Divided

The scary thing about the persisting and bitter polarization in the US is that is based strictly on ideology, not on economic interest. This almost unprecedented in American history.

Persecution

Things are getting worse for Christians in Mosul.

Coming to a city near you

ACORN seems to be an interesting example of how ideology makes people impervious to reality.

End of freedom

If you think Sweden is a crazy country, think again. Often extreme cases only reveal what is logically implicit but still undeveloped in the mainstream.

Trendy

The Economist is baffled:

All this amounts to something that Europeans, at least, may find surprising. In much of Christianity’s former heartland, religion is associated with tradition and ritual. In China, it is associated with modernity, business and science. “We are first-generation Christians and first-generation businessmen,” says one house-church pastor.

We noticed

While obvious and not in need of scientific verification, this connection does have some impact on human affairs.

Self-destructive

An intervention by Cardinal Ouellet on the situation in Quebec.

Poverty is not just money

George Packer on the working class and the elections. It is a melancholic piece because it is obvious what this people really need is certainly not income redistribution by the government, or anything the candidates are proposing. In fact, the things they need the most (stable families, better education, economic creativity, participating in the life of a people) is simply beyond the reach of politics per se. However, politics could at least support whatever forces are capable of social reconstruction.

Yawn

The NYTimes has discovered a debate in the Catholic Church re. the elections. Of course there is no such thing, given that during the last few years the US bishops have been remarkably unanimous in saying what they regard as priorities. But this never stopped the NYTimes before...

Natural affinity

The history of Christianity in India sounds interesting.

At the beginning, experience

Forty years ago died Romano Guardini.

Like me, for example?

Steven Weinberg is a great scientist, and one has to grant that his profession of atheism has a certain existential seriousness which is lacking in many of his contemporaries. As such he is quite representative of the prejudices of the age: a) the reduction of reason: if we learnt to "worship nothing" we would stop being human, and b) that religion is just the things we make up to explain our place in the universe. However, it is also possible that something might HAPPEN.

On the way out?

In November California will vote on marriage. Based on the comments to this column, the consensus seems to be that marriage is some sort of secular sacrament, a state recognition of our romantic committments. Nobody seems to realize that, on this basis, it becomes a perfectly useless institution, and what people are really pushing for is its abolition. On the other hand, this reduced notion of marriage has not come about with the gay movement, but the other way around. The idea of gay marriage has been made possible by a dominant mentality that was shaped many decades ago and enshrined in the no-fault divorce laws of the 1970's.

Aware

Nobody really understands the mind.

Inverse proportion

The connection between Christianity and Western rationality is going to be proved experimentally.