Note from the Assistant Managing Editor:
Our lineup this week satisfies a variety of interests from suffering to education to the Church in China, but I will mention two specifically.
First is Jordan Peterson's talk for PragerU, "Fix Yourself" (the youtube video of this talk can be seen at the bottom of the transcript). "I have learned," he says, "that there are two fundamental attitudes toward life and its sorrows. Those with the first attitude blame the world. Those with the second ask what they could do differently." (I listened to his talk then went and ordered his book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos.)
Then Anthony Esolen writes an excellent piece on Jérôme Lejeune, a French physician and scientist, whose discovery of the cause of Down Syndrome spurred him to seek a cure while others sought methods to "not allow a pregnancy to continue." But those who kill to spare suffering do not make "progress in science. It was the one 'who could not accept the thought of giving up, when confronted with sickness, suffering, and death.'" See "The Least of These."
Winston Churchill said, "Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never — in nothing, great or small, large or petty — never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy....We have only to persevere to conquer." - Meaghen Hale |
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"I have found a desire within myself that no experience in this world can satisfy; the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." - C.S. Lewis
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New Resources
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The Blessings of Family - Pope Benedict XVI - from an address on the occasion of the fifth world meeting of families.
The family is the privileged setting where every person learns to give and receive love.
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Fix Yourself - Jordan Peterson - Prager University
Blaming others for your problems is a complete waste of time.
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The Least of These - Anthony Esolen - Magnificat
Some years ago, when I was in the midst of an intellectual and spiritual abyss, I was visiting the family of one of my students, in the Georgetown area of the nation's capital.
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Introduction: The Image of God That Isn't True - Ulrich Lehner - from God Is Not Nice: Rejecting Pop Culture Theology and Discovering the God Worth Living For
Stripping away the niceties with a sling blade, Ulrich Lehner shows that God is more strange and beautiful than we imagine, and wants to know and transform us in the most intimate way.
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What have I learned in a community college? - Rev. Peter M.J. Stravinskas - Catholic World Report
A Latin proverb informs us: "Discimus docendo" (We learn by teaching). What have I learned these past five semesters while teaching at a local community college? That the teachers' unions have gotten away with academic murder.
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The China Syndrome - Robert Royal - The Catholic Thing
In several decades of living in Washington, D.C., I've met my share of scamps and scalawags, fabulists and outright liars.
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Millennials - Father George W. Rutler - From the Pastor
As a demographic cohort, "Millennials" are the last generation to have been born in the twentieth century.
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Editorials of Interest:
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Editorials of Interest
The Catholic Church doesn't do "paradigm shifts" - Catholic World Report
Because the pastoral implementation of Amoris Laetitia mandated in some places differs from other places, the Catholic Church is beginning to resemble the Anglican Communion (itself the product of a traumatic "paradigm shift" that cost John Fisher and Thomas More their heads).
Romantic Thoughts for Ash Wednesday - Ignitum Today
Ash Wednesday and Valentine's Day reminds us that suffering is the touchstone of love, that the point of penance is not to perform arduous feats of self-denial but to love God and others better, and that with love, suffering is turned into joy.
On the Size of the Universe - The Catholic Thing
In the end, it will turn out that all civilizations are confronted with the same issue. Are they the cause of their own existence, or were they all included in the initial plan that brought anything into existence?
How to Trust Your Feelings - The Catholic Thing
Feelings can be important, because they often tell us something about ourselves and/or the world. But feelings can also be a delusion.
The Philosophical Contradictions of the Transgender Worldview - Public Discourse
The thinking of transgender activists is inherently confused and filled with internal contradictions. Activists never acknowledge those contradictions. Instead, they opportunistically rely on whichever claim is useful at any given moment.
Transgenderism: Mutilating the Reproductive Function - Crisis Magazine
The human body is an integrated organism designed to work in a particular way. Faux organs do not have a reproductive function. They are "genitals" that do not generate. "Transitioned" persons are sterile.
Poverty's Greatest Foe - Values & Capitalism
By overwhelming margins, free markets and private enterprise have enabled more people to escape poverty than any system in the history of the world.
Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman and St. Justin Martyr, pray for us |
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