In an interesting article, How Our Brains Go the Distance, Virginia Hughes tells us: People think about distances all day… long. Distance can describe physical spaces (a far-flung city; a nearby store), time (distant past; near future), and social relationships (near-and-dear pals; a quarreling couple needing some space). Researchers have long thought that these various … [Read more…]
I confess to failing the tests of being a `professional’ philosopher, having been forced to face up to that criteria during a reread of Etienne Gilson’s Being and Some Philosophers. I don’t really care since I see serious advantages in being non-professional, advantages similar to those of the highly energetic semi-barbarians (da Vinci, Michelangelo, etc) … [Read more…]
In the back of my mind, I’ve been pondering a strange blind spot in mainstream modern historians and political commentators since reading Barbara Tuchman’s March of Folly in May of 2013. It seems to me that she saw clearly the somewhat complex and fluid balance of forces between individuals and families or other tightly knit … [Read more…]
From a Catholic News Service article as published on the website of my diocese (Springfield, MA), Pope orders new rules on relations between bishops, religious orders : Pope Francis said he has ordered a revision of what he called outdated Vatican norms on the relations between religious orders and local bishops, in order to promote … [Read more…]
Scientific American published an article about research on the relationship between prayer and cure of diseases: Scientists Find One Source of Prayer’s Power. The results seem plausible and the interpretation of the results emphasize the natural but don’t deny the possibility of the supernatural. I’m probably more inclined to deny the supernatural when it comes … [Read more…]
Folks who would be conservative, who would preserve what is good and even holy in the heritage of Western Civilization, still don’t get it. At least not fully, but some are trying hard to figure out what to do in a decaying and possibly collapsing West and some of those are risking their futures in … [Read more…]
Due to some volunteer projects followed by a sinus infection, I’ve been writing little for publication. My energies have been devoted to early drafts of a couple of novels as well as reading background material to the next stage of understanding the world from a traditional Christian viewpoint—where `traditional’ should be taken in the dynamic … [Read more…]
Srdja Trifkovic wrote of Jean Raspail’s New Warning on the website of Chronicles Magazine. Raspail wrote The Camp of the Saints in 1973; that novel was a controversial take on immigration and multiculturalism; it depicted France decaying into a state of violent incoherence in a multicultural age. Forty years after publishing his prophetic dystopia Jean … [Read more…]
I’ll begin by saying that I believe God is at work even when morally disordered men are seemingly in command. It is God who is moving the story of the Body of Christ forward. We, all Christians in the most recent few centuries, have been following our own inclinations rather than paying attention to the … [Read more…]
In Colossians 1:24, St Paul writes: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church…” [From the Catholic edition of the Revised Standard Version as published by Ignatius.] I suspect, partly on the … [Read more…]