miscellany [ mis-uh-ley-nee], noun
1. a miscellaneous collection or group of various or somewhat unrelated items
2. a miscellaneous collection of literary compositions or pieces by several authors, dealing with various topics, assembled in a volume or book

As election season gets into high gear, there is more and more ink spilled (and electrons rearranged) on political topics. Instead of just linking article after article after article on politics, which is wearying--at best--I'm linking broader articles that are older than just this week to keep it interesting!

Changing the World, One Outfit at a Time. When I was growing up in small town Indiana, worship attendance was a suit or dress affair, almost without exception. Everyone broke out their "Sunday best" every Sunday. The idea of dressing up for church isn't even an idea for most American Christians today. This has always rubbed me the wrong way and makes me think that people don't truly understand what is going on during Sunday's divine service. We always pointed out to our children the folly of dressing to meet the Lord of all creation in a unique and special way looking less respectful than we would dress to meet our bosses' boss for a meeting at work. For better or worse, we're not entirely alone in our rejection of dressing casual for worship. Catholic Anna Davis writes, "There are countless times in the Gospel where Jesus reminds His disciples that we’re different, sanctified, set apart. So how can that be the case when one of the most trivial aspects of our lives—clothing—has us parading around in the slovenly uniform of the world? The uniform that screams—or belches—it’s cool man, come as you are."

Great & Wonderful Days: The Death of Conservatism & the Negative World. Here's the obligatory political post for this week, from one of the directors of the group responsible for our Daily Devotional Guide. As though we were gnashing our teeth in the same room together, J. Douglas Johnson says, " In the run-up to the 2024 RNC convention, the conservative party, the Republican Party, finally did what the New York Times spent the last half-century lobbying it to do: it removed the sanctity of life from the party’s platform. And to make clear where the party now stands, it invited Amber Rose to speak, a woman who recently said that satanists were good people because they helped women obtain abortions.We wish the Republican Party hadn’t altered its platform, and we wish it hadn’t invited Amber Rose to speak as a representative of what the party now endorses (and let’s not kid ourselves; she represents what the party now believes). But in the Negative World, American Christians should no longer expect to find safe sanctuary in the GOP." After this scathing reality check, he goes on to leave us with encouragement from Fulton Sheen, who lamented times we would look back upon fondly (but mistakenly) as the 'good old days,' saying, "these are great and wonderful days in which to be alive. . . . It is not a gloomy pictue—it is a picture of the Church in the midst of increasing opposition from the world. And therefore live your lives in the full consciousness of this hour of testing, and rally close to the heart of Christ." This is a great read.

How a Generation Lost its Culture. This is an old post, dating back to 2016 by a professor at Notre Dame. It's about education, specifically the decline of education in the West insofar as its products (the students) know little about our Western Civilization...and why that's a problem. "My students are know-nothings. They are exceedingly nice, pleasant, trustworthy, mostly honest, well-intentioned, and utterly decent. But their brains are largely empty, devoid of any substantial knowledge that might be the fruits of an education in an inheritance and a gift of a previous generation. They are the culmination of western civilization, a civilization that has forgotten nearly everything about itself, and as a result, has achieved near-perfect indifference to its own culture...Our students’ ignorance is not a failing of the educational system – it is its crowning achievement. Efforts by several generations of philosophers and reformers and public policy experts — whom our students (and most of us) know nothing about — have combined to produce a generation of know-nothings. The pervasive ignorance of our students is not a mere accident or unfortunate but correctible outcome, if only we hire better teachers or tweak the reading lists in high school. It is the consequence of a civilizational commitment to civilizational suicide. The end of history for our students signals the End of History for the West." It you're not a fan of history, this may not be the most exciting article you've ever read, but you owe it to yourself to read it because today's students are tomorrow's leadership.