thoughts in and out of season
How the Council seemed to some at the time: Gregorian Chant Strangled in its Own Cradle. To the young monks of a Benedictine monastery in Rome, Vatican II meant that it was a religious duty to toss away everything to which they had been brought up in the Church for the sake of imitating … More ...
A concrete result of the destruction by the Derrida virus and related strains of the ability to think like a normal human being: Hanging Corpse Admired as Sculpture on Campus. It was for this, it appears, that the Hungarians overthrew communism.
I find it extraordinarily illuminating to view modernism and postmodernism as collections of … More ...
A correspondent envisions a
“conservative ecumenism that would bring about a revival of Christendom, with Catholic, Orthodox, and even theologically conservative Lutherans and other Protestants finding some way to join as the reunified Body of Christ.”
I think my correspondent’s remark may have been prompted by a comment I made that
… More ...“it is important for
What is the Christian attitude toward race, ethnicity and peoplehood?
Such things do not determine human worth any more than other aspects of social position do. Nonetheless, it seems important to me to recover a Christian conception of legitimate particularism. Such a conception would necessarily include some degree of ethnic identity and loyalty and therefore … More ...
Rock ‘n roll overthrew communism, says Hungary’s ambassador to the United States. According to Andras Simonyi, it was the Beatles, Cream, Traffic and Jimi Hendrix—not the Bible, Bach, or S�ndor Pet�fi—that gave Hungarian baby boomers the resolve to bring down the communist state.
The fall of communism, like the defeat of Nazi Germany, was … More ...
So how can Christendom be restored? Liberals view the question as one of force—will people be forced to accept some particular religious dogma, or will they be free to follow their own consciences? In fact, of course, it’s not fundamentally a question of force, but of how the world is understood. Is equal satisfaction of … More ...
Can Christendom be restored? When something started disappearing in the Middle Ages, and has been disappearing more and more every year since then, it looks like the tendency of things is rather against it. Still, there are points that should be kept in mind:
La Civilt� Cattolica, the semi-official Vatican magazine, has published an important article on Christians in Islamic Countries that points out a truth that recently has dared not speak its name: Islam is an aggressive religion that aims at the acquisition of universal dominion by force and oppresses Christians (and others) who live in Islamic … More ...
What orthodox Catholicism looks like from the standpoint of liberalism: The Crusaders. The author (a staffer at the Boston Globe) is a clever writer and doesn’t adhere to the sterner demands of honesty, but the piece is substantive enough to be useful.
Some interesting points:
The NYC marathon put the kibosh on the Latin Mass I usually go to in Brooklyn, so on All Saints Day and Sunday I went to Mass a couple of places in Manhattan. It’s remarkable how different it can seem in different presentations (High or Low Mass, music, behavior of the congregation, physical setting and … More ...