Year: 2002

Here’s a link to a couple of comments I made at another blog I maintain in which I bring back the theory of contemporary advanced liberalism as a gnostic heresy. I suppose it’s not exactly gnosticism, though. The gnostics (it is said) believed this world is evil, while liberals as liberals believe only that it … More ...

Now there’s a title that should make this entry even more crowd-pleasing than others I’ve posted recently. Still, I feel the need to mull over some basics, and those who get bored can skip entries.

Anyway, “essentialism” is considered a big sin among a lot of educated and intelligent people today. It seems to be … More ...

I wonder whether what these women are doing in Piero’s Discovery and Proof of the True Cross constitutes “full, conscious, and active participation”? One guy’s doing everything, everyone else is just watching, and he’s not paying the slightest attention to the audience or even facing them. I call it hopelessly bad liturgy.

So now that I’ve decided that Christ is a sign of contradiction and that we should “accept and pass on to others the whole of the truth that sets men free,” what next? Sounds hugely ambitious. Still, everything has to be put in its setting and grand plans do that. And I suppose the idea … More ...

A look around the net confirms that mainstream and liberal religion is instinctively left-wing, traditional and orthodox religion right-wing. The exceptions usually seem a little artificial, more a matter of sticking with a theory than immediate unselfconscious perception of how things are.

I suppose the reason things sort out that way is that both mainstream … More ...

The great contribution religion can make to us today is to liberate us from the chains of modernity. “Religion today must speak to modern man” is true the way “religion in a jail must speak to prisoners” is true.

Fundamentally, modernity is an attempt to abolish the transcendent and reconstruct the world as a system … More ...

I’ve been reading Matthew in the Vulgate and rather like it. The Latin is simple—the vulgar tongue after all—and familiarity with it helps with the language of the Tridentine mass. Also, it means something that the words are words that some people in the Palestine of Jesus’ time might have used. It seems to bring … More ...

Some interesting background on Vatican II: Diary of an insider (the “insider” was Yves Congar).

I have no knowledge of Congar or his views, but gather that one objection he made to the pre-Vatican II situation was over-centralization. I agree with that. All I’d add is that if centralization is the problem reform-from-above and rule … More ...