From a Catholic News Service article as published on the website of my diocese (Springfield, MA), Pope orders new rules on relations between bishops, religious orders : Pope Francis said he has ordered a revision of what he called outdated Vatican norms on the relations between religious orders and local bishops, in order to promote … [Read more…]
I’ve written on this general topic before: as one example, one revealing an important development in my thoughts, see The Need for Abstractions in Moral Self-understanding as one example. In that essay, about the necessity of abstractions, but proper abstractions, I stated: My interest lies in an important stream of thoughts and attitudes of New … [Read more…]
I’ll begin by saying that I believe God is at work even when morally disordered men are seemingly in command. It is God who is moving the story of the Body of Christ forward. We, all Christians in the most recent few centuries, have been following our own inclinations rather than paying attention to the … [Read more…]
Pepe Escobar is a world-traveling journalist who’s worth more than the entire staff at CNN, Fox, New York Times, Washington Post, and most of the others in the American mainstream news-media. He seems to often be in the most dangerous regions of our planet and to have lots of solid information and to be able … [Read more…]
A number of those most consistently and honestly upset by Obamacare seem to be libertarians and I’ll side with them on this issue though I consider myself to be what some have called Orestes Brownson—a radical conservative. I’ll ignore the clueless conservatives and liberals who think moral order to be a gloss upon their favorite … [Read more…]
In this essay, I’ll sometimes write about the West as a whole and sometimes try to be more particular, especially in giving examples, by writing from the American viewpoint. In fact, it’s at least arguable that the current moral and social disorders of the West began in the United States. Henry James is said to … [Read more…]
Most human beings alive in this year of our Lord 2013 freely and fully accept the evidence that the human race wasn’t a special creation by God. Our ancestors were knuckle-draggers who rose from that position to one we consider, with some prejudice perhaps, to be more noble. Remarkably, many who have accepted our biological … [Read more…]
In this short essay, Classical Liberalism versus Anarchism, Mike Rappaport tries to shift the focus in a debate about anarchism vs. classical liberalism. He quotes Robert Higgs, an advocate of anarchism: My difficulty arises not so much from a dissatisfaction with government’s being charged with protecting the citizens from force and fraud, but from a … [Read more…]
This, What Keeps the States United?, is a well-written and clearly reasoned review by Joseph Baldacchino of a book, Rethinking the American Union for the Twenty-First Century edited by Donald Livingston. (I haven’t read the book though I’ve read writings of some of the authors.) It deals with the general problems in American political and … [Read more…]
An article about the analysis of monetary flows in the continental states of the U.S. tells us, “By combining network theory with the travels of our dollar bills, the ‘real’ effective boundaries in a new USA are far simpler, reflecting where money ‘stays’ as opposed to more arbitrary state boundaries.” These mathematical analyses result in … [Read more…]