From Mark Shea

• He’s got a little list.
• Loss of reason and triumph of the will: Our post-textual society is losing its grip on reason and becoming more and more dependent on the juxtaposition of images instead of rational argument. Can we finally put to death the Endarkenment lie that the Middle Ages were the Age of Faith Without Reason? If any age really has a lead pipe cinch on being called the Age of Unreason, it is ours. Again the ancient Greeks, Catholics and classic Anglicans say reason is conforming to reality not the absolute power to change reality based upon feelings that’s claimed today. Come to think of it today’s soi-disant rationalists hate St Thomas Aquinas not because he was irrational but too rational.
• Stop being played by the Torture Party and the Baby-Murder Party.
• What it means to be a Republican now. After the fall of Communism, the end of the Cold War, the late, great Murray Rothbard thought he could ally with people like Pat Buchanan and retake the GOP from the neocons. Alas.
• Voluntary charity: paying it forward at the Aramingo Diner.
• Evangelical culture spends a lot of time rediscovering Catholic truths due to the fact that so many Evangelicals are a) thinking a lot about Scripture and b) living in reality rather than trying to prop up human traditions like sola fide and sola scriptura. When you do that for a long time, you are bound to discover things like “Please be patient. God is not finished with me yet.” What does that sentiment really mean? It means “Salvation is sacramental, transformational, communal, and eschatological.”
• The Israeli principle is the Nancy Kerrigan principle. Just because you are a victim doesn’t mean you can’t be a jerk too. True: my priest lived there and says the same.

Labels: history, humour, Palestine, Pennsylvania, the Catholic faith