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Androgyny
Is he a youth? Is she a woman?Is she a goddess or a god?Love, fearing to be ignoble,Hesitates and suspends its confession.To make this beauty mauditEach gender brought its gift.—Théophile Gautier,...
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Blog Talk
Straightaway, a housekeeping item. Several readers have emailed to ask why there is no place to comment at the end of this blog. One reader complained, “It is a nuisance having to look up responses on...
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Who Killed Extreme Unction?
Whatever happened to Extreme Unction? Who are the baleful liturgists who drove a stake through the sacrament and nailed it to the ground? No need to answer that. I know who they are. They are the same...
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Eschatological Confusion
Instead of the sorry and unbecoming spectacle of the priest racing with death to the bedside of the sick, the Church prescribes a devout and dignified procession from church to home, with the minister...
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Lessons From Haiti
At this point, it seems opportune to recall all the primitive religions, the Animist type of religion, which puts first emphasis on the worship of their ancestors. It seems that those who practice it...
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A Reader Responds
Among the many thoughtful letters that came in response to the previous post, one in particular articulated thoughts that you yourselves might have. The one below comes from a man familiar with the...
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Poland Spring & The Miseries of Matter
Without an ever-present sense of death life is insipid. You might as well live on the whites of eggs. —Inspector Mortimer, in Muriel Spark’s Memento MoriWhat...
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A Brief Thought
Writing in 1956, Romano Guardini reflected on man’s place in a world hurtling toward what we call today postmodernism. The End of the Modern World is a bleak reflection but a necessary one. Guardini,...
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Audubon’s Seeing Hand
This weblog began as First Things’ art page, so to speak. Yet I have a hazy suspicion that you are not all that interested in art. Certainly not art in the lower case. Upper case Art, yes; ART in ten...
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Extreme Unction: Responses
My earlier essay on Extreme Unction generated a considerable volume of mail. All of it was thoughtful. There were simply too many to quote, or to include in a single blog post. So, herewith are two...
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A Correction
The freedom of a weblog comes with one high-voltage hazard: the absence of a proofreader. Unsung and half-resented, a proofreader is every writer’s guardian angel, a protector of literacy and the...
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Last Rites; Last Responses
The last days of August. It is time to let be. Time to lie in a hammock and take bribes. Read. Doze. Plan the rest of my life. Anything except trawl for words at a computer. Girl on a Swing in Central...
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Lucifer, Patron of the Arts
Consider how beautiful the devil must be. A fallen angel is an angel still. Seeing him fall, Jesus likened the plunge to “lightning from heaven.” (Luke 10:18). Lucifer appears a pulsing field of...
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Sheen Center Pre Partum Blues
The single New Testament reference to anything that comes close to the arts is that messy episode with Herodias’ daughter. Was it dirty dancing? Or “natural” dance, precursor to Isadora Duncan, Martha...
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Calvary, the Movie
The movie Calvary is a stunning meditation on the Christian story. If you have not already seen it, you might want to save this until later. Every review is a spoiler to some degree. But this is less...
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Weddings, Papal and Otherwise
Would Lena Marie and Walter still be together if they had been married by the pope? Thomas Theodor Heine. Bride-to-be Admiring Herself in Mirror (1898). Simplicissimus. Munich. Lena was the first of...
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Letters from Ireland
Among letters responding to recent posts are two from Dublin. One is from a parish priest uneasy with Rome’s Disneyfied wedding fest and its predictable press response. One of the uncountable...
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New Evangelism?
Christian mission is not to preach Christ, but to be Christians in life.Fr. Alexander SchmemannThe new evangelization is hardly different from the old. It resides, as it has from the first century,...
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John Walker at Alexandre Gallery
In Painting and Reality, Etienne Gilson argued that painting should be experienced on its own terms. That is to say, aesthetically. He insisted that audiences greet art without thinking of it as...
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Columbus’ Day
Christopher Columbus is the patron saint of everyone who misses the turnoff and winds up in Cleveland. AnonymousThe finest way to spend...
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