Sunday Snippets — A Catholic Carnival

Hello, and welcome again to Sunday Snippets — A Catholic Carnival, to which I've been very bad about contributing this last year and will hopefully make up for it this next year.

The point of Sunday Snippets is to introduce you to obscure Catholic bloggers whose work you might not ordinarily come across as you hopscotch through the blogosphere. I link a post from each of my blogs through the main page hosted by RAnn at This, That and the Other Thing, and also write up a referring post on the blog you're reading now.

In previous installments of this post, I would usually write up and link a list of post I'd written the previous week, in both this blog and The Other Blog. But not this time; I just haven't written enough to justify it. Besides, you're perfectly capable of scrolling down from the home pages to see what I've written recently. Moreover, the point of this post is to get you over to the Sunday Snippets page, where you can get tasty writing from other Catholics!

So tolle lege: click, read, and enjoy! And have a blessed First Sunday of Christmastide!

Sunday Snippets—A Catholic Carnival (Vol. 4-24)

Welcome again to Sunday Snippets, your portal to a small collection of obscure but deserving Catholic writers on a wide range of topics. 

Yes, I know I haven't had one of these up for a while; despite my copious free time, I haven't produced a lot the last couple of months.

Anyway, here's how it works for those who are seeing this for the first time: Writers like me create a single post with links to the articles they've written for the week. This single post includes a link back to RAnn's blog This, That and the Other Thing, where the single post will be submitted as a link on the page. Follow the link back (I've provided two!), and it'll take you to RAnn's page, where you can find those other obscure but deserving writers I mentioned above.

What have I produced this week?

In Outside the Asylum I have two major posts, both of which touch on the topic of right-wing dissent, or conservative "cafeteria Catholics". The first is "'Mere Catholicism' vs. Real Catholicism™", in which I use a couple of pre-Vatican II sources to dispose of a false distinction and remind my fellow papist bloggers that we're granted neither the presumption of infallibility nor the power of excommunication. In the second, "Pope Francis and the libertarians", I take apart a couple of key free-market contentions held by libertarians, and argue that libertarianism places too much emphasis on the autonomy of the individual to be compatible with Catholic social doctrine.

In The Impractical Catholic (this blog what you're reading now), I started off with the musical question, "Has Ralph Nader become a Distributist?" It covers an article written by the consumer advocate and perennial presidential candidate, which reviews a book published in the 1930s by Herbert Agar and Alan Tate, Who Owns America? A New Declaration of Independence, and is adapted from Nader's own new book, Unstoppable: The Emerging Left/Right Alliance to Stop the Corporate State. (Be on the lookout for a future review of this book by Your Humble Blogger!) The next, "Seventy years ago today" (actually published a day early), is a reflection upon the men who landed in Normandy on June 6, 1944, and on the few men and women still alive who served in all the theaters of World War II. Finally, there's "Separating truth from manufactured outrage in Galway", which takes apart the various strands of the story that became the myth of "800 babies thrown into a septic tank", and is based on an Irish Times interview with the historian who first brought the story to light.

Here you go, then! Follow the link back to RAnn's page, and happy reading!

Sunday Snippets — A Catholic Carnival (Vol. 14.10)

Once again, it's time for "Sunday Snippets — A Catholic Carnival", hosted as ever by RAnn at This, That and the Other Thing. Go to her page, and follow the links to some interesting reading by Catholic writers just waiting to be discovered.

This week brought me a status change that will free me up for writing for a while. As a result, I was a little more productive this week than I've been for some time.

Monday was particularly productive. First, a post I'd written over the weekend, "What are you prepared to suffer?", posted bright and early as I intended. This was a post arguing that Christians who advocate a right to discriminate on religious grounds must be prepared not only to suffer economic consequences but also to be discriminated against on religious grounds as the cost of exercising our conscience rights. Just as that story published, I ran across an article in the Toronto Sun's web page about a lesbian who had been denied a male haircut by a Moslem barber. That was too good to pass up, so it became the springboard for "The reductio of moral relativism", which argues that relativism would be self-defeating if the people who claim to believe it actually tried to apply it consistently.

Sunday Snippets — A Catholic Carnival (Vol. 14:4)

Welcome again to "Sunday Snippets — A Catholic Carnival", hosted as per usual by RAnn at This, That and the Other Thing.

Here's how it works: A Catholic writer (such as Your Humble Blogger) writes a post in which s/he includes links to other posts written the previous week. The post includes a link to the "Snippets" page. Then, the link to the new post is submitted to RAnn's site. So when you follow the link above, you'll find a page that will link you to a bunch of fellow Catholic bloggers who offer you the best of their efforts, which will make tasty reading for a lazy afternoon.

