Religion
-
Instead of attempting to free ourselves from the things of the senses, or abstracting from them, we should try to probe deeper into them; not stopping at their external appearance, which changes, but seeking what is hidden deep in their substance; their being, in a word. For God is Being. And thus we shall find…
-
Sunday Night Journal — December 18, 2011 At least half the Christian and/or conservative bloggers and pundits will have something to say on the passing of Mr. Hitchens, and most of it will be somewhere between mildly sympathetic and adoring. This is a curious phenomenon, because he was not a conservative, and he was an…
-
One of my many, many unfinished projects is the conversion to blog posts of all the Sunday Night Journal entries that were published in hand-crafted HTML before I started this blog in 2006. Here's July 11, 2004, on the subject of the intelligent design movement. Since I wrote that piece I've become considerably less hopeful that…
-
Here's an interesting piece by Simcha Fisher, Dangerous Books for Teenage Girls. She's talking about books that are not bad in themselves, but may feed unhealthy tendencies in the mind of a teenage girl. Interestingly, she names Walker Percy's novels as an example from her own youth. I can see the point: Dr. Thomas More's lusts,…
-
Sunday Night Journal — November 20, 2011 Today is the feast of Christ the King. The archdiocese of Mobile has a traditional celebration of this occasion which still involves an actual public procession. I was going to say that that’s probably a rare thing in this country in these days, but I decided to look…
-
Sunday Night Journal — November 7, 2011 For many years I’ve thought of writing some sort of lengthy appreciation of W.S. Merwin, but the project has never made it to the top of my list, and it’s time I accepted the possibility that it never will. Last year when he was appointed Poet Laureate I…
-
In case my account of Caryll Houselander's vision of Christ In All Men may have left anyone who hasn't read the book with the idea that it was a sweet but vague sentiment, here are some key passages from her description of the experience and its implications: I had long been haunted by the Russian…
-
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…
-
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…
Light On Dark Water 