Category: Religion

  • By Selwyn Duke With the election of Pope Francis, there has been an almost "catholic" attempt to determine if he is liberal or conservative. CBS claims he is a "staunch conservative" based on the fact that, as correspondent Allen Pizzey put it, he "opposes abortion, supports celibacy, and called gay adoption discrimination against children," not…

  • By Selwyn Duke With the election of Pope Francis, there are the usual complaints about how the Catholic Church has got to get with the times. The Huffington Post ran the headline, “Pope Francis Against [sic] Gay Marriage, Gay Adoption,” which is much like thinking it newsworthy to write, “New Pope Believes in the Divinity…

  • By Selwyn Duke One day back in high school, a very interesting English teacher asked our class a moral question: if you could press a button and get a million dollars, but a little old man — with no family, friends, or ties of any kind — in the backwoods of China would die, would…

  • By Selwyn Duke You’ve got to hand it to bloviating Brit Piers Morgan. While he got most of the facts wrong in his recent targeting of the Second Amendment, it hasn’t stopped him from moving on to even more formidable targets. Such as the Bible. He says the book is “inherently flawed” — and needs…

  • By Selwyn Duke A co-religionist friend of mine asked some years ago, “What is the [Catholic] Church’s teaching on firearms…? Does it recommend an assault rifle or a shotgun?” He was kidding, of course, but not so funny are some recent attempts by liberal “Christians” to turn Jesus into Sarah Brady. Motivated by their unique…

  • By Selwyn Duke This is the piece that will never be published. Haven’t you heard? The world’s going to end on December 21. End-of-the-world hysteria is rather interesting. The Argentine government has restricted access to a mountain over a mass “spiritual suicide” threat associated with it, and the Chinese regime has responded to a doomsday…

  • By Selwyn Duke The Salvation Army has long been a holy-day season fixture in front of my local supermarket, providing some Christmas sounds and cheer as it raises money to serve the poor. But when I went grocery shopping a couple of days ago, a difference was apparent: there was an SA volunteer and collection…

  • By Selwyn Duke “As I rained blows upon him, I realized there had to be another way.” So said the Frank Costanza character on Seinfeld, as he described a toy-store struggle with another man over a doll during the holiday season. It was comedic fiction, but, lamentably, it is also art that has been imitated…

  • By Selwyn Duke Among the beautiful messages in the 1937 film Captains Courageous is one relating to thankfulness. When spoiled rich kid Harvey says to Portuguese fisherman Manuel about Manuel’s father, "[H]e didn’t do much for you; I mean, he didn’t leave you anything,” it evoked quite a reaction. Manuel passionately replied in his broken…

  • By Selwyn Duke When actor and director Mel Gibson was asked some years ago about certain difficulties he had when making his film The Passion of the Christ, he registered a countenance of unease and said (I’m paraphrasing), “Something doesn’t want this to happen.” Being just a couple of seconds of his interview, it was…