This week I reached a major milestone in my life: I celebrated my fiftieth birthday on Thursday, Jan. 23. It just so happened that that day coincided with my monthly submission to Catholic Stand, which features plenty of good, solid Catholic writing, much by people with a higher profile in the Catholic blogosphere than mine. So my contribution for this month was "My First Fifty Years: What I've Learned", my little idiosyncratic take on important life lessons.

On Outside the Asylum, I posted what I hope will be the last economics post for some time, "The tragedy of the corporations", which argues that individual corporate efforts to hold down labor costs is the business world's collective decision to depress consumption and thus reduce their own income ... a kind of collective suicide pact. And on this blog, I posted "Calling George Orwell", a little reflection on a disturbing text message received by thousands of demonstrators in the Ukrainian city of Kiev.

That's all I have. Enjoy your Sunday, and I'll see you next week!

Sunday Snippets — A Catholic Carnival (Vol. 14:3)

Welcome back to Sunday Snippets — A Catholic Carnival! 

Sunday Snippets is a weekly link-fest hosted by RAnn at This, That and the Other Thing. This post contains links back to my writing for the week, while also linking you back to RAnn's blog, where you can find links to other Catholic writers looking to entertain, instruct and amuse you. If you've already read what I've written earlier this week, then by all means go over to RAnn's place and delve into some other writers!

My main effort this last week was in Outside the Asylum: "Dumb idea #6,258: Create jobs by paying poor people less". There's been no small effort by conservatives to pooh-pooh a minimum wage raise, and as a measure to reduce the "wealth gap" I certainly agree that it can have no more than a temporary effect. But Richard J. Epstein wants us to go further: get rid of the minimum wage entirely, because by his reckoning (based on no identifiable facts) labor costs are too high. While I can certainly appreciate his major point — government-mandated redistribution of wealth is generally a bad idea — cutting the minimum wage is not just inappropriate, it's what-color-is-the-sky-in-your-world insane.

In The Impractical Catholic (this here blog) I managed to post three times on non-economic topics (woo-hoo!). First, there's "Being a jerk about gender pronouns", in which I explain why an intelligent, honest person should not use masculine pronouns in reference to a cross-dressing woman or feminine pronouns vis-à-vis a man pretending to be a woman. Then there's "Breaking up with the Pope is hard to do", in which I tweak Philip Pullela of Reuters for insisting that Papa Bergoglio's recent comments on abortion were meant only to placate Catholic conservatives. Last is "An end to arrogant atheism?", in which I reflect on a recent article in Slate by Richard Speckhardt of the American Humanist Association calling for atheists to be more charitable in their dealings with believers.

Go get your Catholic reading on! Have a great week!

Sunday Snippets — A Catholic Carnival (Vol. 14:2)

Welcome to The Impractical Catholic ... although, given the recent predominance of a particular subject, it tends to read more like "The Armchair Economist".

Today is Sunday, which means another episode of "Sunday Snippets — A Catholic Carnival", hosted by RAnn at This, That and the Other Thing. If you're a Catholic blogmaster looking for an outlet, here's how we play the game: First, you write a post with links to things you've written over the last week; be sure to give it the "Sunday Snippets" title and link to RAnn's weekly post. Then hit the "Publish" button and copy the link; go over to RAnn's post, and use the Inlinkz function to add your link to the rest. 

While you're there, write a nice note to RAnn thanking her. Also, while you're there, check out the links to the other Catholic writers participating. You see, they're in the main new or obscure, just waiting to take the Catholic blogosphere by storm; and they need you to go tell other people in Netland that they're out there and deserve to be read.

So what did I do this week? Well, I wrote a lot about income inequality ... or, to be more accurate, I wrote a lot about what other people wrote about income inequality. This week actually saw two posts on Outside the Asylum: "Catholics can't have 'designated sinners'", in which I take the Obama Administration and the New York Times to task over the persecution of the Little Sisters of the Poor; and "What's the problem with income inequality?", in which I endeavor to demonstrate that the "wealth gap" is a problem not just for the poor but for the rich as well. By contrast, there was only one other post besides this one on The Impractical Catholic: "Cutting taxes doesn't work", in which I tear apart a favorite conservative cure-all for economic sluggishness.

And there you have it. Now go get your Catholic reading on! Have a great Sunday!

