Gene Edward Veith Jr.'s Blog, page 7
September 18, 2018
How Religious Are You?
Pew Research has come up with a different way of classifying American religion. Instead of looking at broad categories (evangelicals, Catholics, mainline Protestants), or affiliations (denominations, religions), it has drawn up a “typology” based on how religious a person is, along with some other descriptors. I know, there are problems with this. But the Pew […]
September 17, 2018
The Unattainable Perfectionism of Millennials
The young adults of the Millennial generation are showing a higher rate of mental problems than previous generations. A study says that the problem is perfectionism and their inability to attain it. As Rachel Genevieve Chia reports, “A study on the topic shows this phenomenon is unique to millennials, who are under immense pressure from always being […]
September 14, 2018
What Would a “Progressive” Foreign Policy Look Like?
The Democrats think they have a good chance to pick up the House of Representatives and maybe the Senate in the midterm elections in November and the White House in 2020. And with the left wing of the party gaining more and more grass roots influence, some “progressives” think they may actually get to govern […]
September 13, 2018
The Double Fall
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind,” said Jesus. And “you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 22:37, 39-40). Thus, the first table of the Ten Commandments has to do with loving […]
September 12, 2018
What Percentage of Catholic Priests Have Been Abusive?
How extensive is the problem of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests? Cases have been coming from around the world. Some have said that the percentage of abusive priests is no worse than the percentage of men who abuse children in the general public. But is that true? Some years ago, the John Jay […]
September 11, 2018
Job-Shaming vs. Vocation
Geoffrey Owens is a Shakespearean actor, but he is best known for his role on The Cosby Show back in the 1980s, playing the boyfriend of one of the Huxtable daughters and later her husband. But lately he has been working as a cashier at a Trader Joe’s grocery store in New Jersey. Someone took pictures […]
September 10, 2018
More About Me
Google has some new algorithms, so Patheos told its writers to bolster the E.A.T. factor (“Expertise.Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness”) for our posts. One way to do that is to beef up our biographies on the “About” section of our blogs. So I swapped out my cursory couple of sentences about myself to a more detailed account […]
September 7, 2018
The Beliefs of Sexual-Abusive Priests
How could Catholic priests, leaders of a church with some of the highest standards of sexual morality, sexually abuse minors? They must not have believed what they were teaching, including that doing such things would bring down upon them the punishment of God. So what did they believe? John O’Sullivan speculates about this question in […]
September 6, 2018
That Life & the Universe Cannot Be Mindless Accidents
I came across this interesting piece in Touchstone from a couple of years ago. It’s by software designer Harry Biltz, who argues that “modern science has rendered atheism irrational.” From Harry Biltz, Naked Truth, Touchstone (July/August 2016): Modern science now has very well corroborated evidence that the natural universe (time, space, matter, and energy) had a beginning. Since that […]
The Administration’s “Nervous Breakdown”?
Just what is going on in the White House? It sounds like the administration and White House staff are in full revolt against the president who appointed them. That’s the message of a new book by Watergate journalist Bob Woodward, and it’s the message of an extraordinary op-ed piece in the New York Times by […]
