Today’s Aquinas: What Does God Understand?

March 23, 2015 By willduquette

We’re blogging through St. Thomas Aquinas’ Compendium Theologiae, sometimes called his Shorter Summa. Find the previous posts here. Thomas has established that God has intelligence, intellect, the ability to understand abstract concepts. The next question is, just what is it that God understands? What does He eternally contemplate? In Chapter 30, Thomas says, The foregoing exposition makes it clear that God understands through no other species than through His essence. A bit of review: first, don’t get hung up on the word species. ... Read more

Robert Plant & Alison Krauss: Your Long Journey

March 20, 2015 By willduquette

Anyone who’s heard Alison Krauss knows she can sing like an angel…but who knew Robert Plant could, too? Here’s a lovely duet that makes me quietly happy every time I hear it. Read more

The Saint’s Girl on Cocktail Parties

March 19, 2015 By willduquette

The cocktail party ploughed on through a syrupy flood of mixed alcohols, mechanical compliments, second-hand scandal, vapid criticism, lisps, beards, adolescent philosophy, and personal pronouns. — Leslie Charteris, The Saint and Mr. Teal It’s the “personal pronouns” that get me. _____ photo credit: Underwood Universal, c.1957 via photopin (license) Read more

Prayer and the Big Game: Can You Pray Before You Play?

March 18, 2015 By willduquette

It’s so typical a moment that it’s become trite: the athlete steps out for his big moment, crosses himself, and goes on to the glory of victory…or, possibly, the agony of defeat. And every so often I hear this kind of thing: “Yeah, like God’s going to win the game for him.” Last Superbowl Sunday I heard several people talking about praying for their team and then dismissing it, because “Of course, God doesn’t get involved in sports.” We’ve got... Read more

The Wonder of Reading Terry Pratchett Aloud

March 17, 2015 By willduquette

As I’m sure everyone who reads this blog already knows, Sir Terry Pratchett, author of the Discworld series, passed away last Thursday at the age of 66. One of the hazards of being an evening and weekend blogger is that you miss the news cycle: by the time I’d even heard the sad news, several other bloggers already had posts up with their tributes to Sir Terry. But I wouldn’t have rushed to get something out at the first moment... Read more

Today’s Aquinas: Can God Play Chess?

March 16, 2015 By willduquette

In a comment on last week’s Aquinas post, a reader objected to my characterization of God as pure act, with no mixture of potentiality. He said, As a human I live totally within the domain of potentiality. The idea that God is totally outside of potentiality is totally alien. He cannot be my God. I asked what he meant by living “totally within the domain of potentiality”, and he replied, I don’t live in the past. The present becomes the... Read more

Louis Prima: Pennies from Heaven

March 13, 2015 By willduquette

I’m not sure that Louis Prima was capable of singing a song without getting goofy with it, but that’s especially true of his recording of “Pennies from Heaven”. I especially like the mid-section where he gets into a kind of contest with his bandleader, Sam Butera. Prima scats a phrase, and Butera echoes it on trumpet, back and forth, until finally Butera flubs it and Prima crows, “I knew I’d get ya, I knew I’d get ya” as they move... Read more

Leslie Charteris on Getting Your Goat

March 12, 2015 By willduquette

A tinge of old beetroot suffused Mr Teal’s rubicund complexion. To say that his goat was completely and omnipotently got conveys nothing at all. In the last ten minutes his goat had been utterly annihilated, and the remains spirited away to the exact point in space where (so Einstein says) eternity changes its socks and starts back on the return journey. He was as comprehensively de-goated as a man can be. — Leslie Charteris, The Saint versus Scotland Yard. “Mr.... Read more

Third Orders Aren’t First Orders

March 11, 2015 By willduquette

Clare Short recently began formation as a Secular Carmelite, and has been blogging about it. She’s the mother of young children, and the other day she received a message about her vocation from a priest who should know better: I was recently sent a rather snooty message by a diocesan priest who used to be a Trappist monk. He was telling me that it was basically impossible for me to live a contemplative life in the context of a family... Read more

C.S. Lewis: The Space Trilogy

March 10, 2015 By willduquette

A couple of weeks ago, Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry posted about his first encounter with C.S. Lewis’ “Space Trilogy”: Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength. He devoured them, and I’ll take the liberty of abbreviating his comments thusly: Out of the Silent Planet is excellent science fiction, and his favorite of the three. Perelandra is a poorly disguised bit of religious propaganda. That Hideous Strength is really weird, and really good, but it isn’t science fiction at all.... Read more