Today’s Aquinas: Does God Think The Way We Do?

March 9, 2015 By willduquette

We’re blogging through St. Thomas Aquinas’ Compendium Theologiae, sometimes called his Shorter Summa. Find the previous posts here. Thomas has shown that God is intelligent, that is, He has an intellect. Is that intellect like our own, or does it differ in particular ways? Unsurprisingly, it differs: God understands everything perfectly, so He doesn’t reason as we do: Since in God nothing is in potency but all is in act, as has been shown. God cannot be intelligent either potentially or habitually but... Read more

Stan Rogers: The Flowers of Bermuda

March 6, 2015 By willduquette

Just because it was going through my head last night, here’s a sprightly upbeat tune about heroic sacrifice and death at sea. He was the captain of the Nightingale Twenty-one days from Clyde in coal He could smell the flowers of Bermuda in the gale As he died in the North Rock Shoal But on the other hand, the other eighteen members of the crew survived due to his heroic actions, so there’s that. It’s sprightly and upbeat. (Really! I’m... Read more

Leslie Charteris on What the Well Dressed Man is Wearing

March 5, 2015 By willduquette

Golter’s head snapped round as though it had been jerked by an invisible wire. He had heard nothing of the arrival of the man who now stood over him, whose gentle, drawling voice had broken into his meditations far more shatteringly than any explosion could have done. He saw a tall, trim, lean figure in a grey fresco suit of incredible perfection, with a soft grey felt hat whose wide brim shaded pleasant blue eyes. This man might have posed... Read more

Conversion, or Rearranging Your Inner Furniture

March 4, 2015 By willduquette

Everybody’s familiar with what I’ll call “Big-C” Conversion, as in, Mr. So-and-so just converted to Catholicism, or Miss Such-and-Such converted to Christianity. Tonight, though, I need to speak to our RCIA group about “Conversion”; and for Catholics there’s a lot more to it than simply “I converted to Catholicism”. Big-C Conversion is a real and important thing; but then comes little-c “conversion of life”, an on-going process that ideally lasts the rest of one’s life. The problem with explaining conversion... Read more

A Tour of Tim Powers: The Anubis Gates

March 3, 2015 By willduquette

This week I continue my tour of Tim Powers with his first big hit, The Anubis Gates. I first read The Anubis Gates either in college or shortly after. A friend of mine kept telling me about this awesome novel he’d read, and telling me to read it; but his descriptions of it were rather unclear, and the cover didn’t help: two Anubis statues on plinths, with a glowing entry way between them, and the blurb, “Backward in time to... Read more

Today’s Aquinas: Intelligence is Immaterial

March 2, 2015 By willduquette

We’re blogging through St. Thomas Aquinas’ Compendium Theologiae, sometimes called his Shorter Summa. Find the previous posts here. So far, Thomas has shown that God, the First Mover, must be One, infinite in power and goodness, and the source of all that is good in creation. The next step is to show that God is Person (or, ultimately, Persons); and for Thomas, a person is that which possesses intellect and will: someone, you might say, with whom you could have a conversation. Thomas... Read more

Harry Belafonte: A Hole in the Bucket

February 27, 2015 By willduquette

I grew up listening to my parent’s music, as I suppose many people do; and among the things that stuck were Harry Belafonte’s Carnegie Hall albums. I could go on and on about Belafonte’s voice, and his sense of humor, and his energy, but long familiarity has made it more or less impossible for me to be objective. In any event, here’s a track from Belafonte Returns to Carnegie Hall, one of my favorites as a child. It’s a duet... Read more

Archie Goodwin on Eye Strain

February 26, 2015 By willduquette

Maria went, back inside, and shut the door. It was just as well, since it’s a strain to keep your eyes where they ought to be when they want to be somewhere else. — Rex Stout, Too Many Clients Read more

Lent, Weight Watchers, and Aristotle

February 25, 2015 By willduquette

I associate dieting with Lent. Not because I equate fasting with dieting, but because of a double coincidence. Ten years ago I was extremely overweight, and my doctor put me on a strict diet. It was a couple of days before Ash Wednesday, and I came home and told Jane, “I’m giving up food for Lent.” It was one of the those jokes of the “funny/painful” variety. That diet was success; I lost lots of weight, and kept it off... Read more

Review: Between Silk and Cyanide

February 24, 2015 By willduquette

I’m taking a break from the Tim Powers tour this week to review a book recommended to me by Leah Libresco a couple of weeks ago. I’d just finished Tim Powers’ Declare, a supernatural spy thriller, and Leah posted about a book about real spies: Leo Marks’ Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker’s War, 1941-1945. It seemed like a natural segue, and I grabbed it on Kindle. And then I opened it up—and was enchanted. Leo Marks is an excellent... Read more