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Unexpected things happen all the time but certain things have the power to convey a message to the collective psyche of a nation. Less frequently there are events that can alter the course of human affairs on a planetary scale. The killing of Archduke Francis Ferdinand that ushered a century of unspeakable violence was one of those events. Certainly not the first crowned head of Europe to succumb to the dagger or the bullet, the case of Francis Ferdinand still remains a classic example of how a random and apparently inconsequential event can become the catalyst unleashing forces beyond human control. Francis and his wife Duchess Sophie were the first victims of the Great War that was to claim thirty five million more casualties in and out of the battlefields of the world. The death of Ferdinand and Sophie was a fitting metaphor for the end of the old European order that they represented so well.

The morning of last January 14 here in the American East Coast, I opened the web page of the Corriere della Sera and read for the first time of the horrible tragedy unfolding off the island of Giglio, a beautiful spot by the Tuscany coast that was now quickly becoming the center of attention of the whole wide world. I followed the reports for days on the Corriere thus shaving a few minutes off the news cycle before the latest wires were translated for the world's English media.

Sex Addiction Among Women Real and Growing

Now that I have your attention, I’d like to say that I don’t believe that headline, which recently appeared online. At least I don’t believe that sex addiction among any group is “growing.” I do believe, however, that some women — and some men – are genuinely addicted to sex.

First, let’s address sexual addiction and then, I’ll end by saying why I don’t think the incidence of this addiction is “growing.” The latter is a somewhat less intriguing topic and if I wrote it about it first, you might stop reading now.

Why have not the moral forces of the nation, such as education, press, radio, all the clergy of all denominations, the social reformers, been more insistent on developing a new order instead of patching up the old one? Perhaps the principal reason is because they have been getting behind certain movements instead of ahead of them. The first thought that comes to a particular group which wishes to further legislation in its favor is to wire educators, clergymen, actors, and social workers, to lend their names as sponsors of its cause - and there are at least five hundred such professional signers in our country who keep their fountain pens uncapped for just such demented and cheap publicity. It is just this irrational mentality which substitutes imitation for thinking by pushing some group or class instead of leading for the common good, that has paralyzed the regeneration of society.

A few generations ago it was the fashion to get behind Capitalism, and political parties were formed to support its legislation. Now it is the fashion and mood to get behind Labor which develops its own parties, while John Q. Public and the common good is like ground meat in the sandwich. Each class demands its rights in the name of freedom, forgetting that, as Lincoln once said, "Sheep and wolves never agree on the definition of freedom."

How does one measure whether a life was a success, or a failure?

Some would measure it by recognition, that is, how many knew the person’s name. For others, the measure of a successful life would be the amount of wealth accumulated, or possessions held. Still others would say a life was successful if the person made a major contribution to society — in medicine, sports, politics, or the arts.

By that standard my brother, Marshall Stephen Thomas, who died January 5, was a failure. If, however, your standard for a successful life is how that life positively touched others, then my brother’s life was a resounding success.

Shortly after he was born in 1950, Marshall was diagnosed with Down syndrome. Some in the medical community referred to the intellectually disabled as “retarded” back then, long before the word became a common schoolyard epithet. His doctors told our parents he would never amount to anything and advised them to place him in an institution. Back then, this was advice too often taken by parents who were so embarrassed about having a disabled child that they often refused to take them out in public.

Doctors treating people for depression should delve into the childhoods of their patients before prescribing, because a history of mistreatment has a significant impact on their illness and ability to recover, scientists said on Monday.

Is religion a force for good? That's the subject of a long-awaited debate tonight between the former PM and one of the world's leading secularists. We asked two leading writers to set out the rival arguments in advance. Christopher Hitchens, one of the world's leading secularists and former PM Tony Blair will debate in Toronto. [NOTE: the debate took place during November 2010. I am interested in revisiting the analysis of their arguments as presented a few days prior to the actual debate.]

Let the Fourth of July always be a reminder that here in this land, for the first time, it was decided that man is born with certain God-given rights; that government is only a convenience created and managed by the people, with no powers of its own except those voluntarily granted to it by the people. We sometimes forget that great truth, and we never should. Ronald Reagan

We pay a lot of lip service to our ancient doctrines but many are not living in the faith of the Fathers these days. I like the quote by St. Bernard de Clairvaux at the opening of today's Insight Scoop: "Some seek knowledge for the sake of knowledge: that is curiosity. Others seek knowledge that they may themselves be known: that is vanity. But there are still others who seek knowledge in order to serve and edify others, and that is charity."

