Blog to Watch: The Fifth Column

Someday, I'm going to put up a blogroll again. Remind me to include this blog. Here's a good post on why Catholics don't witness often:

"...What is it about Catholicism that makes personal sharing about one’s relationship with Jesus less likely?"

John Paul II has already answered this question. How many men and women begin a conversation by talking about their love for their spouse? Most married people, especially men, simply don't engage in that kind of conversation. We don't start a conversation with "Good heavens, I love my wife! And I just wanted to come before you to say that she's the best little woman in the world."

Evangelicals emphasize the Lordship of Christ or the fact that Jesus is their friend. But you never hear them talk about Jesus as their lover. For Catholics, that is all there IS to talk about.

And here's one on abortion and Cherryh's The Faded Sun Trilogy.

Twenty years ago, C. J. Cherryh wrote a series of science fiction books, the Faded Sun trilogy. In it, she introduced beings called the regul – cannibalistic frog-like creatures who brought forth the best in their race by ritually chasing down and eating their own children. Whatever children were quick enough and clever enough to survive to adulthood were thereby vindicated as the best.

When one of the human characters asked how the regul could be so bloodthirsty, the regul’s reply upset my teenage worldview. The regul pointed out that their methods of winnowing the population was really no different from that of human beings. The regul simply killed the slow and stupid very early on. Humans tended to wait until youth reached the teens and early twenties, when war served the same purpose the regul winnowing ritual served. The regul couldn’t see why the humans were so upset.

Why mention this? Well, the release of David Reardon’s latest study in the Journal of Contemporary Health Law and Policy now allows for a similar comparison to be drawn between eastern and western culture.

Read the whole thing. It's devastatingly true.