Recently in Reading Assignments Category

Charles Murray, in today's WSJ

He goes on to advocate CPA-style certification tests for most professions. As a firm-believer that college-for-everybody is insane and counter-productive, this is music to my er, eyes.

• The review you've all been waiting for: Adoremus on Piero Marini's A Challenging Reform. The review is surprisingly gentle, but definitely negative.
  It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the book serves more as a “J’accuse� than a simple memoir. Bitterness and even rancor bleed through the text on many a page. Compared elsewhere to a spaghetti western with heroes wearing white hats and villains wearing black, the account is reminiscent likewise of a medieval chronicle, in which history, hagiography, and moralizing all conspire to tell a plangent, nay at times even maudlin, tale.

  Marini portrays Bugnini in glowing terms as the tireless visionary and dauntless reformer who, advancing an agenda of inculturation and purportedly vindicating the cause of national episcopal conferences the world over, battles the prejudices of the Roman Curia enthralled by the ultimate foe, the Council of Trent. Time and again throughout the chronicle Trent rears its hydra-heads to threaten authentic liturgical reform. Its tinpot army is the Roman Curia, in the vanguard of which march and fight the Congregation of Rites, founded by Sixtus V in 1588 and dissolved by Paul VI in 1969.

• The Betrayal of Judas
  When the Gospel of Judas was unveiled at a news conference in April 2006, it made headlines around the world — with nearly all of those articles touting the new and improved Judas. "In Ancient Document, Judas, Minus the Betrayal," read the headline in The New York Times. The British paper The Guardian called it "a radical makeover for one of the worst reputations in history." A documentary that aired a few days later on National Geographic's cable channel also pushed the Judas-as-hero theme. The premiere attracted four million viewers, making it the second-highest-rated program in the channel's history, behind only a documentary on September 11.

  But almost immediately, other scholars began to take issue with the interpretation of Meyer and the rest of the National Geographic team. They didn't see a good Judas at all. In fact, this Judas seemed more evil than ever. Those early voices of dissent have since grown into a chorus, some of whom argue that National Geographic's handling of the project amounts to scholarly malpractice. It's a perfect example, critics argue, of what can happen when commercial considerations are allowed to ride roughshod over careful research. What's more, the controversy has strained friendships in this small community of religion scholars — causing some on both sides of the argument to feel, in a word, betrayed.

• James Wood presents the standard case against God based on the problem of evil under the guise of a review of Bart Ehrman's latest. I obviously don't agree with Wood, but it's an argument no Christian should ignore, and Wood presents it better than anybody.

• Sandro Magister describes a pilgrimage to St. Peter's tomb.
  Imagine that it is night, as in the photo above. We're walking down a little path flanked by Roman tombs of the second and third century after Christ. We're at the bottom slope of the Vatican Hill. A short distance away is the imposing obelisk that stood at the center of the stadium of Caligula and Nero. That's where the apostle Peter was martyred. And along the path stands the monument marking the place where he was buried.

• Ross Douthat ably explains why it was incredibly stupid for Douglas Kmiec's chaplain to deny him Communion.

Zenit has an interview with Missionary of Charity Father Joseph Langford, author of a new book about how Mother Teresa's faith sustained her during decades of darkness.

Some articles to drink your coffee over this weekend :

• Sandro Magister, Vaticanista extraordinaire, reruns a decade-old account of a pilgrimage to Mt. Athos.
  Saints, centuries, empires, earthly and heavenly cities – everything seems to oscillate and flow, no longer distant. The monastery's treasures – golden and silver boxes with sapphires and rubies that are set in the Virgin's belt, the skull of Saint Basil the Great, Saint John Chrysostom's right hand – are offered to visitors for veneration. The light of the sunset sets them aglow, makes them pulsate. And the frescoes of Theophanes – master of the Cretan school in the first part of the 16th century – are also lit up, as are the blue majolica tiles on the walls, the mother-of-pearl on the iconostasis, on the lectern, on the episcopal throne.

  After vespers one leaves the catholikon in procession and, facing the square, enters the refectory, which is also built like a church and frescoed by the great Theophanes. The same liturgy continues. The igoumenos takes his place at the center of the apse. A monk reads stories of saints from the pulpit, almost singing. One eats blessed food: soups and vegetables from old iron dishes – and on feast days even amber-colored wine – on thick, roughly hewn marble tables, themselves resting on marble supports. They are a thousand years old, yet evoke prehistoric dolmens. The exit is also made in procession. A monk gives everyone a piece of blessed bread. Another incenses it so artfully that the perfume remains a long time in your mouth.

