Category: The Dish

More here.

Amy Welborn rightly wants a deeper treatment of Benedict. Here’s Paul Elie’s 2006 article from the Atlantic:

Whereas John Paul seemed most at home when celebrating mass for 100,000 strangers, Benedict is most himself when among fellow churchmen in Rome. Whereas John Paul made all the world an altar, Benedict’s sphere of action is the compound of churches and offices surrounding St. Peter’s. As a symbol of the papacy John Paul’s popemobile has been replaced by Benedict’s personal theological library of several thousand books, which were photographed after his election so that they could be reshelved in the same order in the papal apartments.

In short, Mr. Outside has been succeeded by Mr. Inside; and the story of Ratzinger’s emergence as the Church’s leader reveals the ways in which his pontificate is likely to affect the Church as a whole. In many ways the central fact of the papacy in the modern age is the gap between the pope’s growing power in the Church and his diminishing influence on the religious lives of individual believers. This gap is one that John Paul and his predecessors sought to close. Under Benedict the gap is open—wide open. He will govern more but matter less than John Paul—and will probably matter less to the lives of individual Catholics than any other pope of the past half century.

At basketball?

His kids insisted:

"He thinks we shouldn’t be deaf to the voices of the next generation."

Casey’s another interesting one to put on the veep list. A pro-life Catholic from Pennsylvania.

Reihan’s in heaven.

Noonan an Clinton:

What, really, is Mrs. Clinton doing? She is having the worst case of cognitive dissonance in the history of modern politics. She cannot come up with a credible, realistic path to the nomination. She can’t trace the line from "this moment’s difficulties" to "my triumphant end." But she cannot admit to herself that she can lose. Because Clintons don’t lose. She can’t figure out how to win, and she can’t accept the idea of not winning. She cannot accept that this nobody from nowhere could have beaten her, quietly and silently, every day. (She cannot accept that she still doesn’t know how he did it!)

Knut the polar bear, a "publicity-addicted psycho." And Matt Yglesias comes out as a bear. A straight, white one.

Peter Sprigg apologizes for his earlier comment:

In response to a question regarding bi-national same-sex couples who are separated by an international border, I used language that trivialized the seriousness of the issue and did not communicate respect for the essential dignity of every human being as a person created in the image of God. I apologize for speaking in a way that did not reflect the standards which the Family Research Council and I embrace

Larison on the anti-war vote:

As I have said before, arguments over Vietnam, like arguments over Iraq, are not simply arguments over a military campaign overseas.  If they were, cost-benefit analysis and simple pragmatism would offer the obvious course of action: get out and get out now.  National polling shows that two-thirds of the country want us out within two years, but this obscures the fact that disapproving of the war does not mean that all the current opponents of the war embrace a thoroughgoing antiwar narrative; many of them certainly would not share my characterisations of the war as immoral and illegal.  So, instead of being arguments about policy, they are arguments about “values” and American identity.  Simply put, the party that has tended to be antiwar during the last 36 years has also been the party on the losing side of these other arguments, even when they have been right on the policy question, and so they have lost time after time in presidential elections where these arguments are most powerful.  An Obama-McCain contest will be an almost perfect test of this proposition.

I’ve read Thomas Merton, of course, but I had never actually heard him till now. And then a friend sent me these rare and recently posted Youtubes where you actually hear his voice. His lectures on Aquinas’s "Ways Of God" are quite remarkable but there is something about the tone, the matter-of-factness, the openness and humor and occasional gruffness – so human and yet so obviously full of the divine. I have often wondered what Jesus himself sounded like, although I have in times of great darkness almost heard his tone. I hear that tone in Merton.

I know you probably don’t have time today but if you are curious about what an open, beautiful faith Christianity can be, do yourself a favor. Part One is here; follow the Youtubes from there.