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Pater Edmund Waldstein's Blog

The Lamp

The brilliant Matthew Walther of The Week and William Borman of Incudi Reddere are starting a Catholic magazine that promises to be all that a Catholic magazine should be. As their fundraising page puts it:

The Lamp will be a magazine in the old-fashioned sense, witty, urbane, not pompous or shrill, full of serious reporting, insightful opinions, squibs, oblique parodies, bagatelles, and arts coverage that draws attention to those things that are true, good, and beautiful whether they belong formally to the Church or not, not a throwaway click-driven venture in chasing worthless trends or drumming up outrage… At The Lamp we will take marching orders from neither the discredited ideologies of the progressive left or the libertarian-conservative right nor from the neoliberal consensus of atomization, spoliation, rootlessness, and mindless entertainment into which both are rapidly being subsumed, but rather from the immutable teaching of the Church. We are not nostalgists harkening after a mythical “moment before” when it was supposedly possible to reconcile the Church to the world.

I think it is going to be wonderful.

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Pater Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist.

Pater Edmund Waldstein OCist is a monk of Stift Heiligenkreuz.

4 responses to “The Lamp”

  1. ckuss Avatar
    ckuss

    “All that a Catholic magazine should be…wonderful.” Don’t you think that at this stage of the game it is better to avoid such gushing?

    I remember that back in the early 80s I used to gush like that about the New Oxford Review that combined a kind of highbrow Catholic Orthodoxy with social consciousness. But that Catholic orthodoxy got replaced by a type of highbrow snotty bitterness. In those same years I used to like the National Catholic Register for similar reasons: orthodoxy, piety social compassion, harmony with what the Bishops were teaching. (that was before the Legionaries bought and before it became after Legionary ownership the soapbox for Trump Republicans and Dubistas). And in the old days, even before going to U.D. I found Triumph fascinating. Fritz Wilhelmsen was a fascinating writer, and at U.D. he introduced us to Thomistic metaphysics. And the man was militantly pro-life. And I loved that. But later I learned to question his Franquismo and many things tied to that stance.

    Don’t expect too much from earthly things.

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    1. Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist. Avatar
      Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist.

      What do you mean by “this stage of the game”? It seems to me that each person is at a different stage of the game. Not having suffered your disappointments, I see know reason to share in your pessimism.

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      1. ckuss Avatar
        ckuss

        I am not pessimistic. I try to be sanely skeptical about ideologies. But that does not make me pessimistic about people, or about the modern world, or about the Church.

        The kind of integralism that I believe in is one that adheres to the Magisterium of the Church without confusing it with a mere Spirit of the Age, and stands therefore for a theological, historical, humanistic culture necessary to resist one´s becoming the victim of fashion, and is a bulwark against facile pessimisms and optimisms.

        The stage of the game is simply the moment of history. That each person is at a stage of his game, does not mean that it is senseless to talk about history. At this moment of history, I see less advantage in stressing merely human elements of apostolate in such a way that one creates the impression that by assembling a group of clever writers one has done something significant to assure that a periodical will be (and remain) “all that a Catholic magazine should be..wonderful”. This tilts too towards the Pelagian

        Evangelii Nuntiandi: what the modern world needs are witnesses.

        I find that this suggests an undue limitation on the concept of Catholicity. It turns Catholicity into the mark of things that I (and my friends) happen to like.

        But I suppose that you do have the right to speak an encouraging word to friends. I am not against healthy enthusiasms and encouraging people

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    2. Paul Avatar
      Paul

      Perhaps you still read the New Oxford Review, and you still find its tone distasteful and snotty. It certainly became very bitter towards the end of the tenure of its founding editor, Dale Vree (RIP). His son has, I think, been working to return the periodical to the spot you mention in your comment. Consider giving it a try again!

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