Links R & C 10

Recent

Aelianus, Vicus in the De Regno, Laodicea.

Artur Rosman, Alt-Right Bête Noire Milo Yiannopoulos is an Aquinas-quoting Catholic , Cosmos the in Lost.

Bre Payton, A Disabled Lawmaker Speaks Out About Abortion: ‘People Like Me’ Are Facing Extinction, The Federalist.

Matthew Schmitz, Waiting For a Young Pope, First Things.

Rick Yoder, The Young Pope: The Second Coming of Brideshead Revisited? Cosmos the in Lost.

Swapna Krishna, Thieves Rappelled Into a London Warehouse in Rare Book Heist Read, The Smithsonian: «…investigators theorize that a wealthy collector known as “The Astronomer” may have hired the thieves to steal the books for him.»

Classic

20o2: Chris Charles, Nostradamus: It’s England, BBC Sport Online: «Nostradamus was very serious about the World Cup. As far as England’s group games go, the great man suggests Eriksson will feel torn between his adopted country and the nation of his birth, but will eventually lead his new team to glory against Sweden. And here’s what he actually said: “Pope of Rome, be careful about coming close to the city that two rivers shall water. “There you have come to spit your blood. Thou and thine when the rose shall flower.” Pope of Rome, of course, translates as former Lazio boss, the two rivers represent England and Sweden and the flowering rose symbolises an English victory.»

2008: Richard Whittall, Confessions of a Guardian Football Weekly Podcast Addict, The Run of Play.

2015: Helen Andrews, AA Envy, The Hedgehog Review.

Sancrucensia

2010: Per Evangelica Dicta.

 

 

Links R & C 9

Recent

M.W. Lucik, A Radical Politics of Solidarity in the Age of Abortion, Tradinista! «Abortion and euthanasia are fundamentally a refusal to acknowledge the infant in the womb or the elderly or dying person as a person, “to be made a sharer, on a par with ourselves, in the banquet of life to which all are equally invited by God” (Sollicitudo rei socialis no. 39). They are, in this sense, contrary to true solidarity, as John Paul outlined it for us. But recall that John Paul taught that solidarity and care for the common good are inextricably linked; they are, in fact, the same thing. Thus, anything contrary to true solidarity is contrary to the common good. The force, then, of Benedict’s argument is manifest. When a polity “moves toward the denial or suppression of life,” it moves toward a negation of the common good expressed as solidarity.»

Links R & C 8

Recent

Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P. on Church and State, Lumen Scholasticum. «It would be absurd to contend that princes, in making laws, are able to act as if no revelation exists, when in fact it does exist, and are able to enjoin those things which perhaps are prohibited by it. This would be to say: the human legislator is greater than the divine legislator.»

Michael Gilleland, A Homeric Phrase, Laudator Temporis Acti. «[In] Babylonian poetry […] the future is determined by the so-called Tablet of Destinies, the ṭupšīmātu. Whoever possesses it controls the world. Its place is on its owner’s knees…»

Andrew Cusack, Russian Demographic Turnaround.

A Nāhuatl hymn for All Saints’ Day, Nāhuatl Texts.

Thumb War, XKCD.

Classic

2015: The Order of the World, Entirely Useless. «Thus a successful world is one in which the order of time basically corresponds with the order of causality and the order of goodness. This is what St. Thomas means when he says that the good of the world consists in its order, and that its order consists principally in the fact that one thing is the cause of another, and that one thing is better than another.» Not the whole of what St. Thomas meant, but an important part of it.

1950: Charles De Koninck, Sedeo Ergo Sum, Laval théologique et philosophique. «Our opinion is of course very much down to earth, and yet there is ample proof of the fact that a philosophy which pretends to seek its first principles in the realm of pure thought soon degenerates into a philosophy of the spirit and winds up in the most terrestrial crudeness and a nihilism that is only too tangible.»

 

Sancrucensia

2011: Against C.S. Lewis’s Idea of Hell.

 

 

Links R & C 7

Recent

Stomachosus, Catholics and the Ethics of Voting, The Josias. Some helpful distinctions to be made in the moral evaluation of voting.

Subsannabit, On The Sunset of the Pregnant Mule. A scoffer scoffs at the foregoing.

Nathaniel Gotcher, Urbanism and the Common Good, The Josias. «The modern polis is fractured… Is it any wonder our politics are just as fractured?»

Michael Gilleland, The Most Miserable of All Creatures, Laudator Temporis Acti. «For truly there is nothing, I think, more miserable than man among all things that breathe and move on earth.» — Homer

Rev. John Hunwicke, Lund, Fr Hunwicke’s Mutual Enrichment. «I am always happiest when I have been proved right. This is why I am so happy most of the time.»

