CHARLIZE THERON, who is single, appears with a stunning designer handbag and her adopted son, Jackson. Imagine these two walking together in an airport 16 years from now. Will they even be speaking to each other by then?

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TONY at Catholic Phoenix made the announcement last week:

In a move already denounced by Catholic bishops & other leading religious conservatives, St. Sincerus University, the nation’s 84th largest Catholic university, has invited Satan to deliver its commencement speech later this month. Read More »

NOT only did Obama finally say he supports same-sex “marriage” today, a statement which was no surprise at all, but he specifically affirmed the importance of redefining marriage for members of the military:

I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married,” he told ABC.

Of course, there are no soldiers constrained from committing themselves in marriage. All soldiers can marry. There are, however, no soldiers who are permitted to weaken military morale and dignity by “marrying” members of the same sex and to raise children under such conditions.

It is good that Obama made this statement, barring a complete change of direction on his part. It was clearly his position all along.

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STEVE writes:

Colorado Speaker of the House Frank McNulty (R) last night finally stepped up and killed the Civil Unions Bill before it could go to the floor for a vote. Had the bill gone to the floor, most likely it would have passed because of the votes of moderate Republicans. The media reports on this entire process have been extremely biased. Read More »

JENNIFER LAHL at the Center for Bioethics and Culture reacts to the news that Mitt Romney’s eldest son, Tagg, hired a surrogate mother to bear twins, his fifth and sixth children, who were born last week. Lahl writes that she is “shocked and disgusted.” Surrogacy is commercial exploitation even if the hired mother is an enthusiastic client, she argues. Her words of reproach and horror are wonderful to read.

Tagg (Tagg?!) and his wife, Jen, had hired the same surrogate for the birth of their first child. It is unclear why. They also conceived their third child through IVF.

Surrogacy is fully legal in the United States. The Canadian Supreme Court ruled that surrogacy “devalues human life and degrades those who choose to participate.”

HURRICANE BETSY writes:

This will make some people mad, but I have nothing but sorrow for normal people (not psychopaths) who just have this sudden memory blackout and leave their children in the car in the sorts of situations you describe. They have to live with the consequences of what they did for the rest of their lives. They are being punished enough. Jailing them or chopping their hand off will not prevent these kinds of occurrences. Especially mothers of small children are sometimes so fatigued and overburdened their brain sometimes does not function as it should. No, it hasn’t happened to me, but it could have, and I thank God when I read about these things that it has not. Read More »

VINCENT C. writes:

When one reaches a certain age – mine – and looks back at today’s child rearing practices, I cannot help but notice how U.S. society has been transformed in the past half century. No societal change has been more dramatic than the victory, temporary, I would pray, of convincing young women to allow other people to raise their children. Where I live in Northern Virginia this profound mistake is accepted as readily as many young women accept advice about such things from the feminists who dominate “The View.” Sending babies to “day care” when the child is 6 months old can only be explained if one understands that far too many of today’s mothers see that practice lauded on the television programs they watch, the books they read, and is further nurtured in the movies they view, and the classes they attended. In short, it is pervasive. Read More »

LEAVE it to The New York Times, the newspaper that checks the pulse of today’s narcissistic female every 30 seconds, to invite women who are noticeably lacking in maternal qualities to write essays in honor of Mother’s Day. In the latest entry, Varda Steinhardt describes her return to paid work after ten years at home with her twin sons as “exhilarating, exhausting and deeply satisfying.” Taking care of her children, husband and home was thus not deeply satisfying.

She writes:

It’s taken a toll. I have fed my kids way too many organic chicken nugget dinners. I have heard my son wail, “You love your computer more than you love me,” as my “just a minute more” stretched into another hour of e-mailing. Read More »

I JUST received notice that my local Domino’s is featuring the chain’s new line of “Artisan Pizzas.” Last year, when they were introduced, CEO Patrick Doyle said, “We have never launched anything that showcases our quality ingredients and craftsmanship quite like Artisan Pizza.”

This is interesting. Mass retail has led to such stunning ugliness and uniformity that it now uses that calamity for its own purposes. The mere mention of the word “craftsmanship” or “artisan” is capable of  obliterating the physical reality of Chicken and Bacon Carbonara Pizza in favor of an imaginary vision. That’s how powerful words are. People are now buying Domino’s pizza because they crave something it can never provide.

The Associated Press reported last week that Domino’s first-quarter profit fell 24 percent. But its restaurants are still going strong. Among those open for at least a year, business increased by two percent in the U.S. and almost five percent abroad.

Domino’s can do many remarkable things with its stores around the world, but the one thing it positively cannot do is create anything artisanal. To be artisanal, something must bear the stamp of an individual human being. Mass retail is like mass government, it creates drones. It produces a state of such stupefying dependency and uniformity that the dream of craftsmanship can be awakened with a charred Domino’s crust.

TIBERGE at Galliawatch has posted an eight-minute video of François Hollande celebrating his victory in the presidential election at the Place de la Bastille. She writes:

Hollande, who seems to be hoarse, shouts that he is happy that the young people he is addressing will construct the new French republic.

