After I spoke on that panel in New York last night, some of the organizers took us out to dinner. They mentioned that this was the last of three panels on Gay Catholic Whatnot (the first two having been on Scripture and moral theology, I think), and we discussed whether it made sense to open out the discussion to broader topics. I think the organizers were probably right to avoid bringing in new tangentially-related topics like e.g. Women in the... Read more
In the first installment of this series on great novels about marriage we looked at a thousand-plus-page epic novel about life and death in medieval Norway: early death, mutilation, miserable weddings, war, prowling wolves, even the Black Plague itself. So you might be relieved by the book I’ve chosen this time. Nick Hornby’s 2001 How to Be Good has a bright yellow cover, a modern British setting, and a manageable three-hundred pages. This first impression is misleading. How to Be... Read more
That mention of Feuerbach and joy reminded me of something I saw early one morning a few years ago, as I was walking up to the church. There was a young couple strolling along half a block ahead of me. The sun had come up brilliantly after a heavy rain, and the trees were glistening and very wet. On some impulse, plain exuberance I suppose, the fellow jumped up and caught hold of a branch, and a storm of luminous... Read more
On a large panel discussion called “Being Gay, Having Faith: Dialogues on Gay Sexuality and the Church.” It starts at 7 pm Wednesday, April 10 (TOMORROW) at the Parish Center at 405 West 59th Street. Hope to see many of you there! Read more
in the Weekly Standard. “The Pre-Raphaelites,” at the National Gallery until May 19: The Pre-Raphaelites attempted to craft a unified sensibility at once modern and medieval. Unlike devotees of the overlapping Aesthetic and Decadent movements, who, in some ways, were the Brotherhood’s heirs, the Pre-Raphaelites were aggressively English and Protestant. Shakespeare, Keats, Chaucer, and Wycliffe all get heroic treatments here. And the exhibit highlights the artists’ religious sensibilities—in fact, one room is dedicated to portrayals of “Salvation,” but religious themes... Read more
I forget where I found this list. And I think New Haven is the smallest town I’ve ever lived in, so, you know, I’m no expert! Still, I have read none of these, and now I’m intrigued…. Read more
at AmCon. Read more
See what I did there? Anyway, I have a whole lot of random notes or clarifications about that earlier post and no real organizing principle for them, so I will just throw them out here in a list. * I think I expressed myself poorly earlier, since some people seem to have read the initial post as saying, “With some addictions you need to treat underlying physical or emotional factors first, so that you can point out to the person... Read more
This is true. Read more
The subterranean miner that works in us all, how can one tell whither leads his shaft by the ever shifting, muffled sound of his pick? –quoted in Jane Langton’s Dark Nantucket Noon, which I just finished. It’s a purplish murder mystery in which almost all of the twists are easily guessable; but it’s still affecting, and it has brought me as close as I’ve ever been to actually wanting to read Moby-Dick so there’s that. Read more
Eve Tushnet
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