Sunday Snippets — A Catholic Carnival (Vol. 14:1)

Welcome back, my friends,
To the show that never ends.
We're so glad you could attend;
Come inside, come inside!
—Emerson, Lake and Palmer, "Karn Evil 9"

Yes, once again it's time for "Sunday Snippets — A Catholic Carnival", hosted by RAnn at This, That and the Other Thing. As she explains, "We are a group of Catholic bloggers who gather weekly to share our best posts with each other." First, I create a post (here) to discuss and link to my week's efforts (or, my weak efforts, ATCMB). Then, I create a link to this post at the "Sunday Snippets" main page above. 

This has (hopefully) two effects: 1) It drives readers to my blogs from other blogs; 2) It exposes you, Dear Reader, to some tasty writing by other Catholic authors just waiting for their chance to break out of obscurity. Do please follow the turquoise-linked road ... you may very well be glad you did.

So what did I do over the last week? Not much, I'm afraid. 

In Outside the Asylum, I kinda stepped out of my normal comfort zone to write about "the recovery that isn't" — that is, the persistent lack of confidence in our economic recovery despite the most recent news about the gross domestic product (up 4.1% at the end of the third quarter of 2013) and the unemployment rate (down to 7.0% at the end of November). My answer: the recovery isn't nearly as strong as it's being painted, and it won't get much stronger until something is done about income inequality.

That post wasn't up two days when I came across an article written by Patrick J. Buchanan in Human Events, entitled "Inequality — Crisis or Scam?" (Guess which side he took?) It's not just that he missed the point of everyone's concern with income inequality; he missed it while making such stunningly obtuse statements that at the end I no longer wondered why the GOP shuns him ... he's the kind of Republican that makes the GOP look like it's the party "of the rich, by the rich and for the rich". (Well, in some ways it is — in fact, both parties are pretty much run for the pleasure and benefit of the wealthy — but most Republicans at least realize that such an appearance doesn't contribute to electability.) 

Anyway, that's what brought on my latest post here, "Pat Buchanan's clueless defense of income inequality", which ended up recycling some things I said in The Other Blog. Sometimes that happens: when a particular story gets hot, or a particular issue produces a spate of events and commentary, I'll find myself writing two or three posts on the matter, such as on l'affaire Phil Robertson (see last weekend's "Sunday Snippets").

And ... that's it! Go do some reading, and have a great day!

Sunday Snippets: A Catholic Carnival (Volume 13:50)

Ah-HAH! Finally found the photo I used to use for this segment!

Although I post links to pieces I've written through the week here, this feature really isn't about me. If you want to read what I've done the last week — and this week it wasn't much to speak of — you can always go to my archives here and on The Other Blog. Heck, you can just scroll down the page and click the titles you want to read.

No, the real purpose of this post is to direct you to RAnn's blog, This That and the Other Thing, where once a week she holds a virtual kaffeklatsch called "Sunday Snippets: A Catholic Carnival". This will lead you to other posts like this, where Catholics from around the blogosphere — most of whom you may not know — have their own efforts linked. You can always go to New Advent or BigPulpit to find the big-leaguer Catholic writers and the more promising of the farm-club players. But if you're a true aficionado, you can find some tasty writing among us sand-lot and small-town players. That's also why I promote Catholic Stand and New Evangelist Monthly — it ain't just because the editors of those outlets were kind enough to ask me to contribute.

So anyway: In Outside the Asylum, I offer you "The 'starter job' myth and economic reality", in which I muse over the recent fast-food strikes and demands for a $15/hour minimum wage. On this blog — well, heck, just scroll down a bit for a semi-review of two books on the Christian roots of science in the High Middle Ages, as well as for a slightly naughty rib-tickler on the thermodynamics of Hell.

Today is Gaudete Sunday — gaudēte being Latin for "all y'all rejoice" — when we're reminded that the coming of the Lord is a thing to rejoice over:

Be strong, fear not!
Here is your God,
he comes with vindication;
with divine recompense
he comes to save you.

Then will the eyes of the blind be opened,
the ears of the deaf be cleared;
then will the lame leap like a stag,
then the tongue of the mute will sing.

Those whom the LORD has ransomed will return
and enter Zion singing,
crowned with everlasting joy;
they will meet with joy and gladness,
sorrow and mourning will flee. (Isaiah 35:4-6, 10)

Have a joyous week!

Sunday Snippets: A Catholic Carnival (Volume 13:49)

Translation: "A real Merry Christmas and a real St. Nicholas!"

The best Feast of St. Nicholas meme I've seen so far is to your left. The second is an Eastern-style iconic portrait with the words: "He sees you when you're sleeping /He knows when you're awake /He knows if you've denied the divinity of Christ, so if you're an Arian, DUCK!"

