Gene Edward Veith Jr.'s Blog, page 414

Second bomber captured

From Fox News: BREAKING: A day-long dragnet for the second of two brothers believed to be behind Monday’s Boston Marathon bombing ended Friday night, with police capturing the suspect covered in blood and hiding in a boat in the backyard of a man who called 911 after become suspicious of activity on his property. “We [...]

New system for our “comments”

Patheos, which hosts this blog, is going to be making some major upgrades, including moving to a higher-end server, that should decrease load times, eliminate spam, prevent a host of problems, and make possible new features.  One new feature that will be added before moving to the new server is the Disqus system for comments. [...]

Chrysostom predicts the 21st century

Thanks to Bob Miller for showing me this quotation from John Chrysostom (c. 347-407) from his Homily 5 on Titus: “Woman was not made for this, O man, to be prostituted as common. O you subverters of all decency, who use men, as if they were women, and lead out women to war, as if [...]

Swimming the Elbe

Those who convert to Catholicism are said to have “swum the Tiber,” referring to the river that runs through Rome.  Those who convert to Orthodoxy are said to have “swum the Bosphorus,” the strait in Turkey that separates Europe from Asia.  So what is a person swimming who converts to Lutheranism?  I have heard “Mississippi” [...]

News & updates

Lots of things have been happening in the news, including some new developments in topics we have discussed earlier.  I’ll just pull together some links: Have you seen these men?  The FBI has released photos from surveillance videos that depict two suspects in the Boston Marathan bombing. UPDATE:  They have been identified and a wild [...]

Bad sermons

Karl Barth (not to be confused with the good Karl Barth of the LCMS) was a neo-orthodox theologian, which isn’t as good as being an orthodox theologian, but it was arguably better than being a liberal.  Which he was when he first got out of seminary, to the point that he was called in his [...]

“The long march through the institutions”

In the course of an article about the Roman Catholic organization Communion and Liberation, a group with which the current Pope Francis was affiliated, one that offered a more orthodox alternative to Liberation Theology, Tracey Rowland describes two Marxist strategies for dealing with Christianity and for influencing the culture.  One is Stalin’s approach of violent [...]

American beer is “in”

Interesting story in the BBC on how American beer, once derided in the world’s cultures that take beer seriously,  has suddenly become fashionable.  America’s craft breweries have spawned international fans and imitators, though also new controversies among the purists. From BBC News – US craft beer: How it inspired British brewers. Once widely mocked, US [...]

Ricin attacks and an arrest

Letters laced with the deadly poison ricin were sent to President Obama and a Republican senator.  The letters were intercepted and an arrest has been made (one Kenneth Curtis of Tupelo, Mississippi, someone who doesn’t sound Muslim).   Authorities don’t think these terrorist attacks are related to the one in Boston. From NBC: Federal agents [...]

Easter and Vocation

In the sermon for the third Sunday of Easter, based on John 21:1-19, in which the disciples saw Jesus while they were fishing, Pastor Douthwaite related Easter to vocation: Jesus has not changed, and Easter does not mean that He is now done all His work and now it’s up to us. No, He is [...]