This is the second installment of my interview with Dr. Justin Tse. It concentrates upon the Catholic Church’s complicated role in Hong Kong’s politics. A link to the first installment of this interview can be found here. How much influence does the Catholic Church (as an institution, but also individual believers) have on what goes on in Hong Kong politics? It would seem to be a marginal player when only 5 percent of the population is Catholic. This is a great social scientific... Read more
The Synod reporting has been nothing short of apocalyptic. And I do love it in a Rabelaisian Catholic sort of way. For example, The National Catholic Register’s write up is another sure sign, aside from all the Medjugorje idolatry, that the publication is getting comfortable with wearing the tinfoil hat. In particular, the piece Evidence Emerges of an Engineered Synod borrows the tone of an X-Files script: More and more there is talk in Rome that this synod is being engineered by groups... Read more
Since the Synod is occupying everyone’s minds, including my own, I thought I’d change things up a bit with an interview about the Hong Kong Occupy Movement. I mean, no matter if the Synod will unleash the apocalypse, the world will still go on (at least for a little bit). Now, you might be aware of the Hong Kong Protests from brief news-reports, but how much do you really know about what is going on? Did you know religion is... Read more
When grandiose Church events such as the Synod on the Family roll around I look forward to rolling my eyes as the conservatives freak out about the possibility of radical change, whereas the liberals freak out about the possibility of radical change not being made. The real problems usually reside elsewhere. My unreasonable attempt at adjusting to being Mr. Mom, blogging, and job hunting (all at the same time) has prevented me from taking an in-depth look at what’s going to be... Read more
After driving Dominik to kindergarten I took the girls for a spin around the block in the vain hope that they would fall asleep. Along the way I noticed a man who cultivates the Slash, guitarist of Guns n’ Roses, look. I see him frequently around the University District and Ravenna pinning concert flyers to walls and posts. He has the hair, the nose piercing, the aviator sunglasses (sometimes worn at night), even the huge Victorian steampunk top-hat. There is... Read more
Wislawa Szymborska, “Travel Elegy” from Poems New and Collected Everything’s mine though just on loan, nothing for the memory to hold, though mine as long as I look. Memories come to mind like excavated statues that have misplaced their heads. From the town of Samokov, only rain and more rain. Paris from Louvre to fingernail grows web-eyed by the moment. Boulevard Saint-Martin some stairs leading into a fadeout. Only a bridge and a half from Leningrad of the bridges. Poor... Read more
Leading up to the coalition of the willing waging war against ISIS much noise was made about getting the Muslim leadership to speak up. Whenever there is any violent crime committed by someone suspected of being Muslim, like the recent beheading in Oklahoma, there are predictable calls for the Muslim leadership to speak up. There is one major problem with this tried and found wanting method: there is nobody on the other side of the phone to pick up. It is not... Read more
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the famous Walker Percy Jefferson Lecture “The San Andreas Fault in the Modern Mind.” The lecture remains the best introduction into the heart of Percy’s writings and preoccupations. It is his little summa where he lays out the problem of communication between humanist and scientific forms of knowledge. The lecturer this year was Walter Isaacson head of the Aspen Institute, former chairman of CNN, and once the managing editor of Time. He is... Read more
Carl Schmitt who was one of those extremely bad Catholics like Heidegger who played a part in Hitler’s regime. In some circles Schmitt became known as the “Crown Jurist of the Third Reich.” This arch-conservative thinker ironically made a comeback through the New Left. You can see his influence on Derrida (that Catholic phenomenology enabler) in his The Politics of Friendship; for Schmitt politics is the process of the state creating a friend/enemy dichotomy by designating clearly defined... Read more
Let me be clear, I can only read Matt Walsh’s constant emoting one paragraph at a time. His never-ending rivalries with the easiest targets make me physically ill. After these rare reads I know what Jean-Michel Oughourlian [one of the two thinkers who interviewed Girard in Things Hidden] means when he says in The Genesis of Desire that our desires are making us sick and destroying our relationships. From what I’ve been able to gather, Walsh’s appeal lies in his... Read more
Cosmos The In Lost
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