The Doctor Is In

I’ve been incommunicado for a while, in no small part for reasons shortly forthcoming. But lest you be left completely high and dry, here’s a little nugget for you.
The WSJ has a book review of Son of Hamas which will definitely be on my reading list when it comes out:
Mosab Yousef is the son of […]

Many of us have been struggling to understand the nature of our current economic meltdown. Was it greedy bankers, who made unscrupulous loans while passing the risks on to others? High-rolling hedge fund managers who resold the risky bundled securities and reaped millions? Politicians and political activists who pressured banks and lending organizations to make […]

From Hewitt:
Bishop Thomas Tobin opens a can of whoop-ass on Congressman Patrick Kennedy, on his “I’m pro-choice and a good Catholic, too” shtick:
“The fact that I disagree with the hierarchy on some issues does not make me any less of a Catholic.” Well, in fact, Congressman, in a way it does. …
There’s lots of canonical […]

The following essay was originally posted in June 2005. The story is a true one, although the names have been changed.
 
They say that hell is hot. Sometimes, however, it is very, very cold.
Jim loved Alaska — it had been his home since birth. God’s country: wild, unpredictable, spectacular in beauty–there was no place like it […]

Third in an ongoing series on grace in Christianity:

On Purpose
Justification, Sanctification, & Grace

 
We struggled through some intimidating “God-words” — justification and sanctification – in my previous post, and in the process I lost both of my regular readers, leaving but a few wandering insomniacs whose Ambien prescription had just run short. For those now drifting […]

This essay, the second of a two-part series, was originally posted in October 2005.
 
In my previous post on guilt and shame, I discussed their nature and differences, their impact on personal and social life, and their instrumentality in much of our individual unhappiness and communal dysfunction. If indeed shame is the common thread of the […]

This essay, the first of a two-part series, was originally posted in October 2005.
 
A wise friend–a man who helped me emerge from a period of considerable difficulty in my life–once taught me a simple lesson. In less than a minute, he handed me a gift which I have spent years only beginning to understand, integrating […]

Today is the fifth anniversary of the massacre at Beslan. The following post was written shortly thereafter. Michelle Malkin also has a remembrance of this horror.
 
David Brooks, in his NY Times Op-Ed piece, Cult of Death, says the following about the Muslim terrorists and the Beslan school massacre:
We should be used to this pathological mass […]