Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Jesus, the Apostles and the Early Church By Pope Benedict XVI Publisher: Ignatius Press Price: $14.95/hardcover In Jesus, The Apostles and the early Church , we meet the same Pope Benedict whose recent visit charmed so many Americans. The Pope’s manner of writing is pastoral and deceptively simple. He writes with authority not only because of his station within the Catholic Church, but also primarily because he is a superb   theologian. In the late Middle Ages, theology was considered the “queen of sciences” because it contained all the other sciences, including what we moderns would call textual exegesis. Consider the following commentary on an incident with which most Christians would be familiar: We know that Peter, the “rock” upon which Jesus was said to have built his church, denied Jesus three times before he was taken away by Roman soldiers to be executed. After the Resurrection, a transfigured Christ appears to some of the apostles, Peter among them, on the s...

When a deficit occurs in Connecticut – not often, because the state regularly reaps surpluses by overtaxing its citizens – the first instinct of the Democrat politician is to reach for someone else’s wallet. Millionaires -- the-well-to-do, the redundantly rich, the average Connecticut Gold-coasters who usually, according to those who want to pilfer them, spend their Sundays grinding the faces of the poor -- are a convenient target. It was Luke, not the relatively inoffensive Mathew, who in his beatitudes called down lightening upon the heads of the rich and heedless. Luke’s beatitudes, unlike Mathew's, include curses: “…woe unto you that are rich, for you have your consolation; woe to you that are filled, for you shall hunger; woe to you that now laugh, for you shall mourn and weep; woe to you when men shall bless you, for according to these things did their fathers to the false prophets.” Luke’s objection seems to be that the sons of wealth need no God; comfort can well afford t...

The Hartford Courant did not report on Pope Benedict’s mass at Yankee Stadium on the Monday following the mass, and some readers noticed the non-report, according to the paper’s ombudsman Karen Hunter. “One reader said, ‘Shame on The Hartford Courant. The only newspaper in the country that opted to put something about the priest and had nothing about the pope's visit yesterday. I'd like to know who is responsible. As far as I'm concerned, I am going to write a letter to the editor. I'm going to write a letter to several other newspapers. And I say, I would love to know who was in charge of not putting one . . . go on the Internet see the front pages of all the other newspapers in the country. Shame on The Hartford Courant.’" “A North Branford reader said, ‘I can not believe that I pick up The Courant and there's nothing about the pope. Not only is he a religious leader, he's a head of state. I can't comprehend that your paper did this. . . . People abov...

Freedom of speech is not going away in the United States of America . It’s gone -- Ben Stein . If you enjoy diaries and are unfamiliar with Ben Stein’s, you will find it in The American Spectator, monthly. Bright, light, and fun—but not the latest, which he entitles “Outraged Sadness.” It is in the April issue. Stein is an actor, writer, lawyer, and son of esteemed economist Herb Stein. He and his make-up artist were chatting while he waited for his turn before the camera. He told a joke in which Barack Obama figured. Unbeknownst to them, someone was taping them. Next day he was summoned to the front office. The executives were scandalized at his “racism.” A fighter against racism even from childhood, he was outraged. “Can’t talk about that.” There are already many things we no longer are free to talk about. Examples: Stein gives the example of Global Warming. “The debate is over. The issue is settled.” Gore gave the message to the eager media. The media passed the mess...

During the Easter Vigil, the pope baptized and received into the Catholic faith “Italy's most prominent Muslim, an iconoclastic writer who condemned Islamic extremism and defended Israel…” This is not an unusual occurrence. While attending Easter Vigil at St. Mary’s church in Coventry, my wife and I witnessed several men and women being received into communion by Father Victor Chaker and Father Ray Introvigne. The Egyptian born Madgi Allam explained why he had titled his recent book "Viva Israele.” He had received death threats from Hamas, and “Having been condemned to death, I have reflected a long time on the value of life. And I discovered that behind the origin of the ideology of hatred, violence and death is the discrimination against Israel. Everyone has the right to exist except for the Jewish state and its inhabitants. Today, Israel is the paradigm of the right to life." None of this, one supposes, will be received in a spirit of good will in the badlands of Pak...

Western countries must rid themselves of multiculturallist delusions and take the assimilation of immigrants much more seriously than has been the case in recent decades. . . . Bringing immigrants from outside the civilizational orbit of the West to an appreciation of . . . civil society norms must be the task of civic education -- George Weigel Jihadism is a mortal threat to the civilization of the West, writes George Weigel, Catholic theologian and member of the Ethics and Public Policy Center , in a fascinating short new book, Faith, Reason, and the War Against Jihadism , A Call to Action . Unlike as in World War II, he says, we do not understand the motives of the global jihadists nor how to confront their danger. “Jihadism is a religiously inspired ideology [which teaches] that it is the moral obligation of all Muslims to employ whatever means [are] necessary to compel the world’s submission to Islam,” is Richard John Neuhaus’s definition. Jihadism’s goal is a global Islam...