Author Archives: Andrew Stuttaford

Pope Francis and Venezuela: Throwing Another Tyranny a Lifeline

Cross-posted on the Corner: Critics of Pope Francis who describe him as a ‘socialist’ are fairly wide off the mark.  Perhaps that was inevitable: Describing the ideology of a pope in conventionally political terms is, by definition, going to be … Continue reading

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The Slippery Slope?

Opponents of assisted suicide often warn how legalizing it would represent a slippery slope. That’s not an argument convincing to those who have slid very far down a slope themselves. And nor should it be. STV News: The family of … Continue reading

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Christmas in Jablonovka

Furlough in Jablonovka by the Austrian-Jewish writer Joseph Roth (1894-1939) includes a description of Christmas just behind the front lines of the Eastern front during Roth’s time with the Austro-Hungarian army during the First World War (the translation is by … Continue reading

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Pope Francis and “Fake News”

It was perhaps not that surprising that Pope Francis would look to involve himself in the controversy over ‘fake news’. The terms in which he did so were, however, unexpected…. The Guardian reports: Pope Francis has lambasted media organisations that … Continue reading

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Castro: The Pope and the Dictator

To Pope Francis, Castro’s death was “sad” news, kind words indeed from someone who the former dictator would once have described as “social scum”. Meanwhile, just two or three weeks ago the pontiff was being quoted favorably on Telesur (a … Continue reading

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Morrigan’s Hotel

Writing in The Guardian, Alex Mar explains how making a documentary film “about a handful of fringe religious communities around the country” led her deep into the pagan world. The article is an interesting account of where the search for … Continue reading

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Germany: “Everything about this mosque made me feel uneasy”

Cross-posted on the Corner: One obvious concern about Angela Merkel’s decision last year to, so to speak, throw open the doors to Germany was the obvious risk that potential jihadists were among those that she was  welcoming into the country. … Continue reading

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Clearing a Path for Christ (on Mars)?

Over at Foreign Policy, James Poulos frets that, in the event that Elon Musk’s Mars mission ever gets off the ground, Musk (who admittedly has some strange beliefs: he appears to think that we are all living in some type … Continue reading

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Church and State, God and God Gene

Whether or not God exists there cannot be much doubt about the existence of (to use a crude shorthand) a ‘God gene’, the innate propensity of  most people to believe in gods and/or the supernatural and, at least to a … Continue reading

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‘3-Parent’ Babies: A Controversy That Shouldn’t Be

The New York Times: A few months ago, after a fertility procedure at a Mexican clinic, a healthy baby boy was born in New York to a couple from Jordan. It was the first live birth of a child who … Continue reading

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