Religion

  • I've been putting off writing this post, even more than is accounted for by my normal level of procrastination. The reason, upon examination, was pretty simple: I didn't want to write it. And the reason for that was, similarly, more than is accounted for by my normal laziness: I didn't know what I wanted to

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  • As I mentioned in the previous (but one) post, I've been wanting to re-read Robert Hugh Benson's Lord of the World, which I first read almost exactly eleven years ago. Since it concerns the Antichrist and the end of the world, the subject matter seems even more timely now than it did then. I wrote about

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  • Cluny Media is a publisher whose main line of business is the reprinting of Catholic classics, or classics which are in some way connected to and compatible with the Catholic tradition. And when I say reprinting I don't mean a sloppy scan of an old book run through a print-on-demand process. I mean very high-quality

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  • 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

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  • Values

    As I think I mentioned not too long ago, I've been going through old notebooks containing odds and ends of writing, with the aim of getting rid of the notebooks, as part of a bigger de-cluttering process. Some of the material is drafts of blog posts or essays which were eventually published. Much is only

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  • Dylan has a song, released on the first of the outtakes collections falsely called "bootlegs" (it's not a bootleg if it's released by the record company), called "Foot of Pride." It was recorded for the Infidels album but not used, thereby making the album weaker than it might have been. To me Infidels is one of

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  • This past Easter I wrote about going to the Vigil at a small parish where the pastor is a young priest, and said this: The young priests I've encountered in recent years are all similarly committed to the traditional mission of the Church, which makes them "conservative" in the confused mind of our time. And

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  • 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

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  • I thought I was reasonably familiar with Houselander’s work, but it came as a surprise to me to learn that she had written a novel: only this one, published in 1947. So when I saw an ad for an online seminar on the book, a joint effort from Dappled Things and the Collegium Institute, I

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  • 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

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