thoughts in and out of season
Still, in spite of the gloom and doom of the last posting, life goes on, and no cloud but has a silver lining. For example, a big benefit of the recent scandals in the Catholic Church and growing anti-religious trends in Western life is that they’ve squashed a lot of the happy talk the Church … More ...
The dictionary definition of theocracy is government of a state “by priests or according to religious law,” or perhaps “by immediate divine guidance or by officials who are regarded as divinely guided.” As such, it applies to states like traditional Tibet, early Mormon Utah, and revolutionary Iran, but not in substance to any traditional Christian … More ...
In France, criticism of a private fund-raising effort now seems to constitute a violation of the separation of Church and state: Catholic Clergy Attack French Telethon Over Stem Cell Aid.
The country’s Muscular Dystrophy Association runs an annual telethon to raise money for medical research, part of which is spent on research on … More ...
I find atheism extremely puzzling, like persistent attempts to square the circle or construct a perpetual motion machine.
To me it seems that our way of understanding the world will be usable—will actually function as an understanding—only if it is coherent, hierarchical and ethically directed. “Coherent” seems self-explanatory. “Hierarchical” means we must be able to … More ...
A really striking feature of the Guardini book discussed in my last entry is how extremist it is by current standards. It’s not a call for dialog and a place at the table. Instead, he calls for the “absolute experiencing of dogma,” for “a pure obedience. Christianity will arm itself for an illiberal stand directed … More ...
Romano Guardini’s book The End of the Modern World provides an interesting comparison with Weaver’s Ideas Have Consequences. Both were written in the immediate post-war period, and first presented to the public in 1947-1948. Both considered, in the setting of recent horrors, the tendency of technological mass society to reduce all things to function … More ...
A Good Source tells me that everyone at the Vatican is in a tizzy over the rumored document liberalizing availability of the Tridentine (traditional Latin) mass. Everyone think’s it’s a big deal, but no one (except I suppose the Pope) has any idea what’s going to happen or when.
So much for inside gossip. In … More ...
I remember the beauty of Anglican worship when I first encountered it, and I used to attend an Episcopalian church, so like others I’ve been watching with horrified fascination the continuing devolution of the Episcopal Church. So here are some comments on Dr. Katharine Jefferts Schori’s investiture sermon as presiding bishop of what is now … More ...
Oriens, the journal of the Ecclesia Dei Society of Australia, has a good website with a good selection of articles, reviews, and other materials connected to the restoration of the traditional Latin Mass and its bearing on the situation in the Church generally. Among the articles I particularly noticed The Papa Luigi syndrome and … More ...
The following review of Christopher J. Insole, The Politics of Human Frailty: A Theological Defense of Political Liberalism (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005) appeared in the Spring 2006 issue of Telos.
What is liberalism and is it good or bad? Its pervasiveness makes it difficult to gain the perspective needed to … More ...