More About Those Amazing Bejeweled Skeletons

Last updated on: November 13, 2013 at 11:19 pm By Eve Tushnet

Let’s give a warm welcome to… those amazing bejeweled skeletons! Paul Koudounaris is not a man who shies away from the macabre. Though the Los Angeles-based art historian, author and photographerclaims that his fascination with death is no greater than anyone else’s, he devotes his career to investigating and documenting phenomena such as church ossuaries, charnel houses and bone-adorned shrines. Which is why, when a man in a German village approached him during a 2008 research trip and asked something... Read more

“A Catholic Dog,” 1877!

Last updated on: November 6, 2013 at 3:31 pm By Eve Tushnet

Via Pat McNamara. I know we’re supposed to be all unsentimental and stuff, but I eat this kind of thing up–just not on Fridays! Read more

Yoda and the Giving Tree: The Leaf-Green Faces of the Enemy

Last updated on: November 5, 2013 at 9:42 pm By Eve Tushnet

Two points connected solely by my desire to use this title. First, I am not going to say much about the long exchange in the comments to the post I was just talking about. You’ll know pretty quickly if it’s the kind of thing you can read without wanting to throttle a swan. But I wanted to register my full-throated agreement with Gabriel’s disapproval of the Yoda line, “Do or do not. There is no try.” People. This is very... Read more

The Diversity of the Saints Is a Diversity of Pain

Last updated on: November 5, 2013 at 9:25 pm By Eve Tushnet

Speaking of the wild diversity of the saints–over the weekend I read this powerful & bluntly painful piece from Mudblood Catholic: “God is doing something in the dark.” But what? And, really, “Why remain here in the dark?” And that post collided with a very intense night at the pregnancy center, and the readings from this past Sunday: For you love all things that are and loathe nothing that you have made; for what you hated, you would not have... Read more

Fools, Drunks, And Americans

Last updated on: November 5, 2013 at 9:53 pm By Eve Tushnet

As much as I love the idea of a ballet about alcoholism, this article on “Why Russia’s drinkers resist AA” seems to rely on unstated, wrong assumptions not only about addiction and recovery, but about the diversity of spirituality. Although the title is neutral–resistance can be heroic as well as bullheaded–the article itself seems pretty clearly slanted toward the conclusion that Russia needs to get with the Program. As you know, Dr. Bob, I have immense respect for the 12... Read more

“Baby’s Touch ‘N Feel Guide to Russian Literature”

Last updated on: November 5, 2013 at 2:23 pm By Eve Tushnet

via NJMKW: The Brothers Karamazov Feel the soft little bag where Dmitri hides his shameful money. He wears the bag around his neck. It is full of rubles. Why doesn’t Dmitri save himself? more Read more

Rowan Williams on CS Lewis

Last updated on: November 5, 2013 at 2:19 pm By Eve Tushnet

via Wesley Hill–it’s Anglicans all the way down on this fine Guy Fawkes Day: Lewis is a brilliant storyteller; he’s not one of the world’s great novelists. But even so, what he does, he does wonderfully. He is always very good at depicting something about joy. If you look at an extraordinary episode in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, where Lucy finds herself reading a story in a magical book, when she puts the book down she can’t remember... Read more

Enough Is Never Enough… Of “The Stuff”!

Last updated on: November 4, 2013 at 12:22 am By Eve Tushnet

So here in the wacky land we call the Catholic Church, Halloween is the beginning of spooky death season, not the end. All of November is set aside to honor the dead, and while I may have some serious posts on that theme, I also plan to watch a ton of horror movies, because I’m the Halloween equivalent of the person who gets really intense about singing Christmas carols on December 26, apparently. I started off with The Stuff, a... Read more

Halloween Skating 2013

Last updated on: October 29, 2013 at 11:54 pm By Eve Tushnet

I know you’ve been waiting for it! Previous years here, here, and I also posted this one year. Gregory and Petukhov do sexed-up, props-based steampunk anti-Gnosticism: Todd Eldredge is a mummy: This is the only thing I’ve ever described as “a bit too German avant-garde for me”: It’s always Swan Lake somewhere… and this one, from Sasha Cohen, is ferocious and dramatic and dark: And last, the greatest Carmen program ever skated: Read more

Clickbait Pro-Lifery with Existential Wisdom!

Last updated on: October 29, 2013 at 11:08 pm By Eve Tushnet

Ignore the “…with this one weird trick” headline, and also the (IMO) too-quick cheap shots at secular bases for meaning. There’s really great stuff in this piece on risk and unplanned pregnancy, by Tristyn Bloom: …I think the actual problem here, I think the reason people continue to defend abortion is because, essentially, of existential terror: fear of what will happen when something unexpected, uninvited, unplanned bursts into our lives demanding action. I think that is a crippling psychological problem... Read more