Bookworm Room

Tweet My book club group met the other night to discuss William Manchester’s book A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance: Portrait of an Age. The title is something of a misnomer. It’s only a “portrait of an age” if you want to read a thousand years of medieval history [...]

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Tweet Well, I finally got around to seeing The Blind Side.  For those unfamiliar with the movie, it retells the true story of Michael Oher, a profoundly disadvantaged black boy who ended up as a scholarship student at a Christian academy in Memphis.  Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy, parents at the school, stumbled across him, [...]

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Tweet Wolf Howling has put together just a stellar post about the ongoing attacks on the Catholic church (along with a very nice link to yours truly).  If this is a subject that interests you — and it should, whether or not you’re a Catholic, because it goes to attacks on a pillar of Western [...]

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Tweet I have some familiarity with Church history and doctrine, owing to my background as a European history major.  I am woefully ignorant, however, about modern Catholicism — or, more specifically, modern American Catholicism.  I therefore have a question for those of you who are Catholic:  Does it matter to a critical mass of American [...]

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Tweet I just finished reading a very bad book, although I owe it thanks for leading me down some interesting intellectual paths.  The book is Derek Wilson’s Charlemagne, which came my way through my book club (and it’s because of the book club that I actually finished a book I normally would swiftly have abandoned).  [...]

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Tweet I know that, in the run-up to the to the 2008 presidential election, many Christians said that they could not vote for Romney because he is a Mormon.  I’m wondering if that’s changed.  Romney may be a Mormon but Obama is, well, Obama.  For true Christians, can there be a “lesser of two evils” [...]

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Tweet Pastor Martin Niemoeller, after the war, penned the famous “first they came for the Jews,” with regard to the way non-Jewish demographics turned a blind eye to Nazi depredations, confident that the Nazis would stop after the Jews, and then after the Communists, and then after the gays.  But they never stopped. The interesting [...]

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Tweet It’s been an incoherent day, one that never gave me the opportunity for contemplation and writing.  Instead, I’ve been bopping here and there, and dealing with one thing and another.  Nevertheless, I have been tracking the news, so I thought I’d just write up a mish-mash of thoughts about current issues and events. Gaza [...]

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Tweet It’s been a long time since I’ve read anything this sad. It comes from the Church of England’s own newspaper: If recent reports of trends in religious observance prove to be correct, then in some 30 years the mosque will be able to claim that, religiously speaking, the UK is an Islamic nation, and [...]

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Tweet Longtime readers know that one of my favorite book series is C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series. In the Narnia series, my favorite book has come to be The Last Battle — which is the Biblical end of the world, Narnia style. Within that book, my favorite scenes take place after the Apocalypse, when the saved [...]

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Tweet I read two articles today that dovetail beautifully, by showing words spewing meaninglessly into the ether and by showing words used bravely to make big changes. As for the meaningless spew into the ether that is, of course, Barack Obama, he of the sonorous (or, to my mind, soporific) voice, the big, meaningless ideas, [...]

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Tweet Reagan gave him the opportunity, but it was Mikhail Gorbachev who personally wielded the power that destroyed the Soviet Union.  Many have wondered what gave him the insight and the courage to do so.  Maybe this is the answer.

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Tweet Perhaps it’s because I’m not very religious, but I’m completely unoffended by the Pope including this language in his Good Friday prayer: “Let us also pray for the Jews: That our God and Lord may illuminate their hearts, that they acknowledge that Jesus Christ is the Savior of all men.” As long as it [...]

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Tweet No comment: A vicar was in hospital last night after being attacked in his churchyard by two youths in what is being treated as a ‘faith hate’ crime. Canon Michael Ainsworth, 57, was kicked and punched in the head as one of the attackers screamed “f***ing priest”. He was left lying on the ground [...]

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Tweet Is he an hysteric, a prophet, or a tragically doomed Cassandra? Time will tell if Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester in the Church of England, is correct to warn of the end of the Christian faith in that country, something he already sees happening in various British communities: In fewer than 50 years, [...]

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Tweet Bloody Mary — or Mary I, her more official title — was Henry VIII’s oldest daughter by his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. Raised by staunchly Catholic parents, she too was staunchly Catholic. By the time she was about 16, however, Henry VIII was troubled by Catherine’s inability to bear a son (because the [...]

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Tweet I did a post yesterday in which I quoted from an interview with Michael Cappi regarding the fact that Islam, unlike Judaism or Christianity, is not a religion that concerns itself with broader moral issues that rise above mere tribal law. I’d actually made precisely the same point in an earlier post, here. In [...]

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Tweet On May 23, 2007, I did a post in which I looked at Mitt’s Mormonism, and concluded that it shouldn’t matter because his values are what counts, not the path he took to arrive at those values. Based on comments left in response to that post, I updated it to explain that, as far [...]

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Tweet The teddy bear scandal put Islam on the front pages again as a religion whose practitioners are so insecure that they cannot accept anything that they might perceive as critical or demeaning. As have most conservative bloggers, I’ve written periodically about Islam’s misogyny, its cultural insecurity, its intolerance, etc. I’ve quoted my cousin the [...]

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Tweet I have no comment to make about this, but I nevertheless find it interesting: Tony Blair is to become a Roman Catholic within weeks. The former prime minister will be received into his new church in a mass at the private chapel of Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church in [...]

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Tweet Americans like to talk about ecumenicalism, which is an idea that concerns itself with “establishing or promoting unity among churches or religions.” We in America have proven to be very good at it, so much so that we think nothing of little news stories about the rabbi giving a talk to his neighbor’s church, [...]

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Tweet . . . . a wonderful opinion piece that Cinnamon Stillwell wrote about the San Francisco drag queens dressed as nuns who took Holy Communion, not as an act of faith, but to ridicule the Church.  Not only does Cinnamon expose the fundamentally anti-Christian attitude behind this attack on the deepest principles of the [...]

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Tweet Courtesy of the Anchoress, I’ve learned that Ann Coulter has done it again, this time coming out with remarks that are going to sound anti-Semitic. Here’s what Ann said during an interview with Donny Deutsch: DEUTSCH: Christian — so we should be Christian? It would be better if we were all Christian? COULTER: Yes. [...]

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Tweet All religions, at all times, in all places, have one of two goals: to give meaning to life, something usually tied to morality, or to allay the fear of death. Some religions, of course, serve both goals. It is the second goal — defusing death — that I write about today. People who do [...]

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Tweet John Hawkins, at Right Wing News, sent out a poll to conservative bloggers asking them about political issues of the day, such as Larry Craig, the 2008 elections, patriotism and religion. You’ll find the results here. Would you have answered the questions as the majority of responding bloggers did? I did, although I included [...]

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