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Post by assisi on Sept 10, 2012 20:51:57 GMT
Some Catholic bloggers discuss why contemporary Catholic/Christian art tends to be sterile and mediocre. (They are talking about North America where there is still a certain amount of middlebrow material being produced/written for orthodox Catholic publishers.).............. I would have thought that Catholic Literature should come in all varieties. There is room for the sentimental alongside the hard hitting. However the 'healthier' and more influential type of literature will be the one that veers away from a sentimentalised Catholic idyll. After all Christ asks us to 'take up our cross' not because life is easy but because it can be very hard. The books that I have most enjoyed and which have been most satisfying from a Catholic perspective have been those that have a Catholic theme up front and visible, namely Greene's the Power and the Glory and Benson's science fiction 'Lord of the World'. We have a tendency to judge the merits of Catholic literature on not only the quality of the work but also on how we think it will impact and evangelise others, notably the non-believers. While it is important to have a presence in the wider world of literature there is also room for literature that will inspire existing Catholics even if it remains largely within the boundaries of a Catholic readership.
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 11, 2012 11:05:47 GMT
Yes, but the point is not to confuse different qualities. There is a type of bad art that can be positively harmful. The key word I think is "sentimentalised" - sentimentalism is not about the object but about our own feelings - not about having faith but about how nice it is/would be to have faith.
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 23, 2012 21:52:04 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 31, 2012 18:22:03 GMT
Victor Hugo's religious views were extremely heterodox, to put it mildly, but LES MISERABLES is often referenced as a really classic rendition of the Christian understanding of Law versus Grace. Here is a post on the contrast between Inspector Javert and Jean Valjean by an Evangelical blogger. (To use a slightly different terminology, Javert represents the Pelagian position that we can save ourselves/merit salvation by our own efforts, Valjean's story reflects an Augustinian understanding that we cannot be saved by our own efforts but only through unmerited grace): www.patheos.com/blogs/philosophicalfragments/2012/12/29/the-theology-of-les-miserables/Here is a brief account of the real-life bishop on whom the bishop in LES MISERABLES is modelled: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bienvenu_de_Miollis
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 3, 2013 19:37:01 GMT
Here's an interesting piece which picks up on a common criticism of Tolkien - that he's morally simplistic. [I would distinguish this from the related view that he is morally mistaken in areas such as his dislike of technology and his attitude to the orcs as incapable of good - the latter point was something that troubled Tolkien himself throughout his life and with good reason. That view would accept the possibility of moral judgement as such - the other implies that moral judgement per se is inappropriate because everyone is "good" in their own eyes (it underlies the deeply sinister GAME OF THRONES novel series, for example, which is often held up as superior to Tolkien on these grounds, and which incidentally was written by an apostate Catholic): ayjay.tumblr.com/post/13589267620/modernist-ambiguity-or-realist-emotional#notes-containerEXTRACT It has just become the tale that middle-to-highbrow critics tell — ever since Edmund Wilson was saying his own manifestly untrue things about Tolkien in the New Yorker fifty years ago — that Tolkien’s fictional world is morally simplistic and rigidly Manichaean. It may be true that the story of the Ring is less morally ambiguous than the average realistic novel, but that’s primarily because Tolkien wasn’t especially interested in the problem of knowing right from wrong. His concern was to explore the psychology of the moment when you know right from wrong but aren’t sure whether you have the courage and fortitude to do the right thing. Modern liberalism likes to think that all our problems are epistemological: we are afflicted by never knowing with sufficient clarity what we ought to do. Our fictions tend to reflect that assumption. Tolkien, not being a modern liberal, thought it more interesting to explore situations when people know what they need to know but may lack the strength of will to act on that knowledge. He might say, and with some justification, that contemporary literary fiction is not simplistic in regard to such problems but oblivious to them. END This touches on quite a few issues that will recur on this board - for example, the difference between the traditional Aristotelean idea of character formation (that there is such a thing as a pattern of virtue which must be learned by imitation) and the "values clarification" approach which puts intellectual autonomy above all else and assumes that the rational person will automatically be good, rationality and goodness being defined in instrumental terms.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Jan 3, 2013 19:49:29 GMT
Is the term "Manichaean" ever actually used correctly? Mani would turn in his grave.
