Reenchantment: Atheist PZ Myers Attempts to Confess Bias, FAILS

Last updated on: January 6, 2015 at 3:16 pm By Artur Rosman

If you didn’t notice Saturday evening I ran a confirmation bias experiment on my coreligionists (many, if not most, did not notice). The experiment consisted of running a variation upon my favorite pastime of quoting Rerum Novarum passages and attributing them to Marx on social media. The results were almost as amusing as seeing the distinguished professor Robert P. George (“Four Things to Remember About the Pope’s Environment Letter“) dogmatically urging skepticism about the ideologically divisive contents of a yet, as far as I... Read more

I Have Met Many Secular Bigots (Calasso on Sacrifice)

Last updated on: January 5, 2015 at 12:35 pm By Artur Rosman

It’s a big deal any time Roberto Calasso releases a book, because his books always deal with The Big Topics. He’s an unclassifiable writer who writes strange quasi-novels about real-life figures. Perhaps my favorite Italian novelist, Italo Calvino, said that Calasso’s The Ruin of Kasch (one of the selections on my TOP10 novel list) is about: First, Talleyrand; second, everything else. It seems that, Ardor, Calasso’s latest book translated into English is about: first, sacrifice in Vedic religion; second, everything else.... Read more

BREAKING — Pope Says We Are All Responsible for Climate Change

Last updated on: July 9, 2015 at 2:55 am By Artur Rosman

In a leaked draft of the forthcoming encyclical on the environment the pope says: Preservation of the environment, promotion of sustainable development and particular attention to climate change are matters of grave concern for the entire human family. The document gives climate change an almost ontological import: The relationship between individuals or communities and the environment ultimately stems from their relationship with God. When man turns his back on the Creator’s plan, he provokes a disorder which has inevitable repercussions... Read more

A Feast of Circumfession: TOP10 Reading Standouts From 2014

Last updated on: January 2, 2015 at 1:10 am By Artur Rosman

Today was formerly known as the Feast of the Circumcision. Due to sleep deprivation I can think of no better way to celebrate than staring down my best reading experiences of 2014. (But feel free to peek at my posts on Christ’s genitalia and his circumcision while you’re at it). I’m a picky reader so it was very hard to limit myself to the following standouts. Anyway, isn’t it great to participate in a faith so incarnational it allows you so many... Read more

Christianity Does Not Endeavor to Save Christianity

Last updated on: December 31, 2014 at 2:45 pm By Artur Rosman

The Lumen Christi Institute is devoted to promoting the depth and breadth of Catholic culture through its connections to the University of Chicago. Nowhere is this mission more apparent than in the recent debate caught on the video below. It features two Cosmos regulars: Remi Brague and Jean-Luc Marion. The central question of the debate “Does Christianity need metaphysics?” comes from controversies surrounding Marion’s influential critique of metaphysics, God Without Being (now in its 2nd edition in English, very rare... Read more

Culture of Waste: Thesis → Antithesis → Santhasis

Last updated on: December 25, 2014 at 10:47 am By Artur Rosman

There’s a reason for the season, and Santa it ain’t. I can’t help suspecting that our children think Santa expired on the Christmas tree for their gifts. I’d like to blame them or myself (as some have already done), but there are more powerful trends at work here. The notion of competing cultural liturgies–as developed by James K.A. Smith in Imagining the Kingdom, William T. Cavanaugh in Migrations of the Holy, and Bruce Ellis Benson Liturgy as a Way of... Read more

Two Nativities? Can You Divine the Original Christmas Story?

Last updated on: December 2, 2015 at 12:21 pm By Artur Rosman

Margaret Barker sure knows how to set up an argument. She goes all out in introduction to Christmas: Original Story. Bump, set, spike, Barker: The Christmas stories are not only beautiful; their meaning is at the heart of the Christian faith, and they show how the first generations expressed their understanding of Jesus as both God and man. The creeds are later statements of Christian belief, summarizing the essentials. The first to be set out formally was the Apostles’ Creed, the... Read more

Beauty For Truth’s Sake: The Creed’s Amazing Hidden Symmetry Between Son & Spirit

Last updated on: January 14, 2015 at 10:47 am By Artur Rosman

One of the most persistent claims of the Catholic tradition is that truth, goodness, being, and beauty are convertible. Yet, the relationship between truth and beauty is probably the most difficult to see for us. Leo Tolstoy is representative of this trend (think: Nietzsche’s saving lie) when he says in his Kreutzer Sonata, “It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.” Hans Urs von Balthasar almost single-handedly fought to repair this rift in his theological aesthetics, especially in Seeing... Read more

Dare We Hope That All Dogs Go To Heaven?

Last updated on: December 18, 2014 at 12:21 pm By Artur Rosman

Dare we hope that all dogs go to heaven? Sure, why not? Though there’s no reason to believe cats will go as well. The canine chances seem better than the chances for us humans. They are the animal kingdom’s model of fidelity. I mean, do you see any dogs (besides your neighbors) getting divorced? Pope Paul VI once made a pronouncement upon this dogged question, “One day we will see our animals in the eternity of Christ.” These words proved to... Read more

In the Beginning Was Poverty: Advent Should Rob You Blind

Last updated on: December 17, 2014 at 3:15 pm By Artur Rosman

Why does the German church get a lot of grief for its spiritual opulence? Because it deserves it. German Catholicism has a lot of money in its coffers thanks to unbroken economic prosperity since World War II. Yet, its membership is dwindling at Episcopalian rates. If there is one voice in that ecclesial body crying for an interruption from God, then Johannes Baptist Metz is that voice. His name seems to have predestined him for this role. When Metz mentions... Read more