A promising conference will be taking place in Poland in April: Towards a Biblical Thomism.

Classic

2014: Alan Jacobs, a word to those on the journey, more than 95 theses.  «Either throughout your history or at some significant point in your history you let your views on a massively important issue be shaped largely by what was acceptable in the cultural circles within which you hoped to be welcome. How do you plan to keep that from happening again?» (via Rod Dreher, A Question For ‘Affirming’ Churches, The American Conservative).

2007: Tom Howard, Ashes to Ashes: ‘She Knows Who I Am.’ Crisis. «Whatever one may make of all of that, I found myself brought to a halt by a remark made by the old geezer whose job is (solely, I think) to hoist the royal standard at the top of the great tower when the queen takes up residence. Since there are more than 300 servants at Windsor, obviously the sovereign can’t know each one personally. But this man, with apparent joy, finished with the remark, “But she knows who I am.”»

Sancrucensia

2010: The Analogy of the Spiritual Sense of Scripture to Natural Signs.

 

 

Links R & C 6

Recent

HHG, 15 Ways to be a More Effective Pro-Life Advocate, The Josias. 

Peter Leithart, Shadow Work, First Things (blog). «Illich thinks feminists are right to complain that women are discriminated against in shadow work. They do more of it, and they are paid nothing. What they miss, Illich argues, is that this sort of economic activity is not the product of residual patriarchy, or of traditional gendered work. It’s the opposite…»

Joseph Koczera, S.J., The new St. Elias. The City and the World.

Subsannabit, Cf. 1110a. An amusing new troll appears on the internet, and cites Aristotle to troll me.

Classic

2013: Adam Kelly, The Map and the Territory: Infinite Boston. «…when it comes to emotionally affecting passages of philosophically inspired prose, Wallace has few equals in literary history. It is difficult for me to read, even silently, those closing sentiments – “It is tragic and sad and chaotic and lovely. All life is the same…” – without being moved both intellectually and emotionally, without having my head throb heartlike, as Wallace suggested to his editor Michael Pietsch he wanted to achieve with Infinite Jest.»

2011: Richard Whittall, On Soundtracks, The Run of Play. «…during the lead up to Phil Neville’s decisive game-winning penalty against Chelsea last weekend, Zadok the Priest came up on my iTunes player. Handel’s expectant arpeggios accompanied Neville’s nervous placing of the ball, and finally, after he scored and had just walked up to the crowd, the choir entered on a double forte just as Neville stuck out his arms to Everton’s supporters. Writing about it does it no justice. It was magical.»

Sancrucensia

2010: Per Evangelica Dicta.

 

 

Links R & C 5

Recent

A new edition of Franzelin’s On Divine Tradition!

Tertullian on the Duty of Praying for the Emperor, The Josias. An excerpt from Tertullian’s Apology, with an introduction by me.

Ursula Kals, Katholik zu vermieten, Frankfurter Allgemeine. Superficially a funny column, but deeply sad on consideration. Invents the brilliant new word Karaoke-Katholiken.

P.J. Smith, John Podesta’s Catholic connections, Semiduplex. As Kojève would say, the Catholic Church is difficult to co-opt.

Addie Mena, Leaked emails show Clinton’s team should read a catechism, CNA Blog. The Catholic Church is also apparently difficult to understand— at least for American progressives.

Andrew Sullivan, I Used to Be a Human Being, New York Magazine. «I felt a trace of a freedom all humans used to know and that our culture seems intent, pell-mell, on forgetting.»

Aelianus, Emperor and Pope, Laodicea. «…to see the Emperor’s son and heir Otto von Habsburg kneeling before St John Paul II at his father’s beatification knowing that the Pope’s father was a fiercely loyal soldier in the service of Emperor Karl and that Karol Wojtyla was named after the last Emperor.»

The Tradinista Collective, The magisterial sources of the Tradinista! manifesto: part I, Tradinista!. It’s nice to a Catholic political project cite Unam Sanctam and Regnans in excelsis in defense of its position.

Eric Voegelin, On Classical Studies, The Imaginative Conservative. 

Classic

2009: Andrew Cusack, The Continued Decline & Fall of the International Herald Tribune. I used to read the IHT in the library of the Franciscan University of Steubenville Austria Program in Gaming as a child. Cusack’s piece was a fitting lament on its demise.

