A few nights ago, in the sleepy haze that follows nightly prayer but precedes full unconsciousness, Mrs. MC and I discussed how we discipline our kids, what we might change, etc. Nowadays, no right-thinking parent ever defends corporal punishment, even if they sometimes practice it. It’s time outs, privileges withheld, that’s it.  (more…)

Meg Stout gives a plausible explanation of when dissent warrants expulsion from the Church, and when it doesn’t. It’s true that the women’s organization “Give Us The Priesthood Or We’re Telling The NY Times” (that was the name, right?) was “tone-deaf when it comes to Mormon culture but in tune with world media.” They certainly seemed to come from a much more alien value system than some of the subtler snakes in the grass, who dress and talk like Mormons, so much that they seem almost like the real thing. But I think it’s even simpler than even that. (more…)

Those words would be as good an answer as I could give to the question originally addressed to Conan the Barbarian: “What is best in life?”

But they’re actually taken from this passage: (more…)

The man is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man.

Thus St. Paul.

He says it in the middle of some deeply reactionary stuff about women keeping their head covered in church and such so this particular teaching gets lost. But as with an illusionist’s trick, the part that draws the eye isn’t the important part.

So what does Paul mean?

I don’t know. But sometimes my life as a husband and a father feels like I could say ‘she is my glory.’ I feel like I do a lot of scutwork out in the world and a lot of discipline and order and stabilizing at home to make possible the little circle of domestic intimacy that she creates. Because of what I have to do to make it possible, or because I am the sort of person who does what is necessary to make it possible, I can’t fully be a part of it. But all the same that circle validates all my efforts, it seems to me.

See here. But against the stupidities of our culture, even Santa struggles in vain. (more…)