Sunday Night Journal

  • A Beautiful Mass A couple of weekends ago I attended Mass at a parish which I will refrain from naming, in a city on the other side of the continent. I know I’ve mentioned more than once here that after a long period of struggle I eventually became reconciled to the normal American Catholic liturgy.

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  • The Quiet American This is about both the movie and the Graham Green novel. A few weeks ago the movie was shown on one of the cable channels that broadcasts movies uninterrupted (it wasn't TCM, so it must have been Sundance). On an impulse of curiosity I recorded it. I had read the novel some

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  • Gender Studies I was away from Friday afternoon till Monday night and didn't have time for writing. And I have to admit straightaway that it's cheating a bit to call this a Sunday Night Journal, because the pictures below were taken Monday morning. But I don't want to leave a gap in the SNJ series,

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  • Progressive Ironies The past month or so has seen the deaths of two men associated with progressive Catholicism in this area. One was a priest, one was a deacon. I had a slight personal acquaintance with both of them, a bit more so with the deacon, and on the basis of that and of their

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  • Report on Anglican Developments I haven’t yet written about my experience with our local instance of the Anglican Ordinariate. I first mentioned it here on Easter Sunday (see this SNJ), shortly after it had come to my attention, and a great deal has happened since then. The first word I had, back in April, was

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  • Reading at the Grand Babylon I had intended to include this in last week’s journal, but had already gone on too long. So, picking up from there: I took two books to the conference with me, and had made a pact with myself not to turn on the television. I have made and broken such

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  • At the Grand Babylon “Grand Babylon” was the term Christopher Derrick once used to describe the American luxury hotel. I stayed at one of these for most of the past week, attending a conference for customers of the company that provides the software that supports most of the administrative functions of the college where I'm employed,

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  • Three Movies and a Book Winter's Bone I suspect most people who read this blog regularly have already seen this–after all, you're the ones who told me about it. But a brief description for those who haven't: it's about a seriously messed-up family in rural Missouri. and is a very grim portrayal of the methedrine

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  • Wagner: The State of the Question (For the benefit of anyone coming across this post in isolation from its predecessors of the past two weeks: I am writing this after having seen a repeat of the Metropolitan Opera’s 2011-12 Live in HD broadcast of its new Ring cycle.) I suppose I should say “The Ring” instead of

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  • Today is Mother's Day, and has been very full of activity. I've had no time to write, so I will offer you something I wrote for Mother's Day 2006.  It's hard for me to believe that that was six years ago. And I've been contemplating the fact that the year 2000 now seems a fairly

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