2013: James Chastek, Do I want a Christian culture? «Taboos are the human law at its most powerful – they are the most perfect and powerful tool for what St. Thomas calls the power of law to lead to virtue. Mere statutory laws bridle behavior; taboos actually restructure thought and form the will.»

2006: boeciana, Historical Method For Beginners, Laodicea. «But our perspective is, of course, irrelevant.»

Sancrucensia

2014: Tarnishing the Splendor of Truth.

 

Links R & C 4

Recent

Claudio Gatti, Elena Ferrante: An Answer? The New York Review of Books.

Peter J. Leithart, Scarcity, First Things (blog). Leithart excerpts John Milbank and Adrian Pabst’s promising new book— including their insightful observations on Girard.

Burn my Vote: an ingenious way of disarming the common argument against voting for a third party in an American presidential election: “a vote for a third party is a vote for [insert name of candidate considered to be the worst].” One is matched with a voter from the opposite “side” of the political spectrum, who also commits to voting for a third party.

James Chastek, Liturgical Reform, Just Thomism. A liturgy that “spoke to the heart of contemporary persons” would be pagan. «Historically, many liturgies did count on the power of horror and libido: human sacrifice, temple prostitutes, collective use of hallucinogens, crowd frenzy, public mutilation, finding meanings in chance events…»

Thomas Storck, Capitalism and Economism, The Distributist Review. «Why should family and community, culture and traditions, be treated as trivial matters in contrast to economic activity?»

Joseph Trabbic, The much-maligned unicorn, Philosophy at AMU. Unicorns once roamed the earth.

Classic

2012: Mary Norris, In Defense of “Nutty” Commas, The New Yorker. Close punctuation is good.

2008: Aelianus, The Vacuity of Modernism, Laodicea. «…it is clear that a great many theologians do not possess the supernatural virtue of faith.»

Sancrucensia

2010: Saint Benedict and Thackeray on False Peace.

2011: On Jokes and the Difference Between Austria and Prussia.

2011: Kantian Ngrams.

 

Links R & C 3

Recent

John Zmirak, Tradinistas: Angry, Churchy Millennials Who Scorn Freedom and Demand a Guaranteed Income for Breathing, The Stream. Zmirak is always good for a laugh.

Elliot Milco, Some Comments on “Gender Essentialism”, The Paraphasic. «…the social features of the sexes are an expression (in some way natural) of the underlying material differences between their bodies.»

Jane Zwart, Only Connect: An Interview with Zadie Smith, Books and Culture. «And the closest I ever came to being a formal Christian was The Screwtape Letters, which actually David Foster Wallace recommended to me. I found it convincing. I think he found it convincing, too.»

Gregory DiPippo, Videos of the Consecration of St Elias Church, New Liturgical Movement. I’ve never actually been to St. Elias Church, but I once spent a month in Ukraine with Fr. Galadza, and have heard about it often since, so that it has taken on a special place in my heart. The consecration liturgy is glorious.

Dom Mark Kirby, O.S.B., The seventh degree of humility, Vultus Christi. «One cannot abide in the presence of the Host without being drawn into Its silence and hiddenness. It is a terrible thing, this Eucharistic humility of God. The Most Holy Eucharist is the Sacrament of the Divine Humility. Those who partake of It worthily enter into the humility of God, for one cannot eat the Bread of the Humble and remain proud.»

Rev. Johannes M. Schwarz, Building the “Hermit’s Hot Hog” – Rocket Stove Plans meet the Vortex Design, Vimeo. Fr. Johannes, my predecessor as Vizedirektor of the Leopoldinum and the world’s coolest man, now a hermit in the Italian Alps, builds an oven for his hermitage.

Classic

2004: Gassalasca Jape, S.J., The Situation is Very Good, it is Hopeless, The New Pantagruel. Ah, The New Pantagruel, vanished beau idéal of the webzine.

2012: Daniel Nichols, Unfolding, Caelum et Terra. There used to be good conversations in the comboxes of C&T.

Sancrucensia

2010: Jerome K. Jerome and S. Bernard on Sleep.

2012: What is Heard About Nature and the Trajectory of Certain Thomists.

2012: Father Johannes Schwarz is a Genius.

 

 

Links R & C 2

Recent

Peter Kwasniewski, Candlelight Missa Cantata at Wyoming Catholic College for the Seven Sorrows of Our Lady, New Liturgical Movement. I have often thought that the general introduction of electric light into churches was not good for the liturgy— Kwasniewski’s reflection show why.

 

Martin Kettle, Brexit was a revolt against liberalism. We’ve entered a new political era, The Guardian. «Liberalism is a Hydra-headed and extremely resilient creature.»

