Quick Hits: Science and its enemies, choral music for the Novus Ordo, the Armenian genocide

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Apr 26, 2016 | In Quick Hits

• Now and then a scientific discovery comes with a breath of poetry, as in the Daily Telegraph headline : Bright flash of light marks incredible moment life begins when sperm meets egg. It’s sad that in our age, impervious to the beauty of nascent life, the report continues with the observation that this “discovery could help fertility doctors pick the best fertilised eggs to transfer during in vitro fertilisation (IVF).”


• And speaking of science, Bill McGurn of the Wall Street Journal notes that the former baseball star Curt Schilling shows more respect for science than many people who style themselves as scientists, when he insists that a biological male is in fact a male, no matter what he thinks he is. (It might be worth noticing that Schilling prospered in a profession ruled by hard cold facts, not subjective judgments. It was easy enough to say that you thought you could hit Schilling’s fastball. You couldn’t.) McGurn goes on to observe that the PC police who dismiss Schilling’s factual observations about “transgender” realities are also working to suppress scientific facts about climate change, the independent life of unborn children, and other topics. “Turns out that restoring-science-to-its-rightful-place comes with its own set of dogmas and orthodoxies,” he writes.


• Several weeks ago a friend asked me if it’s true that I “hold up the bass section” of the parish choir. Yes, I do: if by “hold up” you mean that it takes longer for the basses to learn a new piece when I’m at the rehearsal. But until I’m kicked out of the choir loft, I’ll enjoy singing parts of the Mass of St. Philip Neri, by my friend (and the former director of the choir) Paul Jernberg. Another friend, David Clayton reports for the New Liturgical Movement on the other parishes that have discovered this simple but beautiful composition.


• And on a much more somber note, Stella Morabito reflects on what she learned from her grandfather, a survivor of the Armenian genocide a century ago, and discusses the “groupthink” that has paved the way for mass killings