ARS LONGA, UNIVERSITAS BREVIS: Uh, sorry for the probably-mangled Latin. Anyway, I don’t really have much to say about my Gay Catholic Whatnot talk for Carnegie Mellon U’s Newman Center. The audience seemed intrigued. I could intrigue audiences on your campus! Why not invite me? If you’re not on the DC Metro I’d need you to pay for my transportation plus a nominal speaking fee, and feed and shelter me if I’m expected to stay overnight, but I would be very happy to have dinner w/students, do an extended Q&A;, stay after the talk to speak with people privately, or whatever else I can do to reach out to students with questions on all things romoerotic.

The one thing I did want to mention is that one student (not from CMU, I think) described the atmosphere on her campus in a way which made it sound, to me, pretty vulgar. A lot of campus Catholic groups seem to do Bible study, prayer groups, and corporal works of mercy for those already within Mother Church, and focus their evangelization efforts on discussions of controversial issues. I wondered whether they’d do better to give students opportunities to encounter beauty. Why not show Therese (this one), or do posters with poetry from St John of the Cross or Thomas a Kempis’s reworking of the Song of Songs as a hymn to Christ crucified?

There’s more than one way to be countercultural; and contemporary college culture is so often banal (not only at secular colleges, either) that offering an encounter with sublimity might be the most oppositional thing campus Christians could do.