Posts Tagged ‘Culture’
A reader alerted me to an interesting and insightful analysis by Pope Leo XIII of three trends that both alarmed him and pointed to future problems. He wrote of these three concerns in 1893 in the Encyclical on the Holy Rosary entitled Laetitiae Sanctae (Of Holy Joy). The Pope enunciates these three areas of concern [...] Read the rest of this entry »
It is a very brief word that begins the Lord’s prayer, “Our”, as in “Our Father.” Note that it is in the first person plural. Such a little insight, yet such a powerful one. We live in times that emphasize the first person singular: I, me, mine my rights, my opinion, my choice, my lifestyle, [...] Read the rest of this entry »
I was tipped off by a parishioner to a social commentary in an unlikely place, a journal for Engineers, called ECN. In the article Karl Stephan, Consulting Engineer, Texas State University, San Marcos writes on the decline of the average American worker to find stability in the workplace, and that this instability has ripple effects [...] Read the rest of this entry »
One extreme tends to bring on the other. Idyllic – I did not live through the 1950s (born 1961), but it would seem that many of the TV shows presented a kind of idyllic picture of marriage and family life. To be sure there were shows like “The Honeymooners” that showed another side. But shows [...] Read the rest of this entry »
Are we each living in our own little world? A reflection on the increasing loss of shared experience
The Video at the bottom of the page is from Bill O’Reilly on Last Friday’s show. I do not post it as a political commentary (this is not a political blog), but as a social commentary. In it he wonders whether or not American’s are living increasingly in a world of their own. I too [...] Read the rest of this entry »
I am not sure why, but my memory was stirred today about a controversy back in 2004 in Los Angeles County, California. It involved The American Civil “liberties” Union. (Yes the same ACLU that this week sided against the First Amendment and against Religious Liberty by arguing that any business owner that opposes the HHS [...] Read the rest of this entry »
In the recent killing at the Batman movie the alleged perpetrator James Holmes said eerily, “I am the Joker.” Let me state right away, I do not pretend to understand what set this alleged mad man off, but his self-identifying with the Joker, the featured nemesis of Batman in the last “Dark Knight” movie, resonates [...] Read the rest of this entry »
The video at the bottom of this post is a commercial that caught my attention the other day as emblematic of how coarse our culture has widely become. And, as I watched it I thought “We have lost a lot in the recent cultural revolution.” I suppose I shouldn’t expect a lot from a commercial [...] Read the rest of this entry »
When looking to Scripture it is clear that many historical events are being recounted. And while parts of the Scripture recount that history in the “strict” and modern sense of history, yet, many different genres are also used: poem, drama, moral tale, epic saga, wisdom saying, parable, apocalyptic, gospel, and so forth. But all the [...] Read the rest of this entry »
Back the 1970s there was a lot of talk that living together before marriage was a “wise” thing to do. After all, said its proponents, “You need to try a shoe on before buying it” and “You take a car for a test ride before negotiating the deal.” Never mind that human beings are a [...] Read the rest of this entry »
I know, I know, I am so hopelessly old fashioned. But I want to say, I miss women wearing hats. I have written before (HERE) of how I miss them wearing the veil in Church. But even before the veil, the hat was more commonly worn by women in 1940s and before (See photo below [...] Read the rest of this entry »
Last week on the blog we spoke briefly of tolerance in the discussion about Sloth. For it sometimes happens that what some call tolerance is more of a disinterestedness of discovering the truth and living by it. But there is such a thing as true tolerance and it has an important place in the human [...] Read the rest of this entry »
