Levavi oculos meos in montes

"This is no cave!" -- Princess Leia  One facet of Cardinal Newman's perception in regard to Ideas and development of doctrine is that we who are downstream from the theologians and philosophers are given a language and a kind of mythology associated with that language, and these things comprise the tools we are able to use or sometimes transcend.     This seems to tie in a bit with what Bishop Varden said about generations in regard to the reception of Vatican II .   The first generation is in the middle of the event, the second generation is trying to consolidate or dispute that legacy, and the third generation is sometimes baffled by the preoccupations of their elders.   But they are still holders of the legacy the thing has left.   They have to decide what it is going to mean to them -- what is ephemeral, situational, and what is durable.     For example -- an example that comes to mind after reading various takes on Ne...

“I have not used ‘magic’ consistently, and indeed the Elven-queen Galadriel is obliged to remonstrate with the Hobbits on their confused use of the word both for the devices and operations of the Enemy, and for those of the Elves. I have not, because there is not a word for the latter (since all human stories have suffered the same confusion). Their 'magic’ is Art, delivered from many of its human limitations: more effortless, more quick, more complete (product, and vision in unflawed correspondence). And its object is Art not Power, sub-creation not domination and tyrannous re-forming of Creation. The 'Elves’ are 'immortal’, at least as far as this world goes: and hence are concerned rather with the griefs and burdens of deathlessness in time and change, than with death. The Enemy in successive forms is always 'naturally’ concerned with sheer Domination, and so the Lord of magic and machines; but the problem: that this frightful evil can and does arise from an apparent...

There was a recent commentary by Massimo Faggioli at Commonweal called Vatican II at Napa .   In the context of a somewhat critical look at the Napa conference, the article referenced the talk given by Bishop Erik Varden of Trondheim , who is as Faggioli says  one of the most interesting figures in a European Catholicism that is emancipating itself from the dominance of the French, Belgian, and German conciliar theology. Here is the written version of Bishop Varden's talk .   Here is what he calls a brief antiphonal response of his to Faggioli's article.     Here is his conference on the Creed , which is as he notes the main feature of his attendance at the conference.... I think the comments on Vatican II were part of a panel he participated in ?   There are a few things that came to my mind when I was reading through this interchange. One is the civil tone between two Catholic thinkers who come from very different contexts.  ...

Substack is an interesting platform, and currently it is rather interesting to browse through the substacks of people who have ended up there -- sometimes, people whose writing I haven't seen for a long time.  Fr Fessio might be a good example of that.   But I am kind of stuck in the early 2000s, as far as social media goes, and I think I will have to stay here on Blogger with this site, and much as I admire focused blogs I don't think I can write one.   I think if I'm going to post with any kind of regularity, it will have to be a patchwork or a mosaic.   One of my earlier blogs I described as a commonplace book and some form of that is the most viable model, I think.     That actually brings to mind what I was reading this morning -- St Thomas Aquinas on Ideas -- this is from Msr Glenn's Tour of the Summa, which is available online.    He says: An idea or concept is the mind's grasp of an essence. It is the understanding o...

 I almost brought it up a few posts ago -- the question of how to read theology when one isn't a theologian.    The answer is that you read as a reader, and as a Christian, if you are one; at least, hopefully, you read as a truth-seeker.    Perhaps GK Chesterton's words apply here, as they so often do to so many situations in life: I think a man may praise Pindar without knowing the top of a Greek letter from the bottom. But I think that if a man is going to abuse Pindar, if he is going to denounce, refute, and utterly expose Pindar, if he is going to show Pindar up as the utter ignoramus and outrageous impostor that he is, then I think it will be just as well perhaps--I think, at any rate, it would do no harm--if he did know a little Greek, and even had read a little Pindar.      There's a more general point here.   Theology, the endeavor to know the truth of divine things, is too important to leave solely to theologians.  ...

 “Satan is too hard a master. He would never command as did the Other with divine simplicity: 'Do likewise.' The devil will have no victims resemble him. He permits only a rough caricature, impotent, abject, which has to serve as food for eternal irony, the mordant irony of the depths.”   Diary of a Country Priest  was not what I expected.  I thought I had read it once before, but none of it seemed familiar.   The above quote reminds me of this one from CS Lewis' The Screwtape Letters : Now it may surprise you to learn that in His [the Enemy’s] efforts to get permanent possession of a soul, He relies on the troughs even more than on the peaks; some of His special favourites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else. The reason is this. To us a human is primarily food; our aim is the absorption of its will into ours, the increase of our own area of selfhood at its expense. But the obedience which the Enemy demands of men is quite a di...