thoughts in and out of season
At bottom, conservatism is simply attachment to a specific society. It is therefore a disposition to maintain the features of the society that make it what it is: the particular people who make it up, the beliefs, commitments and institutions that order it, and the concrete features that define its character and distinguish it … More ...
Islam continues to fascinate. Whatever the value of suggestions that it emphasizes will over reason and therefore leads to mere assertion and violence (I think there’s a lot to that view), it seems clear that discussions about it mostly generate more heat than light.
To my mind it seems important to discuss something as … More ...
Here’s a CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Company) podcast on Radical Orthodoxy that includes extended soundbites from John Milbank and Catherine Pickstock. What they say sounds sensible enough to me, although they’re academics so it’s all quite theoretical and respectable-sounding, and Milbank at any rate has an ingrained attachment to socialism.
In a way, their views seem … More ...
A correspondent sends the following extracts from Lesson 10, “The Virtues and the Gifts of the Holy Ghost,” in the Confraternity Edition of the Baltimore Catechism, published in the late 1940s. Within living memory, it seems, there were people who did not identify God’s Kingdom with an inhuman secular utopia:
… More ...Love for our neighbor, to
To descend from the sublime to the not-so-sublime, it’s worth noting that a recent Barna Group study finds that Catholics have become mainstream America. There don’t seem to be discernible differences between Catholics and other Americans, except that Catholics take religion and the more austere demands of morality less seriously. They’re more into pornography, … More ...
The Vatican Press Office has released some Observations on the use of the Old Roman Liturgy. It’s not clear just who they’re from or what their status is, but some points may be interesting to Tridentine Mass fans. The release suggests, for example, that the faithful recite or sing the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and … More ...
Catholic bloggers, alert to opposition to the Pope’s motu proprio from suspects usual and otherwise, have come up with some notable examples, one by sometime America editor Fr. Thomas Reese quoted at Journey to Vatican III, and another at a weblog devoted to the Spirit of Vatican II that presents the thoughts of … More ...
The Pope’s long-rumored Apostolic Letter issued motu proprio (“on his own motion”) facilitating the use of the classical Roman liturgy is now out, along with an explanatory letter from the Pope addressed to the world’s bishops. I’ve commented already on why I think the issue is important and the Motu Proprio has world-historical importance… More ...
Senator Obama, whose own church seems quite ready to accentuate differences, repeats the common goodthinker’s complaint that
Somehow, somewhere along the way, faith stopped being used to bring us together and started being used to drive us apart.
The change is not so mysterious. In the 60s or thereabouts governing elites decisively rejected their … More ...