Video Meliora, proboque; Deteriora sequor

I wrote The Praise of Folly in times of peace; I should never have written it if I had foreseen this tempest...I see no one becoming better, every one becoming worse, so that I am deeply grieved that in my writings I once preached the liberty of the spirit....What I desired then was that the abatement of external ceremonies might much redound to the increase of true piety. But as it is, the ceremonies have been so destroyed that in place of them we have not the liberty of the spirit but the unbridled license of the flesh....What liberty is that which forbids us to say our prayers, and forbids us the sacrifice of the Mass? - Erasmus, in a letter to St. Thomas More

"Trust women." Just not women who regret their abortions, right? - commeter on Amy's blog concerning pro-abort sign

Stephen King and J.K. Rowling are the favored providers of literary “guilty pleasures” to British readers, according to a recent survey. John Grisham and Dan Brown are tied for third place. But columnist Thomas Sutcliffe challenges the whole notion of guilt about reading. “How guilty a pleasure can any book be when the alternative is to power up a PlayStation and run amok through Miami with a chain saw?” he asks. - blogger at "People of the Book"


- art painted by Erik of "Erik's Rants & Recipes"

I think most Democrats know me. They understand that my support for the war was always insincere. Of course, knowing what we know now, that you could vote against the war and still be elected president, I would never have pretended to support it. - SNL parody of Hillary Clinton

For a Western Catholic, the only place to start is Augustine. Every Christian should read the Confessions, of course. If you’ve got time, try City of God, which is long but seems to cover just about everything. De Trinitate is hard for a beginner, but it influences every Western theologian afterwards, and is beautiful and brilliant. One of my favorite Fathers is St Gregory the Great. His Forty Gospel Homilies are some of the best things of their kind I know. The Moralia in Job was perhaps the most widespread and influential expository patristic work throughout the middle ages...Irenaeus! And try the desert Fathers. For the middle ages, look at St Bernard. He’s got sermons on everything, spiritual treatises of various kinds, a mystical homiletical commentary on the Song of Songs. Good stuff. Then I would start with St Bonaventure’s shorter works. There’s a volume out in English called “Mystical Opuscula” which is pretty cheap and full of good stuff, prayers, meditations of various kinds, a systematic exposition of the spiritual life (”The Triple Way”)...Then try something harder, like Aquinas’ Summa Contra Gentiles...Look at St Catherine of Sienna’s Dialogue for some feminine input. In modern times, St Alphonsus Ligouri seems to have written about almost everything. He’s not my cup of tea, but I know a lot of people who like him. I prefer St Francis de Sales, especially Introduction to the Devout Life and The Catholic Controversies. One of the best spiritual writers ever is St John of the Cross, but St Teresa is more approachable. Perhaps best of all for the newbie is St Therese, who is simple but profound. - Michael Sullivan's reading recommendations, on Pontifications

I recently finished this extraordinary book [Girard's "Things Hidden from the Foundation of the World'] and whole-heartedly recommend it...After Oughourlian comments on the barren landscape of our contemporary intellectual climate ("a whole host of epigonal movements so devoid of real crativity that they seem more pathetic than dangerously misleading"), Girard closes with the following:

"I began to breathe more freely when I discovered that literary and ethnological critiques are inadequate - even if they are not totally worthless - when confronted with the literary and cultural texts they claim to dominate. This was before I came to the Judaeo-Christian scriptures. I never even imagined that those texts were there for the purpose of passive enjoyment, in the same way as we look at a beautiful landscape. I always cherished the hope that meaning and life were one. Present-day thought is leading us in the direction of the valley of death, and it is cataloguing the dry bones one by one. All of us are in this valley but it is up to us to resuscitate meaning b relating all the texts to one another without exception, rather than stopping at just a few of them. All issues of 'psychological health' seem to me to take second place to a much greater issue- that of meaning which is being lost or threatened on all sides but simply awaits the breath of the Spirit to be reborn. Now all that is needed is this breath to recreate stage by stage Ezekiel's experience in the valley of the dead."

- Quin Finnegan at "Korrektiv"

Where a society has a frail sense of itself that need to provide a sacrifical victim is correspondingly greater. I've often thought that this is a possibly explanation for the current problems in Islam - a culture under pressure needs to establish itself with the sacrifice of law breakers. Perhaps also the current crisis in the Novus Ordo, the irrational frothing at the mouth of French bishops, for example, and their desire to see the Lefebvrists cast out and kept out - ritually sacrificed as it were - indicates a insecurity in their underlying worldview. The same is often true of conservative religious groups - the devil within the gates is the one that must be exposed and cast out: the sexual deviant, the heretic, the impure one. - blogger at "Dominicanus"

Then Mother St. Jude said, "I know nothing of God's intentions. But I can tell you what St. John of the Cross has written. 'I am not made or unmade by the things which happen to me but by my reaction to them. That is all God cares about.' Do you understand, Marie?"...St. John tells us that to do things because you want to do them or because you think they are right are simply human considerations. He tells us that obedience influenced by human considerations is almost worthless in the eyes of God. I obey--always--because God commands me." She smiled. "So I am not a victim, Marie. . . ." - from the novel "Cold Heaven" by Brian Moore, via Steven Riddle