• Two recent articles about human trafficking and prostitution caught my eye. The first is this lengthy but excellent New Yorker profile of a Moldovan woman who works for a non-profit that helps women who have been trafficked into prostitution get home. The second is this First Things daily article from last week that discusses a new book about the modern day slave trade by a reporter who has investigated trafficking all around the world.

• Lastly, Zenit has a brief article quoting Fr. Joseph Fessio talking about Pope Benedict XVI's recent trip to America. This quote stood out to me:
  "Most people already knew [Benedict XVI] is extremely intelligent and articulate. Many weren't aware of the personal warmth, what in Bavaria they call 'Gemütlichkeit,'" Father Fessio said.

  I don't know about you, but to me, nothing says "personal warmth" like Gemütlichkeit

Not necessarily in order of seriousness:

• Manilow lives up to the legend:
  You expect glitter. You expect anthems. You expect grand pianos. But you don't expect Barry Manilow to put on a Nehru jacket and smoke a joint.
• Review of Change or Purpose by Cardinal Christoph Schönborn.

• The Catholic Fantastic of Chesterton and Tolkien -- a review of Alison Milbank's Chesterton and Tolkien as Theologians: The Fantasy of the Real
• One for my brother: The Gospel According to Frank Capra
• From Fides News -- a list of missionaries killed in action in 2007.

This weekend's Chicago Tribune Books section was dedicated mostly to books on schools and the challenges of teaching. Here are the three reviews: 1, 2, 3.

An excerpt from the second review:

• Vanity Fair's interview with Stephen Colbert
• A lengthy, excellent excerpt from Anthony Esolen's Ironies of Faith. The particular irony of faith discussed is that of time, the context is Tolkein's short story "Leaf, by Niggle."

• NCR's John Allen's interview with Cardinal George.
• Cheryl Miller's review of the somewhat frightening Everything Conceivable, a book that casts an indifferent eye on our assisted reproduction mess. Warning, although the review is good, things like this might make you want to bang your head against the wall:
  What of the babies who are the goal of these new reproductive technologies? The procedures of ART can harm the very children they help to create. Infertile fathers often pass their infertility down to their sons. Prematurity is now the leading cause of infant mortality in the United States, in part due to the “epidemic� of multiple births to IVF patients. Multiples are twenty times more likely to die in the first month of their lives than singletons; those multiples that survive are more likely to have respiratory difficulties, learning disabilities, and other problems. Cerebral palsy, for instance, has become more common in the United States, even as its major cause, jaundice, has been all but eliminated. And even IVF singletons are less healthy than non-IVF children: they tend to be smaller and are more likely to be born with birth defects, including bowel and genital deformations and eye cancer.

  And yet press reports abound with stories of “designer babies.� Would-be parents relying on sperm or egg donations try to micromanage every part of the donor selection process—eye color, height, musical or athletic ability, even political leanings—in part, no doubt, because they desperately want to exert some control over a process in which they are largely powerless. Mundy tries, at times, to play this tendency down, arguing that most fertility patients don’t want to design a perfect baby; they’re grateful to have any baby. She quotes a nurse who tells her, “I’ve never come across a patient who wants to design their baby.�

  This seems willfully naïve, even unbelievable. As much as Mundy wants to get past the stereotype of the super-picky fertility patient practicing “yuppie eugenics,� the stories she tells reinforce it. One couple fights over how tall their egg donor should be; another, to head off such squabbles, creates a mathematical formula for potential egg donors: “health plus education times looks, add back social sports.� “What are you going to do, get someone with [an SAT score of] 1550, or are you going to cheat your child and get them a mom with a 1210?� asks the parent who devised that “unofficial algorithm.� Such sentiments might strike the reader as shallow and laughable, but underneath these attitudes lie some unsavory (and decidedly illiberal) assumptions about human equality. One self-described “ardent social liberal� explains her feelings about donating her excess embryos (created using both an egg and sperm donor) thus: “These could be superstar embryos. I didn’t want to put them with high school graduates; you have the product of a doctor and a lawyer, and I wanted them to have the benefit of being around people like them.�

• John Robb's look at the future of terrorism from this summer edition of City Journal. An eye-opening read, but given recent events, the author's touting of Blackwater as a possible solution to the threat of terrorism in our cities is unfortunate.

