Top 10 Recent Books: 5 on Heaven, 5 on Hell

August 6, 2013 By Artur Rosman

I’ve recently written on both heaven and on hell. My own readings on these topics might be idiosyncratic. I’m not sure whether these books get read in seminaries or comparative religion programs. I don’t even know whether these topics are of any interest to academics in those disciplines. I, for one, went through most of the classes offered on Christianity at the University of Washington’s excellent Comparative Religion program and didn’t encounter, or discuss, anything about these topics. What follows... Read more

Constantine, Socrates, and Other Saints

August 6, 2013 By Artur Rosman

Here is one of the more controversial early posts. Read more

The Prolegomena to Any Future Newman

July 31, 2013 By Artur Rosman

Below is an excerpt from an interview with Nick Ripatrazone featured today on his blog The Fine Delight: Artur Rosman’s site, Cosmos The In Lost, has become a daily read for me: sharp, smart, well-written essays ranging from Catholic theology to art to culture to literature, all delivered with a sense of humor missing from most other religious discussions. The panoply of subjects doesn’t result in slim reading: rather, the opposite. Rosman is able to introduce, elucidate, conclude, and educate; to open conversations... Read more

A True Opium for the People is a Belief in Nothingness After Death!

July 30, 2013 By Artur Rosman

When was the last time any of you (who don’t attend fundamentalist churches) heard a good and theologically sound hellfire sermon? The last, no the only one, I’ve ever heard was in James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Here it is in its glorious entirety if you need a memory refresher (BE AFRAID!): Over the last two centuries Hell has been banished from the Catholic imagination more effectively than Adam and Eve from Eden. I suppose... Read more

Miłosz, Penderecki, and Jeremiah: On the Contemporaneity of the Bible

July 29, 2013 By Artur Rosman

I’m taking a bit of a break from my Catholiclandia series before I tackle the trends in Polish Catholic media and intellectual life. Part I is an attempt to provide a differentiated picture of both homogeneity and diversity in Polish religious life. Part II briefly sketched the mixed legacy of Solidarity. There’s a little bit more on Solidarity here. =================================================== In an issue of ZNAK Monthly (557) from 2001 Czeslaw Milosz uses the following words from a Polish musician as the... Read more

Orientalist Dreams of Poland as Catholiclandia (Part II)

July 26, 2013 By Artur Rosman

Yesterday kicked off a series of posts about the orientalization of Poland among Western scholars. The term “orientalization” denotes an image of a culture as “Eastern,” meaning exotic, backward, uncivilized, and possibly dangerous. The term has been used to describe Western stereotypes of Middle Eastern Muslims, but recent scholarship has expanded its semantic field beyond Edward Said’s original intentions in his seminal work Orientalism. The very notion of Poland belonging to “Eastern Europe” invites such analysis, especially since residents of... Read more

Orientalist Dreams of Poland as Catholiclandia (Part I)

July 25, 2013 By Artur Rosman

There are plenty of stereotypes floating in the seas of religious punditry. The so-called pundits are usually anchored in quite a circumscribed set of prejudices they project onto Poland. Both liberal and conservative leaning theologians like to think of my home country, for very different reasons, as a kind of Catholic Disneyland. Upon closer inspection these flattened Western pictures of Poland mirror what Edward Said labeled as Orientalism. They paint a picture of an exotic, backward, uncivilized, and at times dangerous... Read more

Eternity in a Dunghill: Infinity and Perspective

July 24, 2013 By Artur Rosman

You’ve no doubt encountered Blake’s “Auguries of Innocence.” It begins with: To see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour. I’ve stepped into a variation upon this theme. It appears in the remarkable work, Infinity and Perspective, by Karsten Harries (who seems to be a former student of Louis Dupre). Take in the full glory of my serendipity with this photo... Read more

Michael Hanby: Human Making in a Sacramental Cosmos

July 22, 2013 By Artur Rosman

Those of you who enjoy the new Communio website should also know they have a blog . Read more

Introducing Alfred Delp, SJ

July 21, 2013 By Artur Rosman