Catholic Stuff
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Touchstone's current issue marks its 25th anniversary, and it is a very excellent issue. I've been a fan of its "ecumenical orthodoxy" since I discovered the magazine a dozen or so years ago (if my memory is at all reliable). I've been convinced for a long time that the differences among the three great communities…
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Sunday Night Journal — October 2, 2011 There is a crack in everythingThat’s how the light gets in—Leonard Cohen, “Anthem” For those outside traditional Christianity, the whole Catholic (and Orthodox) emphasis on the Eucharist is weird, to say the least. Even setting aside the strangeness of the doctrine that the consecrated bread and wine become…
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We despise everything that Christ loves, everything marked by His compassion. We love fatness health bursting smiles the radiance of satisfied bodies all properly fed and rested and sated and washed and perfumed and sexually relieved. Everything else is a scandal and a horror to us. That's Merton in a 1960 letter to Dorothy Day,…
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Also from his visit to Germany: In order to accomplish her true task adequately, the Church must constantly renew the effort to detach herself from the 'worldliness' of the world. … One could almost say that history comes to the aid of the Church here through the various periods of secularisation, which have contributed significantly…
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Sunday Night Journal — September 18, 2011 Now and then I talk to someone who’s visited Rome, and almost always, especially if the person is Catholic, I’m told that it’s a wonderful experience. And I say “Yes, I’m sure it is,” but I always feel a little guilty that I don’t feel more enthusiasm for…
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Some people think it foolish to ask God for little things, but I do not think it matters at all what one asks for, so long as in asking for anything one recognizes one's own dependence on God…. Sometimes a tiny childish thing brings home to us more than a big thing the intense love which can…
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Christianity does not proclaim merely some salvation of the soul in a vague afterlife in which all that is precious and dear to us in this world would be eliminated, but promises eternal life, “the life of the world to come.” Nothing that is precious and dear to us will fall into ruin; rather it…
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Does anybody know what's going on with the web site that once belonged to the old Crisis magazine, then was transmogrified into Inside Catholic, and not too long ago (some months?) reverted to Crisis? I'm asking because Inside Catholic, despite its mildly annoying name, was a pretty good publication which I read regularly. Yes, it was…
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Weekend Music Here are two sections of the Duruflé Requiem that I heard last night as part of the Requiem Mass I mentioned yesterday (see here). I was only going to post one, but I couldn’t make up my mind. I thought I remembered my recording, which I haven’t listened to for many years, having…
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(A guest post from Janet Cupo) I know that some of you are thinking about sending some sort of aid to Haiti, and so I wanted to tell you about the Louverture Cleary School. This Catholic school has been serving the poorest of the poor in Haiti for 20 years. Their goal is to…
Light On Dark Water 