More Miscellaneous Rambling
Later Addendum: Ignore the Tom Woods Show reference below. If you haven't heard it, you MUST listen to Fr. Richard Altier's 8/19/2018 homily. I'd seen and heard references to it, but hadn't bothered to listen to it until Drew Mariani played the entire thing. It kept me up the rest of the night/early morning. Honestly, go download it, pass it along, shout it from the rooftops. This priest lays it out. I gotta believe the Church hierarchy is going to be coming at him with long blades or, at a minimum, attacks on his assertions. Again, a must hear. Side Note: The good stuff starts at 6:20 (minute 6, second 20)
Okay, run, don't walk, to The Tom Woods Show and check out the interview with Rachel Fulton Brown ("Now They're Coming for Medieval Studies"). Brown is a professor of medieval history at the University of Chicago, and she's hated by academics. Her sins against academia are legion, but among them: an abiding faith that a return to Marian devotion is the only thing that can save western civilization. And she has the intellectual mojo to back up her claim, as evidenced by
her Mary and the Art of Prayer: The Hours of the Virgin in Medieval Christian Life and Thought, which was recently published by Columbia University Press. The Woods' interview is far-ranging and can't be missed. I've never (ever) heard such unabashed devotion to Mary from an academic, much less one from a top tier university like Chicago.
This is one of the funniest and saddest articles of the year: 2014 WaPo fluff piece that praises McCarrick. Comical in retrospect. Fine publication, that WaPo. Excerpt about McCarrick passing out and getting rushed to the hospital:
“I guess the Lord isn't done with me yet,” he told the pope.
“Or the devil doesn't have your accommodations ready!” Francis shot back with a laugh.
But it doesn't end there. Other nuggets:
McCarrick is one of a number of senior churchmen who were more or less put out to pasture during the eight-year pontificate of Benedict XVI. But now Francis is pope, and prelates like Cardinal Walter Kasper (another old friend of McCarrick's) and McCarrick himself are back in the mix, and busier than ever.
McCarrick in particular has been on a [rectal] tear in the past year. . .
He retired in 2006 and was sort of spinning his wheels under Benedict. Then Francis was elected, and everything changed.
Speaking of podcasts, I'm grateful by the early returns on my new Weekly Eudemon. I'm still finding my voice, so patience is appreciated, though early listeners have told me they're pleasantly surprised at the quality. We'll see how it goes.
Well, dang it. I guess I better stop chasing those hot blondes: "People tend to become atheists at a younger age when their religious parents talk the talk but don't walk the walk." Link.
Random Blurb from the Notebooks: Consider George MacDonald's “The Golden Key.” It is a bizarre little story that will no doubt baffle you (it baffled me). It has movement and meaning, however, that I suspect will affect your heart and soul in ways you won't see. Never presumptuously put away a piece of great fiction because you “don't get it” or the author seems to be wasting words–if you don't get it, that's fine; you might understand it some day, especially if you re-read it. If he is a great fiction writer, you need to come to his level, not he to yours, and even if you don't come to his level, the work might have a profound effect on you even if you don't see it or can't describe it.
