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Rod Dreher

This is a story both heartbreaking and infuriating: VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican issued an unprecedented public rebuke Monday of a leading cardinal who had questioned the church’s policy of celibacy and openly criticized the retired Vatican No. 2 for his handling of clerical sex abuse cases. In a statement, the Vatican said only…

Pretty sobering piece about the military hierarchy from Andrew Bacevich, the retired Army colonel and religious conservative whose son was killed fighting in Iraq. Bacevich warns that the McChrystal mouthing-off was a sign of a deeper rot. Excerpt: Throughout history, circumstances such as these have bred praetorianism, warriors becoming enamored with their moral superiority and…

That is the shocking allegation by Alexandra Colen, an orthodox Belgian Catholic, who details her long fight with Cardinal Danneels and the Belgian Catholic hierarchy (including the pedophile recently retired bishop Vangheluwe) over a pedophilic sex-ed book approved for Belgium’s Catholic schools. Excerpt: His predecessor, the liberal Cardinal Danneels, who was very popular with the…

I listened over the weekend to a Fresh Air podcast interview with S.C. “Sam” Gwynne, a talented Texas writer who has just published a book that I’ve got to find time to read: “Empire of the Summer Moon.” (The New York Times recently published an excerpt). Gwynne’s book is a history of Quanah Parker (ca.…

Writing in The American Conservative, Brian Doherty argues that libertarians are more open to insights gleaned from literature than conservatives are. That’s an interesting topic, but not one I’m interested to discuss here. This insight, at the end of Doherty’s piece, is worth quoting for a reason I’ll explain in a second: Gregory Wolfe is…

Tony Woodlief is a wise man. Excerpt: People are inherently self-centered, and especially in a peaceful, prosperous society, this easily leads to self-indulgence that in turn can make us weak and ignoble. There’s something to be said for ordeals — like parenting, or marriage, or tending the weak and broken — which push us into…

Pope Benedict today issued a strong denunciation of the extraordinary police raid in Belgium on church properties — including police prying into tombs of deceased Belgian archbishops. Excerpt: In an exceedingly rare personal message and rebuke of a sovereign country, the pontiff also stressed the church’s “autonomy” to conduct its own investigations and criticized the…

The Country of Marriage I. I dream of you walking at night along the streams of the country of my birth, warm blooms and the nightsongs of birds opening around you as you walk. You are holding in your body the dark seed of my sleep. II. This comes after silence. Was it something I…

Camille Paglia thinks it’s ridiculous that middle-class white people have to rely on pills to rev up their sex lives — and that that fact indicates a deeper cultural malaise: In the discreet white-collar realm, men and women are interchangeable, doing the same, mind-based work. Physicality is suppressed; voices are lowered and gestures curtailed in…

We’ve been arguing in a thread below about the morality of a Minnesota gay reporter infilitrating a support group for gay Catholics and other gay Christians seeking help living chastely, and outing a closeted Lutheran pastor who attended the group. The pastor had spoken out against homosexuality before, so the reporter apparently felt morally justified…
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