Eric Scheske

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Religion

Wednesday

I stated earlier that I like Zen because it represents the highest attainment of un-assisted philosophy. It dawned on me later that I should probably explain myself. What I mean by this is, Zen has sought the highest truths through naked thinking and meditation, without the assistance afforded by divine

Zen Stuff

Who are the most Zen-like Christian thinkers? St. John of the Cross seems to be the one that's mentioned the most, with Meister Eckhart a close second. I've also seen at least two references to parallels with the thought of Blessed John Ruysbroeck. Van Balthasar draws

Humorous and Frustrating

H.I.F. So if I'm reading this story [http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/western-cape/we-re-catholic-priests-who-want-to-marry-1.1598866#.Um_XJFMQNFs] correctly, this African priests starts dorfing a woman on Fridays, then decides he wants to marry her. He finds a group of other priests who want to

Friday

Great Merton anecdote: "Over Labor Day [in 1938, the year before he was received into the Catholic Church], Merton and Joe Roberts went to Philadelphia, arguing over mysticism and the Catholic Church, drinking so much that it took several days to recover." Mott, The Seven Mountains of Thomas

Catholic Lane

My latest over at Catholic Lane: On Charity [http://catholiclane.com/on-charity/]. It's not my favorite piece: It's pretty compact without much flair (no cogent quotes and clever anecdotes), and I'm concerned that the piece slightly conflates "charity" with "entitlements,"

9/11 Days

From the General Instruction of the Roman Missal [http://www.usccb.org/prayer-and-worship/the-mass/general-instruction-of-the-roman-missal/girm-chapter-2.cfm] : > D) The Concluding Rites > 90.To the Concluding Rites belong the following: > a) brief announcements, should they be necessary; > b) the Priest's Greeting and Blessing, which on

CPV

The Catholic Point of View "Everyone has opinions . . . but not everyone has a point of view." Joseph Epstein, "H.L. Mencken for Grownups," Partial Payments. Epstein's remark is critical, citing V.S. Naipul's condescending remark about one of his characters, "she

On Deliberate Barbarism

We need myths. They're irrational signposts in our strange spiritual land: they guide us even when we don't know we're being guided. We don't even necessarily understand them, but only a shallow rationalism (a "defecated rationality" is how Russell Kirk

More Gilson and God and Philosophy

"Just as science can play havoc with metaphysics, metaphysics can play havoc with science." Gilson There is a natural antipathy between the two. Gilson goes on to point out that metaphysics stifled science for centuries, just as science today stifles metaphysics. Empiricism is the belief that only those

God and Philosophy

I try to be judicious in my book annotations, but every so often, I find a book that has more passages underlined than not. Schumacher's A Guide for the Perplexed probably holds my library record in this regard, but Etienne Gilson's God and Philosophy isn'