thoughts in and out of season
A lecturer and adjunct professor of philosophy in Ohio has commented on a column on natural law I published recently at Catholic World Report (republished at Crisis).
He’s an existentialist whose great heroes are Sartre and Beauvoir, so he doesn’t think much of it.
He apparently wants to say “Kalb’s a dogmatic extremist, I’m … More ...
The book is Who Says That’s Art?: A Commonsense View of the Visual Arts, by Michelle Marder Kamhi. It was recommended by a friend who’s also a friend of the author.
The author herself is an independent scholar and co-editor of the (now online) journal Aristos. She seems to be somewhat of a … More ...
Another correspondent asks whether I think it’s possible to be pro-gay marriage and pro-life: whether logically, rationally, ultimately, the two positions can be reconciled. She had noticed some conservatives going that way.
It seemed to me you could give multiple answers depending on how you took the question:
A correspondent forwards the following:
… More ...Another problem for which Vatican II was responsible is what one might call the gentrification of Catholic culture. The fact that Europe’s working classes had largely abandoned Catholicism by the late 1950s enabled Vatican II to concentrate on constructing an essentially middle-class model of what it is to be Catholc.
A correspondent sent me the following passages from Raids on the Unspeakable by Thomas Merton:
… More ...The Unspeakable. What is this? Surely, an eschatological image. It is the void that we encounter, you and I, underlying the announced programs, the good intentions, the unexampled and universal aspirations for the best of all possible worlds. It is
In the Crisis piece mentioned in the previous entry, I suggested the relationship between the two was ambiguous. A blogger who wants to maintain a strong distinction between natural law and religion called me on it, so I had to develop my thoughts a little.
My answer was that the distinction is important … More ...
A common claim among dissatisfied men is that American women are the worst. European women, it is said, are are more feminine, less self-centered, and less concerned with their careers than their American counterparts.
American women do seem to be somewhat different. Even the northern and Germanic countries, which seem so single-mindedly egalitarian, have … More ...
The differences between the sexes I discussed a couple of posts ago come out in the differing uses of “starter husband” and “starter wife.”
Both apparently have their roots in the expression “starter marriage,” which appears in various things women have written about married young/divorced young situations. Most of the commentary (going back … More ...
Changes in sexual mores resulting from the lesser practical importance of marriage in a radically commercialized and bureaucratized society make the situation described in the last post quite a bit worse.
In such a society there is a tendency to delay or forgo marriage but not sexual activity. The result is that women become … More ...