Current Affairs
-
Well, at least during this papacy. The fort is betrayed even of them that should have defended it. And therefore seeing the matter is thus begun, and so faintly resisted on our parts, I fear that we be not the men that shall see the end of the misery. Wherefore, seeing I am an old
-
See this article in the Catholic Herald. I don't, obviously, try to follow the news here. I didn't even write about the October 7th invasion/massacre in Israel, or anything that's followed it, but I have certainly given it a lot of my attention. But this seems significant in a way not very far distant from
-
This one actually appeared on the 15th, so is more than ten days old. But it didn't get any less ridiculous. Government Can't Solve the Loneliness Crisis It appeared in National Review, and, as you might suppose, it's a government-skeptical response to an outlandish idea for a new government project. I just can't think of
-
Well, I guess that's not technically accurate. To set a trend, one must not only be enacting the trend, but be seen doing it. Nobody apart from my immediate family and my neighbors know that I'm doing it. And I'm pretty sure that they are themselves not trend-watchers who have noted that I'm doing it
-
Everybody knows, though many will perhaps have forgotten fairly quickly, of the insane episode involving the marketers of Bud Light and their decision to enlist a female impersonator named Dylan Mulvaney in its ad campaign, issuing a special can with his image on it, making an ad featuring him, and so forth. I'm not of
-
A few things I meant to say about The Dry Wood: I'm not sure exactly what the title means. It's an allusion to Luke 23:31: For if in the green wood they do these things, what shall be done in the dry? That's the Douay-Rheims translation, which is the one Houselander uses, not surprisingly. I admit
-
It was only fairly recently that I became aware of the term “outrage porn,” but I just learned from Wikipedia that it’s been around since 2009, when a New York Times writer said: It sometimes seems as if most of the news consists of outrage porn, selected specifically to pander to our impulses to judge
-
I read the other day that Chuck Jackson had died. I recognized the name immediately, though I may not have encountered it since 1962, when his recording of "Any Day Now" was on the charts. I would have been thirteen or fourteen, and was prone to bouts of infatuation which were often called then, and
-
Somehow Animal Farm escaped from the boxes where most of my books still reside, and I picked it up and started reading it on a whim. I had read it in high school and not since. I don't recall having a very strong opinion or impression of it, beyond the obvious satirical-polemical intent. And it's
-
The collection of writings by Alfred Delp, S.J. which I mentioned a couple of weeks ago has a long introduction by Thomas Merton. I'm not a Merton enthusiast, having found what I've read of his work (not all that much) a somewhat mixed bag, but this essay, dated October 1962, is excellent. Fr. Delp reminds
Light On Dark Water 