Kindle Notes & Highlights
There are pot-smoking priests (subcategory of guitar-playing priests) and alcoholic priests (functioning, tragic, or, that fine balance, Irish).
(the Saturday crowd, I suspect; people who regularly attend Saturday evening Mass are the most dull and mechanical Catholics and should technically be considered Presbyterian),
A singer-songwriter Jesus in his white karate robes. A toned, handsome, healthy, muscular, all-American Jesus.
If Origen is right and what we do in this age determines our form in the next, then at best I’ll come back as a dog, or be reborn the exact way I am now.
There used to be eight deadly sins, not just seven. They cut one out somewhere. I don’t know why. Evagrius of Pontus, one of my favorite desert monks, documented eight, but I guess someone thought seven was a better number. The one they cut was called “acedia.” The noonday demon. “Listlessness” might be a word for it, but I don’t think that’s quite right.
I regret to say it, but Catholics have been terrible at music for at least 120 years, probably longer. In my opinion, the peak of Catholic liturgical music is to be found in the choral works of the Renaissance. Sometime since, we’ve stopped caring about it, and in my lifetime I’ve had to endure a cycle of somnolent organists, sad John Denver clones, and terrible Billy Joel rip-offs. I’m not disposed to liking the organ, is what I’m saying.
He at once reminded me of Art Garfunkel and someone who would happily beat the shit out of Art Garfunkel.
I want to hang out with this dude.
You wind up making God in your own image and forget to look for Him anywhere else.
You’ll give a homily about pretty much anything before you tell me how you feel. Or you make other people do all the work. You ask them questions, get them talking, and then you can vanish. Then you have their story to hide inside of, whenever you need it.
happiness was about as unappealing as the mayonnaise-white Heaven all the evangelicals advertise. Paul was right. I was a flagellant. I wanted my knees to pop. I wanted to wake up tired, with my back as stiff as Joan of Arc’s pole. I needed to keep Paul as a cilice around my heart. I knew he’d forgive me, and probably had done so already, but that wasn’t really the point. I didn’t want forgiveness and the forgetting that comes with it. I wanted endless penance.