...you might check out:

• What's with the boom in spicy food? Baby boomers:
  Chiefly because of degenerating olfactory nerves, most aging people experience a diminished sense of taste, whether they realize it or not. But unlike previous generations, the nation's 80 million boomers have broad appetites, a full set of teeth, and the spending power to shape the entire food market.

• The 10 Most Insane Sports in the World

  Go and belly-laugh

• Lefty v. Lefty on Lefties

  Ezra Klein savages Mark Penn's Microtrends.

  I first flipped through Microtrends while at the YearlyKos convention, and Penn, astonishingly, seemed to comprehend the importance of the loosely connected, grassroots-driven, progressive movement’s flowering. “I suspect the lefty boom will bring a surge in the promotion of sheer creative energy,� Penn writes, “driven by an idea that is at the heart of this book—that small groups of people, sharing common experiences, can increasingly be drawn together to rally for their interests.� I was shocked—Penn was speaking admirably of “lefties,� not trying to recast them as moderates, not trying to write them out of the party? He was endorsing open-source politics, rather than a top-down structure? I had misjudged the man!

  I read on. Penn was talking about actual lefties—people who are born left-handed. Increasingly grim, I absorbed the first hard blows of Penn’s interpretative technique: “More lefties,� he enthuses, “could mean more military innovation: Famous military leaders from Charlemagne to Alexander the Great to Julius Caesar to Napoleon—as well as Colin Powell and Norman Schwarzkopf—were left-handed.� He uses the same thunderingly awful logic to argue that we’ll see more art and music greats, more famous criminals, more great comedians, more “executive greatness,� and better tennis and basketball players...

  What’s more amazing is this: A page earlier, Penn argues that the rise in lefties has nothing to do with there being more lefties, and everything to do with more permissive parenting. In other words, where children used to be trained out of left-handedness, now parents “shrug their shoulders, saying it’s okay.� So not only does Penn fail to prove that lefties are genetically different in some important way, he also suggests that the gene pool is no different, and that there are as many of them around now as always. It’s a fallacy atop an error built around something that isn’t happening.

Forget Send, this is all you need to read about email, and it's pure gold for misanthropes.

John Derbyshire's tribute to 18th century mathematician Leonhard Euler is very much worth reading. Yeah, I know what I just wrote, but it's true.

• This lengthy New Yorker report on Garry Kasparov, who is being nudged into running for the Russian presidency, is worth a skim, though it's too long by about 1000 words.
• Likewise, this essay on human trafficking from the New York Review of Books is a good survey of the problem.

• 25 skills every man should know

  Interesting list except for their lame-a** attempts to add basic computer skills to the list of general competencies every man should have. I think I'm man enough without knowing how to "Retouch digital photos." That said, I'm humble enough to admit that I scored an abysmal 6/25 on the list.

  My other criticism is there's nothing about booze or tobacco on the list. Rolling a cigarette? Smoking a pipe? Mixing a gin and tonic? I guess that can be explained by the fact that the list was put together by Popular Mechanics. Still, it feels incomplete.

• A Tridentine Ordo that is unfortunately good only for another 2 months or so

• NY journalist sneeringly laments miniscule down-tick in Gotham promiscuity.
• One for the wife: A Touchstone article from a while back about forming children. It's a decent article, but I'm mostly posting it because my wife will enjoy his (entirely negative) take on The Giving Tree.

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.

• "Here Lies England" - Ostensibly about England, the post by Anthony Esolen also contains the best take on the whole stupid Don Imus incident I've seen.
• This is insane - The Soul of the Commuter. Probably the biggest reason I don't miss Chicago

When a new issue of Touchstone magazine comes out, they usually post two or three articles online for non-subscribers to read, which is a common and rational thing to do, since you generally want people to subscribe to your magazine instead of just giving away the contents for free.

BUT, if you check out their archives, you'll see that in addition to posting those couple of articles every month, they also post the entire issue of two years earlier. Knowing this, you can go here and see they they have the entire April 2005 issue available. Which means you can read this essay by Anthony Esolen on living the Sabbath as a way of life and not just by staying home on Sundays and this piece by Dawn Eden exposing the sickness of Planned Parenthood's TeenWire site.

