Appalachian theology paper update

To all those who have expressed interest in my paper on Appalachian theology, it's almost finished and I hope to begin posting it here in sections within the week. Tentative title is "'Though the Mountains Be Shaken': Toward a Liberative and Countercultural Ecclesial …

Chomsky interview in Le Monde diplomatique

From a recent interview with Noam Chomsky in Le Monde diplomatique:

DM: Critics tend to lump you together with the anarchists and libertarian socialists. What would be the role of the state in a real democracy?

Noam Chomsky: We are living here and now, not in some …

So long, TCR News

Sad to see this week that Stephen Hand has made the decision to stop publishing his long-running Traditional Catholic Reflections and Reports site and its accompanying blog. I can't say I agreed with everything Stephen wrote there, but I know we were definitely in the …

Time out

Welp, I haven't been blogging as much lately, or responding to comments either, as I have been working a lot and trying to do some research and writing for school. Now I'll be taking off to go back to West Virginia for about a week where I'll play music for a friend's …

FOX News' attack on the "radical left blogosphere"

"The smart stuff is being drowned out by a fierce, bullying, often witless tone of intolerance that has overtaken the left-wing sector of the blogosphere." I honestly had to do a double-take. At first I thought O'Reilly and his kind were describing the Catholic blogosphere.

Pope Benedict on triumphalism and opposition to the Church by the powers

From remarks of Pope Benedict during a Q & A with a group of priests on July 24 in Auronzo di Cadore.

So: in these contexts of two cultural ruptures, the first being the cultural revolution of 1968 and the second the fall into nihilism after 1989, the Church sets out …

Chris Hedges in Adbusters

I have not gotten around to reading Chris Hedges' most recent book American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America (Free Press, 2007). I think maybe I'm afraid his new book will be less-than-inspiring, following the whole slew of books about the Christian …

Crisis Magazine to cease publishing

dotCommonweal is reporting that Crisis Magazine (one of my favorites, as you could probably guess) will cease publication as a print magazine and will shift to a web-only format in September.

Welp.

Let's hope this is a sign of some kind of financial crisis. …

Toward a Catholic "regional patriotism"

Katerina recently posted a good piece on Patriotism and Importance of Memory over at the Vox Nova blog. As one of the Vox Nova contributors who has written on the subject of patriotism/nationalism regularly, I didn't want her post to go by without highlighting it. The …

The real "conservative" position on war

Michael Joseph over at Vox Nova -- a new Catholic group blog in which I participate -- posted the trailer for a new documentary about the Jesuit peace actvist Fr. John Dear. I've heard John Dear speak a number of times and he celebrated Mass with us at the School of the …

"Jesus, take my will"

The Other Journal, an online journal of theology and culture that I read quite frequently, recently featured a piece on a musician I like by the name of Jandek. The article is a good introduction to this mysterious "outsider" artist from the perspective of a listener …

"We are Un-American: We are Catholics" by Dorothy Day

Is it Soviet Russia who is the threat to the world? Is it indeed? Then may we quote from Scott Nearing's THE WAY OF THE TRANSGRESSOR?

"What nation today has a navy bigger than all other navies combined? The U. S. A. What nation today is steadily adding to the only …

Patriotic songs at Mass

Anna Nussbaum at the Commonweal blog poses a question to their readers that I have been thinking and writing about for a while now: whether patriotic songs should be sung at Mass. Anyone who has been reading my blog knows my thoughts on the matter, but I did weigh in …

Franz J

This just in from the Catholic Peace Fellowship: Franz J

Jos

"The 1960s were a time of illusions. Many intellectuals went so far as to claim that Latin American society was in an explosive situation, that the only resolution was a social revolution and the establishment of socialism. As always happens in history, many wanted to …

"Sicko" leaks onto the web, internet illiterates think this is significant

Michael Moore's upcoming documentary, Sicko, set for release on June 29th, has apparently leaked onto peer-to-peer file sharing sites. Advertising Age writes,

Last week, the Oscar winning director announced that he'd decided to stash a copy of "Sicko" in Canada, in …

DignityUSA and the Womenpriests movement

I was recently "called out" by another Catholic blogger for "champion[ing] Catholic orthodoxy" while at the same time providing a link to DignityUSA, a group that "works for respect and justice for all gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender persons in the Catholic …

Why are the republicatholics ignoring Ron Paul?

While some of the loudest voices of the Catholic blogosphere get worked up over the possibility of Rudy Giuliani gaining the Republican nomination, I find it scandalous that most Catholics of the "Oh no, I'm not beholden to the Republican party, I just don't know how …

Response to a response to the responses to my post of 05/26/07

As many of you know, I took a lot of heat for my Memorial Day post a couple weeks ago, from various Catholic blogs. While I didn't have the time or energy to respond in full to all of the concerns, I did participate in discussions on a couple of the blogs who made …

Iraq Veterans Against the War: Operation First Causalty

My friend Paul, a veteran of the Iraq War and now an anti-war activist with Iraq Veterans Against the War, participated in a simulation of sniper fire and mass detentions on the streets of Manhattan this past Memorial Day. He is interviewed in the clip above. …