I went to Easter Mass at the church of Saint Francis Xavier in Brooklyn, a pretty church in Park Slope which does not, despite its name, appear to have any formal connection with the Jesuits. Some years ago it might have been difficult for me to feel the joy the holiday seemingly required – often [...]
Category Archives: Religion
Easter 2013 and New Hope.
01-Apr-13Last month, after having lunch with a friend in Dumbo, I decided spontaneously to take a tour of the Watchtower buildings – the Jehovah’s Witnesses World Headquarters in Brooklyn Heights. It’s one of the things you grow up with in New York City – you tell the time and the temperature by it whenever you’re [...]
The Atlantic seems to have discovered that we moderns have an insatiable appetite for anything plausibly scientific on the topic of love and marriage (or our lack thereof), and out comes another article, centering on the neurological experience of love. Despite the attempt to headline this article with “there’s no such thing as everlasting love” [...]
Your God Isn’t Big Enough.
02-Feb-13A first-hand account of a young woman leaving behind a limited idea of God for something more universal and true. Like all things that feel real, fascinating. I have had this conversation with numerous people whose religious ideas have been tested in the furnace of the world: and the great question always remains, “After all [...]
Jesus and the Second Amendment.
29-Jan-13Andrew Sullivan has a very short and sharp rebuff of a National Review piece which claims that God supports individual gun ownership, as part of a “Biblical” right to self-defense. In general, I hate the word “Biblical,” because it implies a simplicity which only ignorance can accept uncritically; the first Christians recognized many holy “books” [...]
We Need a Catholic Onion.
16-Jan-13To deal with realities like this. It’s old, but perennial. Kind of Catholic in that way. Why the hell is the Pope making knights anyway? Yet another relic, like the fact that they have their own country and put gold on everything, of the fact that for a long long time they were not fishers [...]
Apologia Pro Carolo Gustavo Jung.
08-Jan-13There are some rules in the intellectual world which are pretty reliable for detecting bloviating stupidity, or blathering solipsism (or however you want to render b.s.), and one of them is this: if someone launches a five-thousand word attack on a noted author, and never once quotes a single line from the voluminous works of [...]
The God of Happiness.
07-Jan-13There is an essay about this topic, and Dostoevsky its prophet: “For we are made for happiness, and any one who is completely happy has a right to say to himself, ‘I am doing God’s will on earth.’ All the righteous, all the saints, all the holy martyrs were happy.”
Marie-Louise von Franz, Jung, Death.
20-Dec-12I had the sudden conviction that I should finally more fully explore the writings of Marie-Louise von Franz, a second-generation Jungian whose writings I have been impressed by in the past. I am in general always partial to people who have some kind of redemptive salvific Messianic purpose in their work: ‘Like all of us, [...]
Saint Augustine and Religious Empiricism.
20-Mar-13There was a little bit of Facebook hullabaloo over this Tuesday’s march against gay marriage in D.C., which is being promoted by Catholic bishops. As usual, the bishops going out of their way to prevent non-Catholics from getting things like hospital visitation rights is a good indicator of the general fact that if you want [...]