• Kay Hymowitz on The New Black Realism
• Robert Zubrin sez: Hydrogen as viable consumer fuel source is a pernicious hoax
• Cheryl Miller reviews a book about the SARS outbreak in China and the government's silence

Blogwatch

• Disputations on St. Joseph
  
• Useful and timely: Swordfighting rules for boys

Other stuff

• Eric Cohen and Yuval Levin on healthcare - Their solutions aren't all that convincing, but they have the right idea of identifying that there are multiple healthcare problems that need different solutions.

• Rocco posts gorgeous pics of the new altar screen at San Juan Capistrano in California.
• Dawn Eden Interview at Beliefnet
• St. Pat's done right
• A while back I mentioned an article on the God of Stephen King's books by Ross Douthat. It's online now.

New stuff:

• Medical Ethics and the Interrogation of Guantanamo
  
• NRO: What else in the ossuary?

Old stuff:

• "Horsemen of the Esophagus" - A hilarious look at the world of competitive eating from the May issue of The Atlantic Monthly
  
• "Babies for Sale" - A sobering look at the baby business that exists despite our desperate efforts to ignore it.
  
• "Leonardo’s Last Supper" - The real DaVinci code

Blogwatchin':

• How to visit the dying - Found via Bill White who adds that a Catholic should bring along a rosary and a prayer book. You should probably bring a bunch of rosaries.
  
• Steve Sailer on Chicago's mayoral election

New stuff:

• "What if We Leave?" (Iraq, that is)

Old Stuff:

• The Human Difference - A lovely meditation by Eric Cohen on what separates us from the animals.
  
• A challenge to the stereotype of a cruel Old Testament God. From the Fall 2006 In Character which also included this interesting reading list of classics on justice.

Newer stuff:

• For First Things types: Papal Address on Natural Law
  
• The Stabat mater in, like, every language
  
• From the NAC homepage: Map of Lenten Station Chuches in Rome that links to info on each Church

Older stuff:

• Max Boot on modern military technology. Good stuff, just don't think about how much money we spend to be able to kill lots of people. UPDATE: Victor Davis Hanson reviews Boot's book on the subject here
  
• The sprituality of The Far Side
  
• "The Mislabeled Child" - On decreasing, rather than treating, behavioral problems
  
• "How the Schools Shortchange Boys" - just what the title says. An excellent article, except it's main vehicle of argument is defending a boy who acts like an ass. Not every rude jerk is a misunderstood hero. Sometimes, they're just rude jerks
  
• "Samantha Shrugged" - A teacher tries to get his students to put some thought into the abortion question

Around St. Blog's

• Amy's Theory of Everything
  
• 2007 Catholic Blog Awards winners
  
• That old-time American religion.

Newer stuff:

• Florida's pro-choice license plate option shows a baby star floating upward (heavenward?) from inside a mother star. I can't decide if it's monstrously sick and twisted or refreshingly blunt and honest.
  
• Even Stanley Kurtz can't tolerate D'Souza's book.

Older stuff:

• 30 Days on St. Charles Borromeo.
  
• Review of Alisdair MacIntyre's biography of St. Edith Stein's early life.

I herein inaugurate a new, periodic (adj. - whenever I get around to it) feature, where I provide links to interesting articles I've found on the web, handily divided into stuff that has just appeared and older stuff that I've juse come across.

Stuff from today:

• The introduction to Danielle Bean's next book, (along with a pre-order link)
• Papal Address on 11th World Day of Consecrated life.
• The Winter 2007 Issue of The New Atlantis is online. Check it out!

Older stuff:

• The War of the Imagination - A damning look at the initial phase of the Iraq war published in late November. Lengthy, but necessary.
• Plumbing the archives of the excellent journal Touchstone, I found two gems in the October 2004 issue. In "Swift Prophet", Anne Barbeau Gardiner looks at Gulliver's Tavels as a allegory of British Christianity. And in "The Lovely Dragon of Choice", Anthony Esolen slays said dragon - which is not simply the euphemistic "choice" of abortion, but a far more hideous and menacing beast:
  I am not merely saying that there is a freedom higher and more blissful than the freedom to choose how one spends one’s money or where one buys a house or whom one marries. I assert that even regarding questions of money or dwelling or spouse or any earthly thing, there is a freedom that slays the freedom to choose. Call it the wisdom of tossing the choice away. Call it the hope not in choosing but in being chosen.