What the Incarnation Does to Consumption

Last updated on: January 31, 2016 at 8:48 pm By Matthew Tan

Richard Aleman has taken over the helm of The Distributist Review, arguably one of the most famous English-speaking web magazines on the economic outlook known as distributism, advocated by the likes of GK Chesterton in the early twentieth century and who still has advocates and practitioners today (notable examples include the Mondragon group of cooperatives in Spain). The site had been on an extended hiatus, but has seen a revival in late 2015 under Aleman’s editorship. The Divine Wedgie’s Matthew... Read more

When a Dead Body Attends Mass

Last updated on: January 24, 2016 at 5:23 am By Matthew Tan

One morning, probably due to a combination of liturgical illiteracy and bad timing, a coffin with a body was casually wheeled into a suburban parish in the middle of the Eucharistic liturgy, in preparation for a funeral which was to come immediately after. So there it was, a dead body, cutting through the almost boring familiarity of the space between “Let us pray” and “One God forever and ever”. At first glance, a dead body casually gliding into a non-funerary... Read more

Jesus, Jazz and Who We Are

Last updated on: January 16, 2016 at 12:52 am By Matthew Tan

A previous post explored the assertion by Lacanian psychoanalysis that a subject undergoes a kind of death when exhaustively encased within language, or more precisely, linguistic symbols. This is due to the limitations of symbols in expressing the fullness and the complexity within each subject. True subjectivity, according to Lacanian psychoanalysis, comes when one breaks through the realm of symbols into what Lacan calls the “Real”. That post also hinted at how, in a media-saturated culture, true reality is quashed... Read more

Syndicate Theology Symposium: Beyond Secular Order by John Milbank

Last updated on: January 6, 2016 at 6:25 am By Matthew Tan

While Christmas and New Year celebrations went on over the last two weeks, the folk at Syndicate Theology (mentioned in a post in 2014 – Happy New Year, by the way) were hard at work in putting together a symposium around John Milbank’s follow up to his highly anticipated and equally controversial Theology & Social Theory. This symposium on Beyond Secular Order was edited by Dr. Justin Tse of the University of Washington, who blogs at Religion. Ethnicity. Wired. The... Read more

Mary’s Visitation & the Ark of the Covenant

Last updated on: December 21, 2015 at 1:44 am By Matthew Tan

The Gospel in the Lectionary for the Fourth Sunday of Advent recounts the visitation by Mary to her kinswoman Elizabeth, which is recounted in Chapter 1 of the Gospel of Luke. It is a familiar scene, where Elizabeth breaks out into prophetic utterance, asking rhetorically “But why am I so favoured that the Mother of my lord is coming to me?”, declaring Mary as “the Mother of my lord”, and Mary responds with her famous hymn of liberation, the Magnificat.... Read more

Changing Sex & Living Forever

Last updated on: December 14, 2015 at 4:46 am By Matthew Tan

The editor of the Mars Hill Audio Journal, Ken Myers, recently released some bonus material under the title “Possibility or Potency?“. The materials include two stimulating interviews, the first being with Dr. Mark Shiffman, Associate Professor Humanities at Villanova University. The second interview is with Gilbert Meilaender, a senior research professor at Valparaiso University. The unifying arc of these two interviews is the topic of transhumanism, the radical strands of which seek to technologically enhance the human person and... Read more

Fundamental Joy

Last updated on: December 7, 2015 at 6:40 am By Matthew Tan

It finally happened. In an interstate flight, the Pixar movie Inside Out was watched and, oddly enough, it was quite the charmer. Even more surprisingly, Inside Out proved to be rather philosophically and theologically astute. Whether conscious or not, whoever conceptualised the movie has rather deftly brought together elements of Augustinian theology, as well as an appreciation of Terrance Malick’s Tree of Life, in which interior states folded outwards to form landscapes that were inhabited, rather than mere heremetically sealed... Read more

Lament as Neo-Genesis

Last updated on: December 1, 2015 at 10:16 pm By Matthew Tan

In a previous post, mention was made of a quote by St. Isaac the Syrian, in which tears bore the capacity for renewing the self and the world. To paraphrase St. Isaac, the “place of tears” lays the foundations upon which the “path to a new age” can be paved. It is arguable that such words come, not from mere mystical reflection, but upon an interface between one’s sufferings and the words of scripture, in particular the first two books... Read more

Fascism, Simulation & Christ the King

Last updated on: November 22, 2015 at 3:39 am By Matthew Tan

In 1925, Pope Pius XI instituted the solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe – more commonly known as the feast of Christ the King. Originally celebrated on the last Sunday of October, the Solemnity was shifted in 1970 to the last Sunday of Ordinary Time. The historical matrix behind the institution of this feast is complex, but one immediate factor that loomed large in the mind of Pius XI was the rise of Benito Mussolini’s Fascist... Read more

Psychoanalysis & Death Through Language

Last updated on: November 14, 2015 at 2:47 am By Matthew Tan

To say that much of the world has lost the sacramental mode of viewing and engaging the world may not come as a huge surprise for many Christians. What may surprise, however, is the extent to which the subsequent loss of sacramental presence has become the norm for a Christian engagement with the world around them. With this loss of presence, words and linguistic symbols has now become the default in perceiving things in the world and events that happen... Read more