Here and There . . .

• Mystery Achievement (nearly a year old blog, but a recent discovery of mine) remembers the Wannsee Conference and the Liberation of Auschwitz, and the lessons it has for us today. (On a related note, reflections of mine on the movie Conspiracy from October 2003).

• "We're Sorry!" -- Agreeing that the United States needs to stop "playing Superman," Citizen Smash (the Indepundit) proceeds to issue a public apology to each of those nations that we have "liberated" by force of arms.

• I'd always thought that Ann Coulter was an embarassment to conservatives and was relieved when National Review gave her the boot. Glad to see Amy Ridenour agrees.

• I. Shawn McElHinney (Rerum Novarum) offers a Political Potpourri of his own.

• Chayyei Sarah - "Orthodox Jewish thirty-something from Jerusalem" -- blogs on the difficult quandary of working in the field of journalism and trying not to violate the laws of loshon hara:
  For those not-yet-in-the-know, "loshon hara" is the Hebrew term for (put very simply) any speech or writing that unjustifiably communicates negative information about another person, particularly another Jew. It's considered a terrible sin, and in fact has a reputation for being the most widely-committed terrible sin. It's said that to speak ill of another is on par with murdering them. And the excuse that "well, it's true, after all" doesn't hold water in Jewish law; the information being true is exactly what makes the speech loshon hara. If it were a lie, it would be "motzi shem rah"—libel or slander—which of course is even worse.

• Pontifications recommends "The Catholic Angler" - an interview with Thomas Howard (Touchstone Sept/Oct 1999), predominantly on the works and worldview of C.S. Lewis. When asked to provide his own "mere Christianity" reading list, Howard recommends, among others: Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton; Romano Guardini's The Lord ("his magnum opus, has very, very little that is explicitly or polemically Roman, so I would tell people to drop everything and read that"); and Karl Adam's The Spirit of Catholicism ("probably the best single book that a person can give to a thinking person who is looking at the Church and specifically the Roman Church") -- all excellent works, and definitely would be on the top of my reading list as well.

• Over at Scripture and Catholic Tradition, Dr. Blosser's been blogging on The Eastern [Orthodox] Schism; if you're just now tuning in, scroll down to "Petrine jurisdiction exercised in the ancient Church" (January 5, 2005) which started the ruckus. =)

• Benjamin (Ad Limina Apostolorum) has some reflections on Augustine & the Beatitudes in time for this Sunday's Gospel reading.

• For those suckers for punishment who are considering purchasing the sequel to The DaVinci Code, historian Danny Loss has compiled A list of errors in Angels and Demons. For an author who boasts "Because my novels are so research-intensive, they take a couple of years to write," I'd say it's time he went back to the library. (Via Carl Olson Ignatius Insight).

• Merton and Mere Christianity -- Loy Mershimer compares the trappist monk to a memorable quote by C.S. Lewis.

• "The Perfect Son and the Free Society", by Michael Christopher Toth. Winner of the 2004 Acton Essay Competition:
  Jesus' Parable of the Prodigal Son offers three models for living the reality of social and economic freedom: the prodigal son, the obedient son, and the perfect Son. Each, in turn, exemplifies a distinct social order: the libertarian, the authoritarian, and the free society. Building upon the work of Avery Cardinal Dulles, J. Budziszewski, and Vaclav Havel, this essay will explain why only the self-giving free society adequately values the human person. . . .