There is a group out there that decided long ago that the shortest path to become an "intellectual" is to be an atheist. Some of them are inexplicably politically Conservative. How can a person be Conservative and yet not believe in normative values or a higher order is something hard to conceive. Yet one of those geniuses here slaps the whole community of believers labeling them schizophrenics (see second quote below.) This is a good moment to quote one of the basic principles of Conservatism:

These days government insists in having programs to take care of anyone that could possibly be in need of help. The natural result of all that preoccupation with the needy has resulted in a multiplication of both the number of needy people and the number of needs that have to be addressed. Programs for the needy proliferate as fast as the needy themselves. There seems to be a correlation between the growth of government and the growth of needy people. I sure wonder if government is not creating a market for its own products but I digress. Someone recently told me that his interpretation of the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church was that actually Caesar is in charge of mending all the social ills that individuals, families, and the Church cannot address.

The ... conservative is concerned, first of all, for the regeneration of spirit and character—with the perennial problem of the inner order of the soul, the restoration of the ethical understanding, and the religious sanction upon which any life worth living is founded. This is conservatism at its highest. Russell Kirk

This follows the thread from Father John Corapi and the State of Due Process for Accused Priests in Catholic Lane where the comments have been closed. There you will find a comment by K. M. Tierney that asked for my response. Here is Tierney's comment and my response below. It seems to me that Mr. Tierney really wants John Corapi to be guilty but the way things are going either Corapi is innocent or he is the dumbest megalomaniac the Church has seen lately. I am inclined and I hope for the first.

Father John Corapi has apparently resigned himself to live his faith outside the priestly ministry. I just read his good-bye letter and I must say that I sympathize with him. I share with him the same experience with the only difference that -unlike Father John- frankly I don’t care.

Many years ago when I was barely twenty years old I witnessed the spectacular arrest of a man right in front of my house. A car moving down my street was suddenly surrounded by four unmarked police cars, the driver was brutally dragged out of his vehicle, and his beautiful German shepherd was shot dead while still in the back seat. At the time I was dragging a guitar amplifier out the lobby of the apartment building I lived in. I hit the floor when I heard the shots and I witnessed the whole thing from behind the amp's speaker box. It all lasted but a few minutes. Several men with rifles and pistols formed a circle around the cars, looked around menacingly while brandishing their arms making sure that everyone got the message to stay silent. The five cars drove away and traffic resumed. A pair of broken eyeglasses remained as a silent witness of the violent scene we had just seen.

Another week, another dozen or so images of Weenie the Tweeter in various states of disrobe. I can only imagine the suffering of the poor wife, the humiliation of the family and friends at the sight of this debacle. Yet there is something worse than that. The poor guy wants to keep his job as a US Representative for New York. As long as he holds that position we are supposed to address him as “the Honorable.” Talk about irony!

The U.S. government published the latest unemployment statistics today. Unrevised figures indicate a very high number of workers were laid off for the first time. That is the latest in a series of reports clearly showing that the "stimulus" is not helping the American working class with the same effectiveness it helped banks and Wall Street firms.

I needed to write something to post in my new website and I thought I could begin with a simple reflection on beauty. At first the concept is difficult to define. Instinctively I feel that beauty is real to everyone. Once I have made my mind that something is beautiful I know it in the same sense that I know what the number one is. The natural number does not represent something: one is simply one. Beauty seems to appeal to that same area of our nature, that part that is connected both to the instinctive and the rational.

I was once invited to speak about love to a group of teenagers. From the start I assured them that I could learn more about love from their experiences than from my own. I prayed that my words to them would be useful in some way. After all, I am only a writer, and they did not seem too interested in my writing.

How could it be that the ancient Hebrews could know something that took science and the rest of mankind forty centuries to learn? Science keeps discovering more and more details about how the universe is exquisitely tuned. That comes as no surprise for those who hold Judeo-Christian beliefs. The idea of an orderly universe has existed at least since the time of Abraham, about 4,000 years ago. The concept of order is clear in the Bible and pervasive in both Jewish and Christian traditions. All of that began to be expressed in an organized fashion by the time of Augustine of Hippo around the 4th century A.D.

October 13, 2010 was not September 11, 2001. There were people celebrating in the streets but their joy had nothing to do with death and a warped idea of martyrdom. If the god of the crescent moon proved anything on 9-11, it was a capacity for hating and killing. Christ instead, proved in Chile that He can save, here and now.

You may look at the time-stamp on this message and wonder, what am I doing sending e-mails at this ungodly hour? I have a good explanation: I'm watching the Chilean television coverage of the rescue at the San José mine, near Copiapó in Chile's Atacama Desert, 10,000 feet over sea level with mountains reaching well over 20,000 feet on both sides. That is a terrible place. If it never rains in southern California, it rains even less in Atacama. The sparse life that survives there depends on the camanchaca (the blinder), a very thick fog that ascends from the Pacific at night. If you think you have seen thick fog, just wait until you see the camanchaca in full force. It is an experience very close to being totally blind. That humidity is almost the only source of water around there.