Here’s a sprightly little ditty about drunkenly salvaging chickens, couches, cows, and brandy from the shipwrecked Athens Queen, sung (and composed, I believe) by the inimitable Stan Rogers. And then, if you like, you can hear it performed by a troupe of buskers who dress like pirates and call themselves “The World Famous Bootstrappers.” None of them sing as well as Stan Rogers, but they get extra points for color: Read more
Much of what the Dogmat saw this week made him unhappy, especially the news from Charleston. The Dogmat is glad that the shooter’s goal of igniting a race war has so far not been reached, and he is mightily impressed with the forgiveness shown by the survivors. On Racism in the American South and the Shock of the Charleston Shootings: While providing neither a facile explanation for the shooter’s actions nor a facile prescription for how to prevent similar shootings,... Read more
I’ve got a new friend; he lives in my car. That’s him, over there to the right. I often pray the Rosary on the way to work in the morning. In my old car, which had an automatic transmission, I used a little teeny finger rosary that I would hang on one of the vent knobs between uses. I had to be careful doing that, because if I dropped it, it was gone: under the seat or into a crevice... Read more
Following a nudge by Tom McDonald I’ve just re-read Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time, which is perhaps the most unusual whodunnit I’ve ever read. Tey was an English mystery writer of the Golden Age of British mysteries, a contemporary of Agatha Christie and Ngaio Marsh; she also wrote plays under the name of Gordon Daviot. And that’s almost all that anyone actually knows about her…except that she didn’t write to a formula. Each of her mysteries is distinct in... Read more
We’re blogging through St. Thomas Aquinas’ Compendium Theologiae, sometimes called his Shorter Summa. Find the previous posts here. In the last chapter Thomas explained that God’s knowledge of Himself can be called His “Word”; and since His intellect is the same as His essence, His Word must necessarily be in Him rather than apart from Him. What is contained in the intellect, as an interior word, is by common usage said to be a conception of the intellect. As contained in the mind... Read more
From Feist, here’s a lovely little song about dreaming for the future and building a life together. I don’t know much about Feist, but she’s got a few songs I like, and of those this is my favorite. Read more
This week the Dogmat saw dance recitals, mostly. Lots and lots of dance recitals. Or, actually, one dance recital spread over several days with lots and lots of dances. But he also had time to see a few things on the Webs. Cross on Scotus on causal series: For those who have been discussing Thomas’ arguments for God’s existence, here’s an article that gives a nice clear explanation of the distinction between the two kinds of causal chains (and why... Read more
I’m experiencing technical difficulties at the moment; which is to say that my computer appears to have a failing hard drive. As a result I lost my blogging time yesterday evening, and I’m going to lose much of it this evening taking the beast down to the repair shop. With luck, things will return to normal tomorrow. Read more
Looking at today’s Church I notice three things: in many parts of the world, the Church is growing faster than priests can be trained; in places like the United States the faithful population is growing faster than vocations to the priesthood; and we’re expecting all priests to study like Dominicans, at least during their seminary formation. St. Dominic’s notions were shocking to the bishops of the time. He wanted to found an order of preaching brothers, but at that time,... Read more
We’re blogging through St. Thomas Aquinas’ Compendium Theologiae, sometimes called his Shorter Summa. Find the previous posts here. In the last chapter, Thomas concluded the purely philosophical part of his discussion of God; now we move on to the Trinity, and specifically to the Second Person of the Trinity, the Word of God. As we’ll find, Thomas doesn’t regard that title, “Word”, as purely symbolic, but as reflecting a deep truth about the nature of the Trinity. The Trinity is a murky subject,... Read more
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