Bookmarking - September 2010

I have a lot of Firefox tabs open at the moment, with articles waiting to be read. It's been like this for days. So I'll list them all here. Some of these I've alread read and found interesting, others look interesting and I want to read them in the future:

+ Patrick O'Hannigan, who owns a really interestingly-named blog, from whom I got the idea to Bookmark. Also, check out his review of Mary Eberstadt's The Lose Letters. That's a brilliant (and wickedly humorous) book by the way. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

+ Pat Archbold on a "hero" who shouldn't be considered a hero: Whither Embarrassment? he asks.

+ His brother, Matthew Archbold, argues that "many of the same arguments made in the defense of things like abortion, the legalization of drugs, and homosexual marriage could be used to legalize cannibalism."


+ On a less serious note, Matthew Archbold also has a piece on Catholics for Vuvuzelas and their outrage against the Church's stance on Vuvuzelas. Hahaha!

+ Check out the 10 non sequitors featured by Catholic Hour. Here are two:

(4) "It's legal."
Therefore: "It's morally acceptable."

(8) "Things seemed to go haywire in the Church after the Second Vatican Council (1962-65)."
Therefore, "Vatican II is the problem, and its so-called 'reforms' must be reversed immediately."

+ Mark Shea takes apart the simplistic notion of "the Church as neatly divided between hidebound clerics defending Fortress Catholicism and a marching army of Progressive Laity whose sole desire is for truth, justice, love and freedom" which he calls "one of the many myths that Generation Narcissus has suckled itself to sleep on ever since the Council."

+ The great Arcbishop Chaput calls on Catholics in American and Europe to resist the world's intolerance of Christianity. The Archbishop is always spot on so it'll be well-worth the read.

A funny aside: LarryD reports this interesting turn of events:

You see, an End Times/Symbologist blogger linked to my post highlighting Archbishop Chaput's talk, dug deep into the talk, and made some startling discoveries and correlations (all links and bold type original):

Acts Of The Apostasy brings us a story about how earlier in the week, Archbishop Charles Chaput gave a speech at the 15th Symposium of the Canon Law Association of Slovakia, entitled "Living Within The Truth: Religious Liberty And Catholic Mission In The New Order of the World", and here are some selected excerpts...

[...]

Right off the bat, it's ironic to me because while the Archbishop is correct in his assessment of the current state of the world, he fails to realize (as does the blogger) that the Roman Catholic Church, the Vatican, and the Pope are, sadly, eager accomplices in this drive to establish a New World Order, or the very thing he says he's trying to prevent.

Okaaaay...

+ Joe Carter takes a look at the thought experiment of the pig that wants to be eaten. Short and very interesting.

+ Regarding the potentially imminent literary apopcalyse, Nathan Schneider is concerned more about the bookshelf, than the books themselves: "My fear is for the eclectic, personal collections that we bookish people assemble over the course of our lives, as well as for their grander, public step-siblings. I fear for our memory theaters."

+ Professor Reno has a short reflection on what art says about life: "But one thought: the mass appeal of Impressionism should warn us against apocalyptic anxieties about contemporary middle class culture. We don’t live in a revolutionary age, at least not at the level of taste. We live in a relaxing age, which, at the end of the day, wants to enrich and preserve rather than destroy and overturn."

+ Also check out his reflection on a true understanding of rest.

+ Edward T. Oakes, S.J. shows us an example of why scientists should stick to their fields of experitse and not risk looking like intellectual adolescents in "The Explanatory Sprawl of Natural Selection".

+ Fr George Rutler has a witty and interesting-looking article on titled "The Liturgical Experts’ Long Tassels". I haven't read it properly yet.

+ Via Nick Chui on Facebook:

August Comte must be rolling in his grave – he invented sociology to give the French an alternate way of conceiving the world other than the one the Church had presented to mankind. In research results released last month, Brad Wilcox, a leading sociologist from the University of Virginia and his colleagues illustrate not only the power of Sunday worship in helping couples have happy and satisfying marriages. They also found that those who pray together at home are helped even more.

I must read the entire piece soon.

+ J.P. Sonnen features video. Interesting questions. I'm keen to hear the other side too. Should do some research when I can.

+ One of my favourite authors commenting on the foreword of a great book by another of my favourite authors: Fr James V. Schall On the Foreword to Benedict XVI's Jesus of Nazareth.

+ Via Carl Olson comes this Daily Mail piece which features some women members of Opus Dei. It's a surprisingly fair and well-written article. Though the author simply doesn't get the Catholic understanding of mortification, she asks a great question: "After all, which is more peculiar or ‘unnatural’: women who endure the agony of, say, Botox injections or leg-waxing, in order to be beautiful, and those Opus Dei ­devotees who strap on a cilice as a sign of spiritual devotion?"
On the whole a very fair piece and a good attempt. The same cannot be said about the people who left comments on the article. They certainly live up to this universal truth.

+ Theresa disputes the proposition that contact with typhoid-infected corpses from Cao Cao’s camp was the cause of typhoid fever in the Allied camp. If you don't know what this refers to, watch the movie Red Cliff (which I haven't) or read The Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Which I would very much like to. Edbert has been talking about the book for months now and it seems very interesting). You can't guess that Theresa's a Politcal Science graduate, and not a science student. Today she landed in the UK where she's about to begin a Masters degree at the London School of Hygiene and Tropic Medicine. All the best to her!

+ Finally, a timely article which asks the question: How "Catholic" should you be online? While we heed the Holy Father's call to witness to the faith through the digital world, we must be aware of the potential pitfalls.

Ok. That's all for now! My Firefox tab collection looks much less daunting now.