Why It’s Good that Priests are Like Pokemon

March 6, 2012 By Matthew Tan

Bad Catholic recently published a delightful post entitled “Priests and Pokemon“. The post draws a nexus linking happiness with hierarchy and structure, and argues that the structure that comes with children’s games like Pokemon follows an intuition that should come naturally in other parts of our culture as adults, but are often shunned by as obstacles to happiness. Bad Catholic also comes tantalisingly close to drawing parallels between play and connecting with God, a theme that shall be developed in... Read more

Communication, Form, and Place

March 2, 2012 By Matthew Tan

Steve Martin once said that you cannot play a sad song on a banjo, indicating that the material form more often than not dictates the content of any particular communication. Long before Martin, the poet W. H. Auden once intimated that to fully appreciate the richness and complexity of the world we live in, communication had to take place in a variety of material forms. What is happening in this age of consumption, however, is that the range of acceptable... Read more

Are We Too Human?

February 28, 2012 By Matthew Tan

Philosophers in the tradition of Nietzsche will echo his lament that “we are human, all too human” (made in his 1878 work Human, All Too Human: A book for Free Spirits), which is often used at one level to lament the brokenness of the human race, or at another level to reject the authority of those that might make truth claims from the standpoint of divine revelation (this is indicated by Nietzsche’s attack in that book on Christianity as something... Read more

Christian and Cybernetic Time: The Case of Facebook’s Timeline

February 23, 2012 By Matthew Tan

Kirk Bozeman has provided a thought-provoking piece in Christ and Pop Culture concerning the latest installment in the now all-too-common process of updating Facebook formats. The tweak in question, called the “Timeline“, keeps a record of every input made by the user on Facebook. Going further, however, Bozeman notes that Facebook places additional, not-too-subtle hints to have every stage of life that occurred before life on Facebook to become incorporated into its purview into a literal timeline of the user’s... Read more

Benedict XVI on the Indispensability of Monasteries

February 21, 2012 By Matthew Tan

The Vatican Information Service reported that, at a 9th October 2011 visit to the Carthusian Monastery of Ss Stephen and Bruno, Pope Bendict XVI spoke of the indispensability of Monasteries in our contemporary context. Monasteries are indispensable, Benedict said, because Their purpose…is to ‘improve’ the environment…because it is dominated by economic interests, concerned only with worldly things and lacking a spiritual dimension…In such a climate not only God but also our fellow man is pushed to the margin, and we... Read more

The Ecclesiology of the HHS Mandate

February 17, 2012 By Matthew Tan

Readers may have been following with varying degrees of concern the recent ruckus concerning the Department of Health and Human Services in the United States, requiring all employers, including Catholic institutions, to make provisions to make available contraceptives and possible abortifacient drugs as part of their health insurance plans. One of the most prominent themes that is featuring in the predominantly Catholic response to this measure is a condemnation of the Obama administration’s failure to respect the freedom of conscience... Read more

What is a Conservative? A View from the Front Porch

February 14, 2012 By Matthew Tan

Susannah Black, who blogs at Radio Free Thulcandra, recently wrote an interesting piece in the conservative blog Front Porch Republic, entitled “Debating Conservatism”. There are highly informative Chesterton quotes peppered throughout the piece, but the heart of the article is the assertion that what is often currently passed off as conservatism is really a rehashed nineteenth-century liberalism. The conceptual hinge is the notion of merit in social organisation. While many commentators say this is the special reserve of conservatives, Black... Read more

The Epistemology of the Mass

February 10, 2012 By Matthew Tan

In a culture dominated by the consumer mindset, many tend to treat the Mass as an opportunity to bring their shopping lists to the Lord, often without their being aware of it. The methodology of shopping lists rest on an epistemology in which, whether it is for things or people, we deign ourselves to be so self-certain that we can be sure that we need these things or persons for our lives to function. This may seem a natural thing... Read more

What is a Christian Revolution?

February 3, 2012 By Matthew Tan

In the Old Testament, the prophecies in the Book of Daniel speak of a time when, with the arrival of God’s Kingdom, the Kingdoms of this world become not adjusted or even reformed, but comprehensively overthrown. This very unsettling theme continues on in the New Testament, where we see numerous references in the Gospels to the arrival of this Kingdom. The undoing of the status quo is continued on in Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians (1:22-8) which, like Daniel,... Read more

Prayer and Blogging with Benjamin Myer

January 30, 2012 By Matthew Tan

Benjamin Myer, a theologian from the United Theological College in Parramatta and author at large of the Faith and Theology blog, has compiled an impressive mini-anthology on prayer, consisting of the thoughts of writers both ancient and modern (examples include Isaac the Syrian, Evagrius of Pontus, Julian of Norwich, John of the Cross, Simone Weil, Thomas Merton, Kallistos Ware and William Stringfellow). This post provides some useful material for beginning any reflection on prayer and comes highly recommended. Myer has... Read more