Friday on the Dish, Andrew responded to reader dissent on Bill Clinton’s gay rights record, explored the implicit distinction between infertile straight couples and gay couples in marriage equality arguments, turned objectification back on men. In honor of Good Friday, he sent a prayer out to David Kuo and all others suffering hardships as Franz Wright provided us with some verse to … Continue reading The Weekly Wrap
This weekend on the Dish, we provided an eclectic mix of religious, books, and cultural coverage. In matters of faith, doubt, and philosophy, Thomas Merton taught us how to pray, Reinhold Niebuhr found the essence of Christianity, and Jody Bottum pondered the ways Pope Francis eludes contemporary political categories. Dominique Ovalle urged us to believe … Continue reading The Weekend Wrap
“He is an advocate of the poor who has consistently opposed the Argentinian government’s ostensible programs for the poor. A social activist who rejects most social reform. A churchman who refused many of the elaborate trappings of his office while promoting the power of the church. A populist who denies almost every request for an … Continue reading Quote For The Day
In a rather brutal review of Benedict’s failed papacy, theocon Joseph Bottum worries about it: [T]he modern world doesn’t really need to see in the pope a model of competent administration, nice as that would be. It does need, however, a public reminder that we are not incapacitated as human beings when we age and … Continue reading Benedict’s Radical Precedent
"Some conservatives were extremely uncomfortable with the invasion of Iraq under President Bush and the air support for the Libyan revolution under President Obama, and they expressed some of their discomfort in terms of authority: Whatever the prudential judgments about such wars (with which they often also disagreed), the United States is not a crusader … Continue reading Yglesias Award Nominee
First Things, the theocon-RNC journal whose editor defended Marcial Maciel to the bitter end, and piled calumnies on the reporters, such as Jason Berry, actually disparages Berry's latest report as "thinly sourced." Joseph Bottum, the Catholic Republican reactionary who used to edit the Weekly Standard's back of the book, lards up his acknowledgment that the Legion almost certainly was deeply corrupt with snark about Berry and NCR. They really do have no shame, as an FT reader helpfully notes:
[T]he absolutely dismal past of First Things in relation to Fr. Maciel and the Legion of Christ makes snark in Mr. Bottum’s post particularly inappropriate.
Jason Berry and the National Catholic Reporter were telling the truth about Fr. Maciel’s crimes at a time when the editor of First Things was participating in a campaign of calumny against the victims of Fr. Maciel’s abuse. Certainly by the time that Fr. Neuhaus published his infamous diatribe against Berry, his partner Gerald Renner, and the accusers/victims, there was enough documented evidence and public first-person testimony to persuade anyone who was not either systematically sheltered from information, willfully obtuse, or simply
First Things editor Joseph Bottum – surprise! – is outraged by today's presidential address. Damon Linker counters: Despite what they would like to believe, it is Bottum and his theoconservative allies who stand on the margins of American Catholic life, rallying an embattled, belligerent faction of the Church–a faction so obsessed with abortion that it … Continue reading Obama At Notre Dame
From by J. Bottum’s 2000 article, an enjoyable enough diatribe against needless music: …the truth is that we all are terrorized by music nowadays. It’s not so much the high school kids parading down the street with boom boxes, or the college students partying away a Saturday afternoon, or the insomniac in the next apartment … Continue reading Turn That Radio Down!
Fred’s statement: "Today I have withdrawn my candidacy for President of the United States. I hope that my country and my party have benefited from our having made this effort. Jeri and I will always be grateful for the encouragement and friendship of so many wonderful people." Classy. Maybe too classy to be president. Ambers … Continue reading Short But Sweet
"The fact we must face is this: We have already been defeated in Iraq. Perhaps not in literal truth; a better policy, better implemented, might yet bring about a stable, democratic country. And certainly not in historical terms; Iraq is only an early chapter in what must be a long struggle against global Jihadism. But, … Continue reading “Lost Badly”
