Posted by Webster The honor roll of the YIMC Book Club reads as follows: Mary, Kneeling Catholic, EPG, Goodalice19, Mujerlatina, Mike, Regina, Frank & Webster (Who am I missing?) It’s been a long day, YIMC Book Clubbers! So I’m going to keep this short and turn it over to you. Chapter 3, “The Suicide of Thought” Frankly, between you and me, this overeducated Exeter boy finds Chesterton intimidating. He is so damn smart, he piles on the analogies, the metaphors,... Read more

Posted by Webster While preparing for tonight’s meeting of the YIM Catholic Book Club, I was struck by G. K. Chesterton’s appreciation for Joan of Arc in Orthodoxy, chapter 3. That Chesterton, whom I am growing to admire, could have written this about Joan, whom I have long revered, is all the proof I need that the Catholic Church is on to something. Though I have to admit it gives me pause—in a week when I’ve extolled pacifist Dorothy Day—that... Read more

Posted by Webster I don’t really want to walk another mile on this road, but I have been thinking about Jason Patterson’s thoughtful comment on my review of the new movie “The Road,” based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy. I want to expand on my earlier thoughts about the film and about such films in general. This is not so much a rebuttal of what Jason wrote as my own meditation on it. Jason wrote (and you can find other... Read more

Posted by Webster I’ll wager that only an atheist or a child will shed a tear over “The Road,” the new film based on the Cormac McCarthy novel. Like the book, the movie describes a post-apocalyptic world so godforsaken that not only is there no Second Coming, there was never even a First. In “The Road,” God isn’t dead; He was never born. The story is grim and uniformly gray. A father (Viggo Mortensen) and preteen son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) wander... Read more

Posted by WebsterWhen I told my father that I was converting to Catholicism, he said, “My Methodist mother would roll over in her grave.” Five minutes later, he said, “There are some things in my life that I am deeply ashamed of, and I haven’t even told your mother about them.” My mother was sitting at the table with us as he spoke. I’m not giving away any family secrets here. Everyone in the world has things they’re ashamed of.... Read more

Posted by WebsterI’ve outlined the teaching of the Catechism on “just war”; I’ve presented the pacifist case, represented by Dorothy Day and effectively endorsed by CCC 2304–2306. I’d like to return to a homily by St. John Chrysostom that I quoted on Thanksgiving Day, while throwing a bouquet to a man who combined aggression and pacifism in a historic way, St. Bernard of Clairvaux (pictured here). The homily, on Matthew, makes an odd proposal: Be a sheep, not a wolf,... Read more