Saturday, October 31, 2015

sana doctrina

"Though, in the wake of the classical German philosophers, I am committed to a high estimate of rationality (Vernunft), I do not consider the charge of 'dogmatism' an insult; I hold doctrine to be an intellectual intuition of the mind that anticipates the banquet of the Kingdom in the vision of God, and thus it is 'aretegenic,' or excellence promoting, since all such anticipation effects human transformation in the direction of salvation, which is enjoyment of the supreme Good."

     Aidan Nichols, Chalice of God:  a systematic theology in outline (Collegeville, MN:  Liturgical Press, 2012), 4.

Sunday, October 25, 2015

"Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor."




















     Hillary Clinton shaking hands with Shubhashish Mukherjee, Washington, D.C., 20 May 2004.





















     Hillary Clinton supposedly shaking hands with Osama Bin Laden (the photoshopped version).

     I first consulted Snopes.com on 24 October 2015.  By that point, Snopes had not found (or, at least, not posted) the original (assuming that it is the original).  Not only that, but in the process of looking for it, I ran across a number of persons on the Web who were complaining of having been unable to find it.  So I cropped the photoshopped version down to the right third, and dropped that into Google Images.  Needlesss to say, I have not positively confirmed the authenticity of the first.

religious, but only artificially so

"There was once a time when the terms 'Christian,' 'atheist' and 'agnostic' meant something definite. If they are to continue to mean anything definite, then a fourth term must be invented for that large class of persons which includes Professor Whitehead. They are 'religious,' without holding to any religion; they are also 'scientific,' in that they believe devoutly in the latest theory of any and every particular science; and they must be cast out by any congregation of Christians, Buddhists, Brahmins, Jews, Mohammedans or Atheists."

     T. S. Eliot, "The return of Foxy Grandpa" [1927], The New York Review of books 62, no. 15 (October 8, 2015), 31-32.  From The complete prose of T. S. Eliot:  the critical edition, vol. 3:  Literature, politics, belief, 1927-1929, ed. Frances Dickey & Jennifer Formichelli (Faber & Faber; Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015).  Eliot was probably right to consider this little review unsatisfactory.