Martin Snigg recently put up a comment in response to an article on abortion put up on the ABC Religion and Ethics Website by Anthony Kelly. The comment consisted of a passage attributed to Gil Bailie, a disciple of the French literary theorist and anthropologist Rene Girard, who famously wrote on the necessity of sacrifice in social organisation in books like Violence and the Sacred. What is striking and most compelling is the link Bailie makes between such a “sacrificial... Read more
Glenn Greenwald of Salon wrote a piece concerning the issue of the increasing trend of drone attacks leading to a growing number of civilian deaths. In that piece, Greenwald cited an anonymous counterterrorism official. Expressing exasperation on the coverage of the issue, this official sidestepped altogether the issue of attacking the veracity of the reports of those deaths (which mounting evidence is making very difficult to do, even for some supporters of the use of drones like Bill Roggio of... Read more
Many of the secular liberal set often decry the involvement of religious actors in fear that the integrity of the secular sphere has been undermined. The impression is one of a free space being unduly interfered with by agents that deign to make that space less free to further their own ideological programs. In response, a good number often use the line of argument that goes along this line: the space is free so as to allow for the expression... Read more
Today, the universal Church celebrates the passion of its founder, Jesus Christ. The events leading up to his death on Golgotha constitute the most brutal tragedy known to man. Yet the ancient theologians of the school of Alexandria, drawing heavily on the Gospel of John, describe this moment as the time of Jesus’ glorification. In what sense can we, reflecting on the brutality of the cross, at the same time become witnesses to the glorification of the man hanging on... Read more
In The Drama of Atheist Humanism, the French Jesuit Henri de Lubac remarked that It is not true, as is sometimes said, that man cannot organise the world without God. What is true is that, without God, he can only organise it against man. Read more
This week marked the feast of the Annunciation, the feast whereby the Incarnation was made known to Mary by the angel Gabriel. Because of the brevity of the passage in the Gospel of Luke, many tend to overlook the significance of this episode in the biblical narrative, and as a result underestimate how the incarnation of the Creator hinged on the decision of one of its created to participate in this divine plan. Many would thus pay little attention to... Read more
The Dominican intellectual Antonin Gilbert Sertillanges wrote in the 1920s a book entitled The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods. While a little dated in some parts it remains a highly practical and pertinent book in many areas for those who see the intellectual life as the fulfillment of one’s vocation. It is quite likely that Sertillanges would be galled at the obsession within universities with methodology and their attempts to make it almost an independent arbiter of whether the... Read more
The political philosopher Eric Voegelin long argued that Modernity was marked by an undercurrent of Gnosticism. Put simply, Gnosticism in most of its manifestations is marked by a deep unhappiness with the present life, and finds wisdom and enlightenment only to the extent that the self is stricken from its tainted body. We find exemplars of this Gnosticism even in postmodernity, particularly in cyber-enthusiasts such as Carnegie Mellon University’s Hans Moravec, who once talked about the promise of progressing to... Read more
Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich made a remark as part of his campaign that “the centerpiece of this campaign…is American exceptionalism versus the radicalism of Saul Alinsky”. Gingrich’s branding of Alinsky as a “radical” was an attempt to starkly differentiate himself from the perceived Socialism of the Obama administration. But is the association justified? Russell Arben Fox has written in direct response to Gingrich’s remark a brief biography of Alinsky in the conservative blog Front Porch Republic. One could wonder... Read more
At a recent conference organised by the Australian Society for Continental Philosophy, delegates would have been introduced to strands of Play Theory, elements of which would have been interesting and theologically nurturing. One such theorist, the Hungarian-American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, wrote in 1981 that play is more than just the generation of self-centred pleasure for those engaged in play. Whether it would be in the context of a game, dance or theatrical performance, play can be responsible for extending reality... Read more
The Divine Wedgie
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