Noonan hymns the Net

To experience today’s Peggy Noonan column, one really needs to call it up on the Web. It is, in effect, the first Noonan blog — only printed in a newspaper. What should we call that? Religion news and trends run all the way through it, right down to the last bite (the pope’s email address). Here she is on the Harvard holy wars about President Larry Summers: “What the Summers story most illustrates is that American universities now seem like Medieval cloisters. They’re like a cloister without the messy God part. Old monks of leftism walk their hallowed halls in hooded robes, chanting to themselves. Young nuns of leftist deconstructionism, pale as orchids, walk along wringing their hands, listening to their gloomy music. They become hysterical at the antichrist of a new idea, the instrusion of the reconsideration of settled matter. Get thee behind me, Summers.”


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Revved up for God

Back in the 1980s, while working as the religion editor for the Baton Rouge Morning Advocate, I interviewed a man who was a chaplain to NASCAR racers and their families. The chaplain was kind, and patient with my astonishment that NASCAR drivers would feel any interest in his services.


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What in hell?

The Toledo Blade is digging into a story that has national hypernews potential — if other journalists can believe what they are reading. This isn’t another case of sexual abuse involving Catholic priests. It’s a case involving a murdered nun, stab wounds in the shape of a cross, memories of ritual abuse and fiends in robes. Summary: “Investigators have talked to numerous priests and former students at local Catholic grade schools to determine if they knew anything about children being molested in bizarre ceremonies involving a small ring of clerics, according to several people interviewed by police. Four women told detectives about being abused between the late 1960s and 1986 during cult-like ceremonies involving altars and men dressed in robes, the accusers told The Blade.” Stay tuned.


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Hypocrisy for Lent

Charlotte Observer scribe Ken Garfield recently put out a thoughtful commentary for those in churches — think Anglican — with flexible Lents. The basic idea: Why not give up hypocrisy? This would, of course, be easier said than done. He picks on cultural conservatives, which is totally fair game in light of facts collected by the noted evangelical writer Ronald J. Sider. For example, 6 percent of adults who call themselves born-again Christians tithe and 25 percent of born-again Christians have lived out of wedlock with a member of the opposite sex. And so forth and so on. Nevertheless, I’m curious. Anyone have data on the religious left? Could add to a good story.


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