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Via Open Book and Ten Reason an article about a new book called Shadowplay

Far from being an ambitious entertainer who played down his Catholic roots under a repressive Elizabethan regime, Shakespeare took deliberate risks each time he took up his quill, according to Clare Asquith’s new book Shadowplay. She argues that the plays and poems are a network of crossword puzzle-like clues to his strong Catholic beliefs and his fears for England’s future. Aside from being the first to spot this daring Shakespearean code, Asquith also claims to be the first to have cracked it.

‘It has not been picked up on before because people have not had the complete context,’ she explained this weekend. ‘I am braced for flak, but we now know we have had the history from that period wrong for a long time because we have seen it through the eyes of the Protestant, Whig ascendancy who, after all, have written the history.’

I had previously heard Professor David Allen White on the Hugh Hewitt show discuss new evidence that Shakespeare’s poem "The Phoenix
and Turtle", which had previously defied any key to interpretation, in reality had a very Catholic connection. John Linnis and Michael Wood in a Times Literary Supplement for 18 April 2003 were able to interpret this poem using the key where
the phoenix "is" Ann Line (executed for religion at Tyburn a few months before the standardly accepted date of the commissioning and publication of the volume in which the poem appeared), and the turtledove "is" her husband Roger Line, who had died in exile. This article is not online but one of the authors posted about it here. The National Catholic Register previously reported on this in this article Did William Shakespeare Die a Papist?

ZURICH (Reuters) – A sculpture made with the pickled head of a dead fetus attached to a seagull’s body has fueled a furor in Switzerland about the boundaries of art.

Berne’s Museum of Fine Arts removed the piece from a Chinese art exhibition earlier this month after a complaint that it was disrespectful to the dead, and following concerns its grisly appearance might traumatize visiting schoolchildren.

The piece, named "Ruan," stole headlines in Swiss newspapers when artist Xiao Yu confirmed that the fetus head was real.

Now the museum’s management will decide next week whether to reinstate the work, which sits pickled in a jar of formaldehyde.

"As a result of the complaint it was taken out of the exhibition with the proviso that there would be a debate about the boundaries of art," museum spokeswoman Ruth Gilgen said.

Earlier this week, ethics experts, artists and art lovers argued at a conference in Berne that keeping the work under wraps was an affront to freedom of expression.

Swiss journalist Adrien de Riedmatten, who lodged the complaint, had demanded to know where the head came from.

"The complaint was not about restricting artistic freedom but rather about where this fetus had come from and how the artist found it," Gilgen said.

She said the head had belonged to a fetus conceived sometime in the early 1960s. It was later a museum exhibit.

"It had formed part of an exhibition in formaldehyde in Peking," Gilgen said. "When that came to be renewed, it fell into the hands of the artist." [Source]

In a post long even for Dave Armstrong’s Tolstoyian standards he looks at the Nuclear Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Do They Meet Catholic Just War Standards of Morality? He provides a roundup of opinions, but mostly on the side that the bombings were immoral (the camp that would include me). For most of my life I bought into the position that it was necessary action in order to save lives and the concept of doing evil to achieve good was fine with me. Even after visiting both Nagasaki and Hiroshima while stationed in Japan I still held to this opinion. Since then though I have seen that if this could be morally justified then anything could be as a commenter over at Amy Welborn’s site had previously noted.

Sandro Magister wrote an excellent article on World Youth Day called "After Cologne: The Remarkable Lesson of Professor Ratzinger"

Tony at Catholic Pillow Fight has infringed into some of my territory, though instead of sending him a cease and desist order I will send him a will deserved tip of the jester’s hat for his JPS (Jesus Positioning System) parody.

Besides Tony has been kind enough to link to some of my pieces in the past and his somewhat new blog (since June) has matured into an excellent read.

Rich Leonardi at Catholic Exchange looks at “Catholic Update” which are basically tracts produced by Cincinnati’s St. Anthony Messenger Press with the imprimatur of the archdiocese. Not surprising they are far from edifying or conforming to Church teaching for example making a distinction between the Jesus of faith and the Jesus of history (they put it much more weasally). I guess this makes sense since once you buy this proposal your faith is history.

Rick also maintains this excellent blog.

Steve Kellmeyer has a very interesting and well written article on the Galileo case that goes way beyond the false history often espoused about this famous case playing science against the Church and even goes deeper than most apologetic reviews of this case.

“fine. you dissent. i dissent from dissent.”

A man in California started a web site that is now a database of North Korean Propaganda and contains every article published on the KCNA’s web site. He also has this random insult generator from the actual quotes of Leader Kim Jong Il.

You extra-large flunkey, we will resolutely smash your desperate war moves!

And if your looking for the world’s first Stalinist news feed here goes.

Dr. Phillip Blosser from Musings of a Pertinacious Papist writes a must-read essay on contraception in response to Lutheran theologian Robert W. Jenson article in The New Altantis. He interweaves the wisdom of professor Janet Smith with some of his own observation.