(For those of you not up on your saints, St. Nicholas of Myra, the root of the "Santa Claus" legend, supposedly attended the Council of Nicaea, where in a fit of holy fury he punched the heretic Arius dead in the face. Alas, his attendance is apocryphal ... but it's still a good story.)

Okay, the Saint Nicholas observance is a couple days late, but just in time is this week's "Sunday Snippets: A Catholic Carnival" link to RAnn's blog This, That and the Other Thing. My entries for the week:

From Outside the Asylum: "Ecce ancilla Domini ...", a reflection on the typology of the Blessed Mother as the New Eve, especially as it ties in to the Immaculate Conception.

From The Impractical Catholic: "Conservative 'cafeteria Catholics' on parade", which takes on Rush Limbaugh and the Catholic conservatives who treat the social doctrine of the Church as somehow "optional" or "not authoritative".

I've also submitted my monthly link to New Evangelist Monthly. When I picked "In loving (and selective) memory", I was thinking it was about the only real effort I made last month. However, I could have also selected "Bethlehem redux", which has gotten plenty of shares and "likes" over at Catholic Stand, although it's a trimmed-down and slightly updated version of a post I wrote for The Other Blog three years ago.

Last thought: I'm finally starting to separate the voices of Outside the Asylum and The Impractical Catholic. While I still expect to occasionally take on controversial subjects in OTA, that voice is more reflective, and will probably see at most one post a week from here on out. TIC, on the other hand, will be more engaged with topical matter, where I pull off the gloves and get in my first reactions in a more idiomatic voice. Any thoughts on this?

Have a great week! Pax vobiscum.

Sunday Snippets: A Catholic Carnival—REBOOT!

So I got the weekly email from RAnn at This, That and the Other Thing with the link for submissions to Sunday Snippets: A Catholic Carnival, in which I've been participating off and on over the last two years ... lately more off than on. 

With the email came a little lecture: This thing is a two-way street. It's all fine and dandy to post links to your own scrivenings, but how about linking back? Other writers post to Catholic Carnival, too, y'know.

Quoth the prophet Homer of Springfield, "D'OH!" Yes, I dropped the ball, and I really have no excuse. 

So, to conform in all fairness with the host's "suggestion", the link back to Sunday Snippets is posted above. And here are the posts which I've submitted: From Outside the Asylum, I've posted "First Sunday in Advent", a meditation on the beginning of the Church's liturgical year; and from this blog I've linked to the post on my Knights of Columbus council's annual charity drive (which is done with, but you can still contribute through this link here).

So go visit RAnn and check out all the Catholic writers who post there! You'll be glad you did!

Sunday Snippets—A Catholic Carnival (2/19/12)

Welcome back to Sunday Snippets!  Sunday Snippets is a circle of traded posts hosted by RAnn at This That and the Other Thing.  For some fine Catholic reading, please follow this link!

Well, this week wasn't very productive, as it was my first week back in the regular workforce.  The next week is going to be even stranger, since I'll be working split shifts at my paying job and trying to write at the local library during the four-hour segments between (writing at my desk using company software would be not only questionable work ethics but also sticky in terms of copyright law — they would have a legal claim to it, even if they never exercised it.)

Sunday Snippets—A Catholic Carnival (2/12/12)

Welcome back to Sunday Snippets!  Sunday Snippets is a circle of traded posts hosted by RAnn at This That and the Other Thing.  For some fine Catholic reading, please follow this link!

Of course, the majority of the week was taken up with writing about the HHS mandate and the Obamination's phony "accommodation".  I really have no wish to inflict more of that on you; however, one post that bears on the subject without talking directly about it is Lies, damned lies and the Guttmacher 98%.  Read that and you'll know how to counter it when the office know-it-all gasses on about it.

Sunday Snippets—A Catholic Carnival (2/5/12)

Welcome back to Sunday Snippets!  Sunday Snippets is a circle of traded posts hosted by RAnn at This That and the Other Thing.  For some fine Catholic reading, please follow this link!

Well, well, it's been quite a week.  At least at the end of it — the first couple of days I could barely prod a thought out of my brain.  Then the HHS controversy started heating up good and proper, as more bishops sounded off against the Obamination and more people sounded off for and against the mandate.  Then the news broke out about Susan G. Komen for the Cure and Planned Barrenhood, and we got front-row seats to a mob-style shakedown,played out with the active connivance of the MSM and a huge chunk of Congress on the national stage.

Sunday Snippets—A Catholic Carnival (1/22/12)

Welcome back to Sunday Snippets!  Sunday Snippets is a circle of traded posts hosted by RAnn at This That and the Other Thing.  For some fine Catholic reading, please follow this link!

