Religion

My traditionalist Catholic friend Michael Brendan Dougherty, like several other Catholic friends of mine, really did not like Pope Francis’s letter Amoris Laetitia. From MBD’s column:

Pope Francis’ document justifies people receiving communion in a public state of sin by saying that the Eucharist is “not a prize” for good behavior. That is true. But instead the Church has turned it into a participation trophy, something so perfunctory and ultimately meaningless that it seems just too cruel to deny it to anyone.

Jones, a reader of this blog, wrote this in response to the arguments here about pornography:

I’m even less of a Catholic than Alan Jacobs is – I’m not even a Christian, and I’m a pretty poor excuse for a Jew these days. Nonetheless, I want to say something about the debate about Amoris Laetitia apropos of Jacobs’s piece in these pages and Ross Douthat’s response.

Roger Cohen on “the Islamic State of Molenbeek,” the Brussels district that is home to Islamic terrorists:

It is hard to resist the symbolism of the Islamic State establishing a base for its murderous designs in the so-called capital of Europe at a time when the European idea is weaker than at any time since the 1950s. A jihadi loves a vacuum, as Syria demonstrates. Belgium as a state, and Belgium as the heart of the European Union are as close to a vacuum as Europe offers these days.

More:

Here’s a bit from Catholic theologian Tracey Rowland:

Thus, in order to destroy their power [i.e., the power of the ruling classes in Christian countries], it followed that one had to undermine the so-called cultural hegemony of Christianity itself.