Welcome to Distinctly Catholic, a blog by Michael Sean Winters that examines politics, religion and the estuary where the two meet, all from a distinctively Catholic point of view. The blog is small "c" catholic as well as big "C" Catholic, examining a wide range of issues but always from the perspective of Catholic history and theology.
Our friends at Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good have an essay this week from Bill Buck, who founded the new group Americans for the Protection of Children. The group aims to take on the National Rifle Association where it obviously matters most - the ballot box. There being only 1000 people on the planet, as the saying goes, Bill and I worked together on the campaign of Gen. Wesley Clark in Little Rock back in 2004.
Michael Kinsley, in addition to being one of the nicest people on the planet, demonstrates in this essay at The New Republic, why he remains also one of the sharpest essayists on the planet. He examines the issue of crockpots for crackpots. Hilarious, scary, incisive, all at the same time.
Phil Lawler, who writes at CatholicCulture.org, posted a column yesterday chastising Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley for a sermon he gave last Sunday in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings. You can read the text of, or watch, the homily over at Whispers by clicking here.
I had saved this post from Vatican Insider and then forgot to put up the link previously. Pope Francis, in another one of his daily homilies at the Domus Sanctae Marthae, warns against lukewarmness in our faith, and how that happens when we make ourselves the measure, not Christ.
Ross Douthat, at the New York Times, on the increasing, and bipartisan, influence of libertarian ideas. As I have said before, the ideological fault lines in American politics do not line up precisely with the partisan fault lines, and that lack of coherence can't last forever. I do not know if it will be a slow, gradual process by which one party becomes the libertarian party on all or most issues, or if some crisis will speed up the process.
Yesterday, I called attention to an interview on the Piers Morgan show on CNN, in which Republican State Sen. Greg Ball defended a tweet he sent out calling for the bombing suspect in Boston to be tortured. Mr. Ball, who is not in law enforcement and had no inside information on the investigation, suggested that there might be information the suspect had that could only be garnered through torture.
New York State Senator Greg Ball was on Piers Morgan's show last night, regarding a comment he made calling for the U.S. government to torture the suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing case. Mr. Ball cut out early because, being a coward, he could not answer the questions. Watch the video here. This man is scary.
In this morning's Washington Post, Michael Gerson writes about the way both the left and the right tie themselves in knots when the subject turns to terrorism, and how those knots make it difficult to actually find a solution to the problem posed by terrorism. Good stuff.
Admit it. Even if you are one of the people who gets all riled up when I write, you love getting riled up. I do my best to keep the conversation here at NCR provocative, even a little edgy at times. Now, we need you to do your part.
My colleague Brian Roewe had a news account yesterday afternoon of the conference call with the media led by Cardinal Timothy Dolan, President of the USCCB, Archbishop Jose Gomez, chair of the conference’s committee on migration, and Bishop John Wester, chair of the communications committee. The call addressed the USCCB’s support for comprehensive immigration reform in light of the introduction last week of a bipartisan proposal from the “Gang of 8” in the U.S. Senate.
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