This is an eerie document, where an ethnic Frenchman, a pawn in the hands of his potentially violent, multi-colored, multi-ethnic, multi-racial audience, imagines he is a leader, when in fact he is being led by a pre-determined doctrine of destruction. He appears terrified, but so did Nicolas Sarkozy, whenever he had to put himself among the immigrants and speak directly to them. He is both pathetic and demagogic, possibly foreshadowing things to come.

She also quotes the French writer Bernard Antony on the results:

The Socialist party and the whole left and extreme-left with it, now dispose of our country from the Presidency, to the Senate, to all the regional Councils, except Alsace, to two thirds of the general Councils, to the City Halls of Paris, and those of a majority of cities including Lille, Lyon, Toulouse, Nantes.

NATASSIA writes:

In Houston, Texas a man forgot his infant in the back of his truck while he attended a conference. He did not realize it until his wife called to see how their kids were doing. The child died.

In Dallas, a mother left her child in her hot car to drink margaritas in a restaurant. She drank four in the space of 40 minutes.

ONLY a culture amusing itself to death would listen to the Mother’s Day ramblings of an intentionally infertile woman who wonders, at the advanced age of 44, whether to have a child without a husband. Eve Ledermain writes in her anti-motherhood Mother’s Day essay in The New York Times:

I’m afraid of undertaking motherhood alone, in a tiny apartment with a three-flight walk up and little savings. I’m equally scared of the drone of doing so with a husband and a good job in a nice home. And what I fear the most is missing the indescribably deep connection with a child that yields a lifetime of stories.

Paralyzed by uncertainty, I nearly want to flip a coin to end the wrenching lack of knowing. But as T.S. Elliot said, “Things don’t go away. They become you. There is no end, but addition.” So undecided and waiting for my soul to speak, I’ll wait on, for the choice to become me.

Okay, instead of a “wrenching lack of knowing,” Eve, try this. Admit that it’s way too late for you. You’ve wasted your youth. Given your self-centeredness, you’d have made a lousy mother anyway.

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HERE IS a sickening glimpse into the worldview of feminist Catholic nuns. It’s an interview in the Minneapolis Post with Sister Brigid McDonald of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet. This is a woman seething with resentment and bitterness toward male authority. The Vatican’s recent disciplinary action against American nuns stems from a fear of powerful women, she contends in the interview:

Because [before] we were just school teachers and we just had nice little kids in front of us, you know, and we just emptied bed pans in the nursing homes and in the hospitals. But now they are right, we are out there in the different movements. We help with the Occupy movement and the right-to-choice movements.

It is giving us more credibility in the public. Lots of times people will call and seek out our opinions about certain issues, where it never was that way when I entered the convent. After we taught school, we went home, and said our prayers and ate supper and did our lesson plans and went to bed. Now we are out there.

Notice her contemptuous view of the work of nuns of the past, whose care for the sick and the young she considers demeaning, menial labor.

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The Iris, Vincent van Gogh, (The National Gallery of Canada)

A READER writes:

Regarding your recent entry on Vincent van Gogh, you may be pleased to know that there has recently been serious doubts cast on the belief that he killed himself. In brief, art historians who set out to write the first comprehensive, definitive biography of van Gogh discovered that his suicide was never thoroughly investigated, and that there was a local understanding that his confession of suicide was a cover-up by himself on behalf of a couple of village boys who were careless with a gun. There is a good article with the details here, a quick Google search will turn up many others.

WINNIE writes:

I love your blog. Thank you a thousand times over for your thoughtful discussions, hard work and attention to the Truth and the Common Good.

You present a consistently edifying, validating and encouraging message to me, the daughter of a ground-breaking, unwitting feminist. For over a decade now, my family has been slowly waking up from the destruction of the cultural revolution, thanks in no small part to your wonderful writing. Read More »

MARK RICHARDSON at Oz Conservative further explores the leftist ideology of the nuns of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious.

NEW comments have been added to the entry on recent attacks by homofascists and their hate-filled supporters.

It’s important to emphasize one point. These attacks are not simply the work of a fanatical fringe. Not only do we see ordinary people driving and walking down the street participating in them, but we see the vast portion of America participating. This violence has been aided and encouraged by the mainstream, which constantly stokes the anger and resentment behind it. Those who believe that by embracing homosexuality, this resentment will diminish are remarkably deluded. In fact, the more society agrees that homosexuals have been victimized (legitimizing same-sex “marriage” is extravagant confirmation of victimhood), the more any disapproval of homosexuality will be viewed as an outrage.

All speech in favor of traditional morality would have to be forcibly suppressed for this seething, ever-flowing font of hostility and hatred to be quelled. Civil union measures and the same-sex “marriage” project are inherently totalitarian.

STEVE KOGAN writes:

Commenting on the general clamor among “thousands of little groups” in Germany in the 1920s, each one hawking its own “set notion of life,” the novelist Robert Musil foresaw a time in the near future when “a genuine paranoiac” would no longer “be able to resist competing with the amateurs.” I have recalled this exquisite prediction many times since I read it years ago. On May 1, it came to mind again.

After a day in which the Occupy movement marked the old socialist-communist “workers’ holiday” of May Day with the usual Occupy slogans of class warfare and scattered outbreaks of lawless behavior, Geert Wilders’s interview that night by Sean Hannity was a sobering reminder of the discipline with which militant Islam exploits the decaying authority of our institutions and channels its ancient drive against the unbeliever, a word that confronts us throughout the Koran. Read More »