throughout the eighteenth century, remarkably little real progress was made in the study of elasticity. The reasons …
Ah, for the Days of Wine and Imperialism
The left is getting nostalgic: The American empire is crumbling. What President Trump is destroying is a product of the postwar years. In the years after the Second World War, America constructed what amounted to a globe-spanning empire, with the active assistance of Western Europe. The immediate justification was to build a military coalition capable …
The Sheep Thief: An Episcopal Story
It's another year and another opportunity to start it with a "monumental post." Unfortunately, as the Anglican Curmudgeon points out, there aren't many good things to report these days. Our political system has gone dangerously stupid, completely in thrall to those who judge the merits of any proposal on who proposed it. The Anglican Communion …
The Wrong Side of the Border for Good Tamales
Even the Mexicans know the truth, if they won't admit it: We bring tamales by the bagful to holidays gatherings, trading them like baseball cards with friends and cousins—I’ll give you some of my TÃa Meme’s pineapple tamales if you hook me up with the potato ones from your Guatemalan sister-in-law. And, once we’ve put …
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Christmas with the Roueché Chorale
A little bit of their recent Christmas program: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlxVwnaLc7g The Roueché's are some of my favourite people. They hosted and led our Catholic Charismatic prayer group for many years, which included youth trips to the University of Steubenville. They did so while resisting the siren song of the covenant community. They are great people and …
Ecce Rex Tuus: St. Thomas Aquinas’ Christmas Sermon
For those of us who owe our theological sanity to marching through St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae and Disputed Question on Truth, his Christmas sermon, which encapsulates his method in a very nice form.  Merry Christmas! The Aquinas Institute would like to give our subscribers and supporters a Christmas gift: Aquinas’s Christmas sermon Ecce Rex …
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Positive Infinity 