Halloween lands on the weekend! Far out. If you have costume parties to attend, and you want to embrace your Catholicism, and you want to embrace the (drinking) weekend, I have ten great ideas.

The Liberated Nun, circa 1518

This one might be hard to set up with your crowd, so you may want to limit it to a small setting. The point is, to look like a drunken tart, without the moral sensibilities that continued to persist in Protestantism after the Reformation. Of course, you could go for the Munster Anabaptist look, which would pretty much blow wide open your options.

The Liberated Nun, circa 1970

This one is great fun. And simple. You just need a pantsuit, a dainty glass of wine, and an annoying air of complacency.

The Drunken Monk

Go for this look.

You’ll have to give yourself a tonsure, which kinda sucks if you’re trying to pick up chicks. Then again, you can forego the tonsure and point out that you’re not a medieval monk and that the tonsure was banned by Paul VI in 1972.

The Chesterton

Okay, you might need a fat suit for this one. If you don’t, well, good luck with your doctor at your annual physical.

To pull this one off otherwise, put on a cape, carry a swordstick, tousle your hair, grow a mustache, laugh uproariously, and drink enormous amounts of wine or beer.

And oh yeah, no matter how drunk you are, continue to be brilliant.

The Belloc

Hold a large glass of wine and a scowl. Be nice to the Catholics. Be a dick to everyone else. Talk about how Whig … Read the rest

The author of The Conservative Mind opposed modernity in at least three ways

Russell Kirk hated modernity.

He rebelled against it his entire life. He hated the automobile, calling it a “modern Jacobin.” He wouldn’t allow a TV in his house (though he let a hobo named “Clinton” have one in his room), and once, when he found out his daughter was watching TV, hurled the set from a third-floor window. Bradley Birzer, Russell Kirk: American Conservative, 521.

He didn’t even like the radio, sharing his friend, Max Picard’s, intense dislike for “radio noise.”

But what exactly is “modernity”?

Thinkers quibble over its meaning, but I think most would agree that it was given form by the Enlightenment, reveres science, and is marked by a vague sense that the human race will have continual success in its worldly activities . . . through the exercise of reason.

Many people refer to modernity as “The Age of Reason.”

Others point out that it’s marked by “Rationalism.”

Kirk would’ve agreed.

He countered that “rationalism” is merely “defecated rationality.” Kirk, Beyond the Dreams of Avarice, “Liberal Learning, Moral Worth, and Defecated Rationality,” 153.

But his dislike of modernity and its exclusive use (worship) of reason didn’t stop with funny slurs and personal idiosyncrasies. He opposed it in at least three ways:

First, he wrote The Conservative Mind and gave the whole conservative philosophical tradition a name. Prior to Kirk, no one quite knew what to call that gaggle of writers, thinkers, and politicians who battled against the rational mindset of modernity. By giving it a name and a pedigree, … Read the rest

Stefan Kanfer, in his book on the De Beers diamond cartel, gives Chesterton the last word on Cecil Rhodes, who instead of promoting Western values “illustrated almost every quality essential to the Sultan, from the love of diamonds to the scorn of women.”

The irony was, as Kanfer points out, that Rhodes’ “scorn of women” caused his ruin. While he hid from Poland’s aggressively flirtatious Princess Catherine Maria Radziwill, the lady searched his study and carried away the secret telegrams that would eventually lead to enormous problems. [The Last Empire: De Beers, Diamonds, and the World, New York: Farrar Straus, 1993. pp. 47-48.]

… Read the rest

Recommended: Joe Rogan’s engaging interview with Matthew McConaughey

Delightful interview from Austin, Texas, with Matthew McConaughey at the Joe Rogan Show. I listened to it yesterday while using my new nifty leaf mulcher to create some great winter beds for my garden (the mulcher is great, but (i) it eats the whipping string pretty fast, and (ii) it goes a lot slower if the leaves are wet).

McConaughey has always struck me as a genuinely decent guy, and this interview confirmed it. He has no problem confirming his Christian faith and I’m pretty sure he’s right-of-center politically. How right? I don’t know.

But what really grabbed me: his prayer life. He says he spends time getting in touch with himself every morning, then he “bookends” it in the evening by doing a review of his day. He does the review, he says, right before he does his prayers.

Wow. The guy is doing the Examen. He didn’t call it that, but that’s clearly what he’s doing.

I love seeing Catholic practices erupt into pop culture like that. I call it “Accidental Catholicism.”

I swear, Ryan Holiday is creating an entire cottage industry out of re-packaging Catholic spiritual practices under the name of “Stoicism” (check out these Stoic medallions that he’s selling . . . the guy is really clever).

Here’s the thing: If we Catholics have the truth, or the nearest we can come to the truth on this earth, then we are all sitting on a goldmine of marketing possibilities. We all ought to be developing Stoic medallions and making money from them. Doing well while doing good . . . and … Read the rest

BYCU

Never drink when you are wretched without it, or you will be like the grey-faced gin-drinker in the slum.

G.K. Chesterton, Heretics

For years, I foolishly assumed GKC disapproved of hard liquor, or at least gin.

I don’t think that’s the case. Rum, for instance, plays a central in his entertaining frolic, The Flying Inn.

But he counseled moderation in drinking, as evidenced by these famous words from Orthodoxy: “We should thank God for beer and burgundy by not drinking too much of them” (even though it’s not always clear to me whether he followed his own advice in this regard).

Gin in Moderation?

Gin had a history of immoderation in England, staring with a gin craze that took hold of the country in 1720 (it was first made available with the Glorious Revolution in 1688).

The narrative of the gin craze is incredible.

By the mid-1730s, there were 8,659 gin shops in London, where 5.5 million gallons were purchased in 1735. The sheer number of distilleries cast a nasty fog over the city.

It was cheap, so it was the drink of choice for beggars and vagrants, but also of women. It was known as “the ladies’ delight.”

Children drank it too. Mothers gave it their babies to keep them quiet. Older children drink in gin shops until they couldn’t move. Drunk and destitute girls (as young as 12) sold themselves as prostitutes.

Men and women died in the gutters from drinking too much.

When Parliament passed laws to discourage its consumption (raising taxes on it and requiring a costly license to sell it), speakeasy-practices became … Read the rest