We’re blogging through St. Thomas Aquinas’ Compendium Theologiae, sometimes called his Shorter Summa. Find the previous posts here. And now we get to something meaty: the analogy of being. We say that a statement is the truth when it corresponds with reality; we say that God is the Truth. We say that an act of generosity or charity is good; we say that God is the Good. We say that a painting or a person is a “beauty”; we say that God is... Read more
I first heard of Nat King Cole when I was a small boy watching cartoons on TV. Or, rather, when I was a small boy wishing that the K-Tel commercial would wind up so that I could back to watching cartoons on TV. You remember those ads? There’d be a crawl of song names going up the screen as snippets of different songs played and the announcer explained how you could get all of these great hits for next to... Read more
‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions’ caused forty-eight hours of purgatory when an F-section agent spelt hell with three ‘l’s. — Leo Marks, Between Silk and Cyanide: A Code Maker’s War 1941-45 From an outstanding book I’ll be reviewing next week. Read more
Being a California kid, I first became acquainted with Fr. Junipero Serra almost as soon as I got to school. I’ve visited many of the missions, and many of them many times, especially San Carlos Borromeo in Carmel, California, which was Fr. Serra’s home base. And being a resident of the Left Coast, I also here fairly regularly about Fr. Serra’s sins, how he dragooned the local Indians* into living at the missions and prevented them from leaving, how he... Read more
The third book in Tim Power’s body of niftiness is distinctly better than his first two, though he’s clearly still maturing as an author. It makes the decisive move: from the future to the historical past, and in particular to the secret history behind the history we know, a field Powers has been mining in various ways ever since. The Drawing of the Dark takes place in the 1520’s, and concerns one Brian Duffy, an Irish mercenary and fencing instructor.... Read more
We’re blogging through St. Thomas Aquinas’ Compendium Theologiae, sometimes called his Shorter Summa. Find the previous posts here. We understand the one God through a glass darkly, by means of many names: A second point is this: since our intellect does not adequately grasp the divine essence in any of the conceptions which the names applied to God signify, the definitions of these terms cannot define what is in God. That is, any definition we might formulate of the divine wisdom would not... Read more
From Daily Theology (a site I’d not previously visited) comes this year’s list of 20 Catholic pick-up lines, just in time for Valentine’s day. Several of them made me laugh out loud, especially #3: “The Holy Spirit is driving me into the wilderness of your temptations.” Read more
Some years ago, after watching some Harry Potter movie or other, my second son mispronounced the Potterverse unlocking charm, “alohomora”, as “Aloha, Moron!” This led to the formulation of a companion charm, “howdeedoofus”, pronounced “Howdy, Doofus!”. We didn’t ascribe a meaning to this charm, just admiring the sound of it, but over time it has come to be a charm against bad jokes. By which I mean: when my elder son makes a bad joke, I will say, “Howdy, Doofus!”... Read more
I’ve been hearing a lot of Louis Armstrong songs recently; and I wanted to share some of my favorites. These are all classic songs from the “Great American Songbook”, but Satchmo’s delivery is distinctive and all his own. Give him a few minutes, okay? “A Kiss to Build a Dream On”: “La Vie en Rose”: With Ella Fitzgerald, “Dream a Little Dream of Me” (don’t miss this one): They knew how to sing ’em in those days. Read more
I remember being accosted on Forbes and Murray in Squirrel Hill by a Buddhist who expressed a desire to know if I wanted to be at peace with myself. I didn’t answer him, and I didn’t think much about it until I was reminded, thirty or forty years later, by a rant on the subject in a trashy sci-fi novel I happened to read. In general, I agree with the author of said trashy sci-fi novel: I don’t want to... Read more
Cry 'Woof'
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