Incredible readings in Church today, and relevant to the moment. The sin of David with Uriah (I must confess I think about this story all the time, since Jung pointed out to me that Uriah is a figure of Christ), Paul’s letter to the Galatians (always amazing), and the following from the Gospel, on the [...]
An interesting post by Andrew Sullivan particularly relevant for the tendency of religious people today to look backwards to some previous era as purer or more holy than what we have today. As someone who has spent much of his life with Latin and people who love Latin I know this tendency well. The sum [...]
Tolstoy is a figure I have always kept at arm’s length; beyond reading Anna Karenina (easily the greatest novel ever written; really no other deserves to be put in the same paragraph with it; I hated it) and the most famous short stories, I have mostly avoided him. That he was full of hatred and [...]
If an alien de Tocqueville came to a Christian church to write a “Religion on Earth” book, he would probably conclude that two major tenets of Christianity are dressing up and showing up. And the holier the occasion, the more the commandments “thou shalt dress up” and “thou shalt show up” are followed.
For a long [...]
Andrew Sullivan takes on, in few words, the “Prosperity Gospel” - the Bad News - and gives some real spiritual teaching.
It’s staggering really that modern American Christianism supports wealth while Jesus demanded total poverty, fetishizes family while Jesus left his and urged his followers to abandon wives, husbands and children, champions politics while Jesus said [...]
Astonished by a piece about the writer Shusaku Endo, about the role of failure and rejection and suffering in Christianity.
This he sees as the sense of failure in life and the subsequent shame and guilt that leave a lasting impact upon a person’s life. Such theological notions as love, [...]
Time spent among people reveals just how difficult it is, even for the most worthy and competent, to be capable of real love and relationship. Developing this capacity is in truth the sole bifocal commandment of the Christian religion, all others being mere ancillae; and it is also the goal of Jung’s school of psychoanalysis, [...]
As you grow older you learn that a key dimension of all religious narrative is that these are stories which you will, by virtue of being human, almost certainly reenact in your own life. Andrew Sullivan, who has been leading one of the most impressively public Christian lives, describes in few and eloquent words his [...]
Christianity and the Survival of Creation.
21-Jun-10For the Feast of John the Baptist: this extremely good essay by Wendell Berry; highly recommended. Proof - as if it were needed - that the Magisterium of the Church resides not in the priesthood - which is almost always wrong - but in the Prophets. As it was, is now, and ever shall be.
But [...]