The Lost Gentlemanly Art of Insult

An enjoyable piece by the affable George Weigel on the lost art of rough critique.  Here's a taste:

"One of the (many) signs of our cultural decline is that verbal insults, these days, are almost invariably scatological or sexual, provoking a blizzard of asterisks whenever A wants to put the smackdown on B. Once upon a time, it was not so. Once, the ability to come up with a clever insult that could be repeated in polite society was thought an important, if not necessarily essential, component of being a gentleman.

... Told over dinner by Lady Astor, the American-born female member of the House of Commons, that, “If you were my husband, Winston, I’d poison your soup,” Churchill immediately replied, “And if you were my wife, Nancy, I’d drink it.” And then there was the great man’s take-down of the austere Labor minister, Sir Stafford Cripps: “He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.”

Read the whole short article here.

Ryan-ism: What is Catholic Social Teaching?

[youtube=http://youtu.be/Kce_BZvjfX4] This morning this video caught my eye on Facebook, and it does a great job of very simply explaining in five minutes the core of Catholic social teaching.

This video is produced by SolidarityWithSalisbury.com and comes with a downloadable one-page summary of the video.  I haven't had time to read many of the articles, but the about page of the website says it is dedicated to "collecting, distilling and communicating the truth of Catholic Social teaching as it applies to the business world", which is an exciting endeavor.

**You might also be interested in Fr. Robert Barron's comments on Paul Ryan and Catholic social teaching, found here and here.

+JMJ