Dwight Longenecker's Blog, page 150

The Vatican Stance: Affirmative Orthodoxy

John Allen writes week and positively here on the events in the Vatican this week. The most interesting section is on the Vatican’s stance on sex and family life. Allen calls this “affirmative orthodoxy”. That is, we are trying to communicate what is beautiful, good and true rather than condemning what is lacking. Some years [Read More...]

Dying Naturally

Wesley Smith writes here about some of the creepy new “funeral” services in a secular age. A recent front page story in the New York Time reported on a new funeral fad during which the recently deceased are posed as if still alive and engaged in a favorite activity…Those who don’t want burial but wish to dispose of [Read More...]

Francis’ Honeymoon is Over – Another Liberal Bites Back

Last week Salon ran a hatchet piece on Pope Francis by Anna March. In one of the most ludicrous article I’ve ever read it was suggested that Pope Francis’ nice guy image is nothing more than a PR stunt run by a sinister conservative member of Opus Dei… I commented on March’s piece here. Today [Read More...]

Clarity and Charity in the Liturgy Wars

I found it interesting how people understood yesterday’s post about the Cain Syndrome. It was meant to be an observation about a general trend within human nature and especially within religious behaviors. Some readers, however, interpreted as being only about the liturgy wars. By liturgy wars I mean the traditionalists who believe only the Latin Mass [Read More...]

T.S.Eliot Lived Here

T.S.Eliot’s boyhood home in St Louis. This is in Westminster Place just two blocks behind the Catholic Cathedral. The Cathedral would have been under construction in the last years of Eliot’s time here. It was completed in 1914–the year Eliot moved to England.

Eliot’s Mississippi

Today I stood outside the house in St Louis where T.S.Eliot spent his teenaged years. Then I saw the Mississippi. Here are the lines from Eliot’s Dry Salvages about the great river. I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river Is a strong brown god – sullen, untamed and intractable Patient to [Read More...]

Cain Lives: The Demonic Dynamic in Religion

One of the most discouraging things about religious life is to witness brothers fighting one another. Why do so many religious people feel they have to attack their brothers in the faith? Because there’s something sick going on within a lot of religious people and religious groups. I call it the Cain Syndrome. Remember when [Read More...]

A Literary Lament for Lost Love

Here is my review of one of the best books I’ve read this year: Anthony Esolen’s Defending Marriage. Professor Esolen uses his literary references not to prove a point or even to illustrate a point, but to evoke within us a different and more beautiful understanding of what it means to be male and female, [Read More...]

Read Romance of Religion

National Catholic Register has a nifty review of Romance of Religion here. The modern world is post-Christian and, in many ways, post-rational. Appeals to reason and morality convince almost nobody thes e days, and of the Big Three — Goodness, Truth and Beauty — Beauty is the only thing left with which to convince modern [Read More...]

On Praying and Smoking

Sister Mary: Why are you smoking? Did Mother Superior give you permission to smoke? Sister Aquinas: (puffing away) Yes. Sister Mary: But she didn’t give me permission to smoke! It’s not fair! Sister Aquinas: What did you ask her? Sister Mary: I asked permission to have a cigarette while I am praying.” Sister Aquinas: Ah. [Read More...]