I am thankful Rod Dreher took up my piece “Why Doesn’t Holy Mother Russia Remain Orthodox?” in his “Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and the State.” The following passages from Dreher’s post pick up on themes I thought about addressing in my original piece but left hanging instead: Well. I can agree with Rosman that the “Murray Project” — broadly speaking, the idea that one can be both a good Catholic and a good American — is dead, or at least on its last... Read more
What if you took recent articles and replaced some words as you would in Mad Libs? Remember playing Mad Libs when you were a teenager? The blanks tended to spillover with health class lingo to generally hilarious results. I’m reminded of this immaturity as I scan the wasteland of responses to my interview with Catholic climate expert Anthony Annett on Laudato Si’. Half of the Catholics I know be like: I’m no expert on environmental issues, buuut . . .... Read more
Anthony Annett is a climate change and sustainable development advisor at the Earth Institute (Columbia University) and in this position is affiliated with Religions for Peace. He is a frequent contributor to Commonweal and has published a programmatic essay on an economy of inclusion in Radically Catholic in the Age of Francis. The contents of this interview respect the Vatican embargo on discussing the contents of the encyclical until they are officially published on Thursday. The interview began last week and... Read more
I once made a joke of using Benedict XVI quotes as leaked pieces of the upcoming encyclical by Pope Francis. This time it’s no joke. As a perceptive reader who doesn’t know Italian notes, “Since Benedict and JP2 comprise 85% of the footnotes (that’s how good my Italian is), you weren’t far off.” Hermeneutic of continuity anyone? A draft was made available today by Repubblica.it. You can read it here, that is, if you know Italian. If you don’t, run... Read more
Richard Kearney holds the Charles B. Seelig Chair of Philosophy at Boston College and has served as a Visiting Professor at University College Dublin, the University of Paris (Sorbonne), the Australian Catholic University and the University of Nice. He is the author of over 20 books on European philosophy and literature (among them: Anatheism: Returning to God After God; The God Who May Be: A Hermeneutics of Religion; The Wake of Imagination), and has edited or co-edited 14 more. He... Read more
Iain McGilchrist, the philosopher, neuroscientist, and literary critic keeps popping up everywhere. I’ve seen his book The Master and His Emissary pop up in the following places: Silence: A User’s Guide (Maggie Ross), Hegel and Religious Faith: Divided Brain, Atoning Spirit (Andrew Shanks), the interview I conducted with Kevin M. Johnson on silent contemplation, and tangentially in Michael Martin’s The Submerged Reality (which critiques “left-brain theologies”). Take a look at the following video for a summary of McGilchrist’s The Master... Read more
Forget Caitlyn Jenner. The National Post reports about the next big trend in nominalism: When he cut off his right arm with a “very sharp power tool,” a man who now calls himself One Hand Jason let everyone believe it was an accident. But he had for months tried different means of cutting and crushing the limb that never quite felt like his own, training himself on first aid so he wouldn’t bleed to death, even practicing on animal parts... Read more
This is an experiment in extending the #whyremaincatholic brush onto a wider canvas in order to get a bigger picture of the state of Catholicism in America. The thoroughgoing wisdom in some accounts of how to combat secularization is that conservative churches retain most of their members. They retain them, because a conservative theology supposedly demands more of their members. Since the cost of participation is greater, the conventional wisdom goes . . . those who get in, stay in.... Read more
========================================================================== Philip and Carol Zaleski are the coauthors of Prayer: A History and The Book of Heaven. The Fellowship is their third co-authored book. Philip Zaleski is the author of Gifts of the Spirit and The Recollected Heart and editor of the long-running Best Spiritual Writing series, and Carol Zaleski is Professor of World Religions at Smith College and author of Otherworld Journeys and Life of the World to Come. ========================================================================== Artur Rosman: There seem to be many biographies of the individual Inklings and quite a few collective biographies as well. What... Read more
This is a guest post. Sergio Bermudez is a human being. He went to College at the University of California, Riverside and studied English. They wouldn’t let him study Bullfighting. He maintains a twitter page (@NostromoSerg) that others have described as “Crass”, “Hilarious” and a “Complete Waste of Time”. He Currently Lives Near Philly. End Transmission. ========================= Why I remain a Lewd Catholic… Or how I learned to stop worrying and Love the Eucharist. “I’m not crazy about reality, but... Read more
Cosmos The In Lost
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