Tomorrow, January 23, is my 48th birthday.  If you want to send me a gift, send me a picture of yourself at a March for Life rally!  Unfortunately, because of my financial circumstances, I can't go myself.  But I know what I want for my birthday next year: I want to watch as a pro-life President gets sworn into office.

Speaking of pro-life, we shouldn't be downcast so much by the HHS' decision to keep its restrictive mandate in force.  As the Motley Monk pointed out in The American Catholic, the mandate is not likely to survive the process of judicial review, so it's a cubic zirconia from the Obama Administration to his pro-abort supporters, especially Planned Barrenhood.

Well, what else is of interest?

Sunday Snippets—A Catholic Carnival (1/15/12)

Welcome back to Sunday Snippets!  Sunday Snippets is a circle of traded posts hosted by RAnn at This That and the Other Thing.  For some fine Catholic reading, please follow this link!

This last week has been largely political, between the "Catholic circular firing squad" opening up some whup-a$$ on itself over which candidate is "more conservative than thou", the not-really-surprising victory of Mittens up in New Hampshire (South Carolina will be more interesting to watch), and a SCOTUS victory for freedom of religion.  However, I did manage to write on some other things, too.

Sunday Snippets—A Catholic Carnival (1/8/12)

Welcome back to Sunday Snippets!  Sunday Snippets is a circle of traded posts hosted by RAnn at This That and the Other Thing.  For some fine Catholic reading, please follow this link!

This was an odd week for me.  Since I'm an independent, I normally stay back from the nomination process.  However, the question this year is, Who is the alternative to Obama?  So I've not only picked a candidate to back, I've found myself writing on political issues a lot more than I ordinarily do.

On Outside the Asylum, I wrote two posts in response to a hysterical screed posted on CNN by comedian Dean Obeidallah, who accused Rick Santorum of wanting to impose a "Judeo-Christian Sharia".  While the first simply looked at Obeidallah's vision of horrible dhimmitude and found it somewhat less oppressive than Nazi Germany, the second post looked at Sharia and the Western concept of human rights.  I also threw a nutty about David Clohessy's claim that SNAP should be held to a "different standard of transparency" than should the Catholic Church.

Sunday Snippets—A Catholic Carnival (Week 19)

Sunday Snippets is a circle of traded posts hosted by RAnn at This That and the Other Thing.  Please follow this link to find a very interesting and Bohemian a clutch of fellow Catholic bloggers!

Actually, now that I think about it ... "Catholic Carnival" is almost redundant, as "carnival" stems from Carnevale, the "farewell to meat" celebrations that culminate on Shrove Tuesday (Mardi Gras).

A-a-a-anyway .... HAPPY 2012, EVERYBODY!

I didn't participate last Sunday, as I'd taken Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off from blogging.  Also, this last week I haven't written anything for Lisa Graas.  So I have both more and less to choose from this Sunday:

Sunday Snippets — A Catholic Carnival (Week 17)

I don't know why I didn't think of this before ....

Some months ago, one reader — perhaps it was Barb Schoeneberger? or Stacy Trasancos? — referred me to RAnn's blog This That and the Other Thing, where she runs a weekly collection of posts from others called "Sunday Snippets — A Catholic Carnival".  Since then, I've been submitting links irregularly.

Now, those of you who follow me have probably already read my selections.  If you haven't, I've posted them below.  What I'd encourage you to do, though, is go to RAnn's site and follow the links there to other people's blogs, such as Ellen Gable Hrkach's Plot Line and Sinker, or Barb's Suffering with Joy, or the eponymous Dymphna's Well.

Since I'm now posting on three blogs, it makes more sense to put my choices for the week here, as well as refer you all to some other Catholic writers that you may find simpatíco.  I may also from here on out put up a voting box asking you which posts should go into the Sunday Snippets post.  What are my favorites this week?

• Outside the Asylum: "Tim Tebow and 'Christian incrementalism'" — Almost a case of the satire writing itself, I ask why even the smallest, most absurd controversies send progressivists into dire predictions of mob violence and jack-booted stormtroopers coming to impose a right-wing fascist state ... for instance, if Tim Tebow should (God forbid!) lead the Denver Broncos to a Super Bowl victory.
• The Impractical Catholic: "Fruere in hodiernum diem!" — Enjoy the present day! In which Your Humble Blogger takes a moment to revel in the fact that he lives in the twenty-first century, and reflect on the words of the prophet (Billy) Joel: "You know, the good old days weren't always good /And tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems."
• Catholic Bandita: "The elephant who came for Christmas" — In which I reflect on grief, and on the four months since my brother Bob passed away.

Read! Enjoy! And have a pleasant Fourth Sunday of Advent!