Late one evening, a woman knocked at Father Damien de Veuster’s door. Nervously, she whispered a warning into his ear then fled into the darkness. What she told him was sobering: that night, pagan incantation rites against his life were being conducted in a burial cave. Yet undaunted by the threat, he walked for an […]
Minister to Lepers: Father Damien de Veuster (1840 – 1889) Read Post »
During World War II, General Dwight D. Eisenhower was Supreme Commander of American-British Forces in Europe. When asked for a submission to the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Prayer Book, he turned to one he “once heard a company commander repeating to his men, on a wet, cold night, just before starting a march to the front
Defending Principles Expounded by Jesus—Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890 – 1969) Read Post »
Simone Weil, the French philosopher, displayed an uncommon clarity when it came to exposing human evil. Having seen firsthand the horrors that engulfed Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, she was well acquainted with ordinary people’s capacity for wickedness and gave much thought to how this could be. One of her most startling conclusions was
The Blinding Power of Evil—or—Evil as a “Duty” Read Post »
The deliberate extermination of the female of our species is not the stuff of some dystopian novel or epic film, it’s a fact. Imagine if 160 million women were wiped out in the United States. You can’t imagine it, because that’s more than the entire female population of the country. Yet in Asia alone, the
A just-published story in The Atlantic by Lori Gottlieb entitled “How to Land Your Kid in Therapy” raises some helpful questions about modern parenting and how it is stimulating narcissism. There is some strong language in the piece, so I’m not linking to it. I will, however, quote a section to show the strength of
Where Law and Grace Kiss: Evangelical Struggles in Parenting Read Post »
Maybe the IMF’s Dominique Strauss-Kahn thought he was wearing the Ring of Gyges, a mythical piece of jewelry which allows the wearer to become invisible. It shows up in Plato’s Republic, where Socrates posed the question whether the owner could behave himself. His interlocutor, Glaucon, suggested that, once invisible, few could resist stealing things, taking
The Perils of Gyges’ Ring Read Post »
