I haven't done one of these in a while:

Newer stuff:

• Two from the New York Times:
  "My First Lesson in Motherhood" - A truly moving story about a woman and her husband, who upin arriving in China to pick up the baby girl they're adopting, find out they're getting more than they bargained for.
  "Genetic Testing + Abortion = ???" - The practice of sex selection and aborting babies that have specific deformities makes even some ardent pro-choicers nervous. Unfortunately, the horse has already left the gate on this one since, as the author mentions, 90 % of Down Syndrome babies never get to breather their first breath. Still, it's nice to see people take notice even at this late hour.
  
• Two from City Journal:
  "The Incredible Shrinking Father" - One of the more disturbing byproducts of the radical and near-uncontrolled rise of artificial reproduction is the disappearing father. (And given the tremendous amount of harmful byproducts of the rise, this is saying something.) I can look back over the people I've known in my life and it is simply true that the worst off on any number of indicators were the ones with dads who were absent or messed-up. Now we're intentionally starting kids off with this handicap.
  "Save the Catholic Schools!" - A look at the immense good that urban Catholic schools do. I'm ambivalent about public funding of religious schools, but it's nice to see Catholic schools get props for the work they do in our nation's cities.
  
• "Atheists with Attitude" - A review of the New Atheists (with special emphasis on Christopher Hitchens). Confining his criticism to the typical hand-wringing over the in-your-face brashness of the NAs, Anthony Gottlieb wonders why they can't all be gentle and condescending to us stupid religious sheep, like David Hume.

Older stuff:

• Pope Benedict on the conversions of St. Augustine from his visit to Pavia last month. Does it get any better than that? Seriously, does it?
  
• "The Conservative Convert" - Eric Scheske gives us a spiritual sketch of Russell Kirk. It's about 4 years old, but I just discovered it and it's a fantastic read.

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