 

James Chastek, The order of act and potency, Just Thomism, «Taking matter as logically prior to act is the foundation of all materialism, mechanism, the Analytic doctrine of “possible worlds”, and most other forms of primitive thought.»

 

Steven Long, The Common Good, Thomistic Institute on Soundcloud. Excellent lecture on the deep teleological account of the common good.

 

Andrew Cusack, Norway’s New Passport. «The Scandos are known for being among the few peoples who can do modernism well.»

idem, The Spina di Borgo. Mourning the loss of the old approach to St. Peter’s.

Frater Urban Hannon, O.Praem. et al., Against Gender, First Things Podcast. Frater Urban recalls the argument he made against the idea of sexual orientation when his name was still Michael Hannon, and also offers some reflections on the nature of canons regular, and on the Christian life.

There is a new browser called Brave by the fellow who got sacked at Mozilla for being against homosexual pseudogamy.

Some American scholars and writers, including Rusty Reno of First Things, endorse the American Caligula. May he appoint all their horses to the senate.

Classic

2010: Aelianus, The Servile Arts, Laodicea. A post deliciously dismissive of the most prestigious disciplines in contemporary culture.

2010: Harald Bergbauer, Conservatism in Germany, The University Bookman. Informative article on Caspar von Schrenck-Notzing, including this jewel of a Schrenck-Notzing quote: “Washington and Lenin are much more figures of the present Germany than Bismarck or Frederick the Great.”

2007: Arturo Vasquez, On the Church and Language Or: On Pizza, Beer, Machine Guns, Transliterated Greek Words, Argentine Sedevacantism, Taxi Cabs and Other Attractions of My Theological Freak Show, the Sarabite. Arturo at his most Arturo-ish.

Sancrucensia

(I’ve decided to add a section for posts from my own archives, which it would seem slightly hubristic to include under “classic”).

2010: Kingsley on Lectures.

 

Links R & C 1

Having reduced my twitter account to a bot that post links to this blog, I have decided to post a list of links here from time to time. I am calling the series “Links R & C,” because I shall be posting the links under two headings: “Recent” and “Classic.” Blogging is an ephemeral medium, but certain blogposts of long past years have caught like burrs in the trouser-legs of my memory, and I think it worth while to re-read them from time to time.

Recent

Eugene Vodolazkin, The New Middle Ages, First Things. An amusing essay by a Russian novelist in which he argues that post-modern literary culture is more akin to the manuscript culture of the Middle Ages than the print culture of modernity.

James Chastek, Dialogue on Religion and Laïcité, Just Thomism. The ever fresh and philosophical Chastek on the paradox of cordoning off religion out of fear of death.

Idem, The critique of contemporary conservativism, ibidem. The most memorable point is #2 on the vacuity of the term “big government.”

Michael Gilleland, Disloyalty, Laudator Temporis Acti. «To the average pagan their refusal to burn a few grains of incense on the Emperor’s birthday must have appeared as a deliberate and insolent expression of disloyalty, rather like refusing to stand up when the national anthem is played.»

P.J. Smith, We’re back on the train, Semiduplex. Smith’s reflections on the Holy Father’s recent endorsement of an Argentine implementation of Amoris Laetitia. Semiduplex is solid as always, though I think he is a bit too harsh on St. John Paul II’s letter to Cardinal Baum on how one can intend not to fall into a certain sin again while expecting that one will. This is certainly often the case with habitual sins (eg. gluttony and drunkenness). Of course, one ought to avoid the near occasion of sin, but the supposition here is that there are very serious reasons for not extricating oneself from the occasion. This does, of course, show that those reasons must be very strong indeed, if they are to justify staying in a situation so dangerous to one’s immortal soul. Update: Smith has clarified his position.

Ronaldo as a Theologian, Ludorum Pulcherrimus Football. Over at my new soccer blog I reflect on the Brazilian Ronaldo’s Augustinian understanding of the Pauline principle that “in everything God works for the good of those who love Him.”

Classic

2011: Berenike, Lublin, philosophy and shoes, Laodicea. Berenike was a true master of the blog form. It is hardly fair to regret that she gave up blogging to devote herself to higher things, but she has certainly been missed. This post had everything: odd, endearing autobiographical detail; Lucky Jim style put-downs of great academic philosophers; and even a little philosophy!

2010: J. Nordlinger, Salzburg Souvenirs, National Review. Even people who are wrong about most everything can write good blogposts about the beauties of Salzburg.

2011: James Chastek, The death wish in the contemporary west, Just Thomism. My all-time favorite Chastek post.