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 23, 2013 22:20:58 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 15, 2013 21:29:11 GMT
This CRISIS magazine piece on William Morris's influence opens up an interesting field that could have been developed more widely, because Morris is a very strong influence on GK Chesterton and CS Lewis as well. I am not familiar with Morris, except for some of his political journalism and a few poems. He is one of those writers I keep on meaning to explore in depth but never get round to. Morris started out as a High Anglican pre-Raphaelite and ended up as a rather sad agnostic and socialist; the combination of genuine desire for justice with fantasy-escapism, and the way he appeals both to far-leftists - EP Thompson is a striking example of this; Morris appealed to his extremely voluntarist rewrite of Marxism, and the disturbing thing about reading Thompson's book on Morris is that even though Thompson has dropped from the revised version the eulogies to Trofim Denisovich Lysenko's pseudo-scientific claim to have disproved that reactionary Papist Mendel and show that acquired socialist characteristics could be made hereditary in one generation, it is all too clear that Thompson was not just going through the motions when he praised Lysenko - it really did accord with Thompson's, and indeed Morris's belief that the world can be transformed by asserting the revolutionary will to brush aside all constraints. Now that I think of it, there's a very clear descent from Shelley as well. We don't think of Shelley as an ancestor of Chesterton and Lewis, given Shelley's passionate atheism and Prometheanism, but he's all over their sensibility. www.crisismagazine.com/2013/william-morris-as-inspiration-for-tolkiens-literary-art
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Post by maolsheachlann on Jul 15, 2013 22:44:18 GMT
A bit of a digression prompted by the mention of Shelley (who Chesterton and Lewis both praised constantly). How many of you guys and gals read long poetry? It strikes me that when we moderns (at least most of us) talk about Keats or Shelley (or Tennyson or Byron or Swinburne or pretty much any classic English poet) we are talking about their lyrics and their anthology pieces-- that is, a tiny fraction of their work. Does anybody read long poetry anymore? I am currently embarking on the Faerie Queene by Spenser, and finding it tough going.
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 19, 2013 18:40:00 GMT
A CATHOLIC HERALD columnist defends proposals to open Chesterton's Cause for canonisation against the DAILY TELEGRAPH religious correspondent Christopher Howsee who argues that, for all his virtues, GKC's overindulgence in alcohol and placing the burdens of everyday life on his wife reflect a sort of "self-infantilisation" which is incompatible with canonisation. www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2013/08/19/i-hope-chesterton-is-canonised-and-made-the-new-patron-saint-of-journalists/Personally, as I get older I get to understand more and more the profundity of GKC's understanding of the goodness of Being - I used to find his optimism a lot more facile than I do now. I suspect, however, that his attitude to the Jews will be an insuperable obstacle. It was casual rather than obsessive, but I still think it would give scandal to disregard it HEre is a different take on the matter from Michael Coren, who is particularly sensitive on this because of his own Jewish descent: www.catholicworldreport.com/Item/2494/the_cause_for_a_modern_prophet.aspx#.UhJl3JKmiAYEXTRACT He was, quite clearly, not only a genius but a prophet. But there was also the brief and shallow swim in the dark waters of anti-Semitism, and I predict that this will be highlighted by his opponents when Chesterton is considered for sainthood. I devoted an entire chapter to this issue in my biography, and I have a particular sensitivity towards the subject because my father was Jewish. Chesterton’s brother Cecil may well have been a genuine anti-Semite, but I do not believe this for a moment of Gilbert, or for that matter of Belloc. Gilbert in particular was too loving, too generous, too Christian to hate. He did make some hurtful and thoughtless comments, in particular after his brother’s death, but when the testing time came—the rise of the Nazis—he was as active as he was angry. While many on the left were unsure how to respond to Hitler’s pagan racism, and some even sympathetic, Chesterton demanded that the Jewish people be protected and rescued. He was vehemently anti-Nazi before it was fashionable and before it was safe. Context, timing, and nuance are everything, and a foolish comment about Jews before the Holocaust is somewhat different from indifference during it or hostility after it. Frankly, I am not sure if I will ever pray to Chesterton, but I know I pray all the time of my gratitude that he lived, thought, and wrote. END
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Post by maolsheachlann on Aug 19, 2013 20:45:58 GMT
I HAVE prayed to Chesterton, which (now I come to think of it) means I already assume he's a saint-- perhaps I shouldn't have done that. I find it difficult not to assume that he is in Heaven.
And yet, I'm not at all wild on the idea of St. Gilbert Chesterton. I've been trying to work out why but I'm not sure. Maybe because he seems too much of a "funky" saint-- perhaps I'm scared that non-Catholics will take one look at this obese, cigar-smoking figure, who was anything but temperate in his language ("Alas, alas for England, They have no graves as yet"), and think "They chuck sainthoods around like confetti these days, why should we take it seriously?". Having read so many biographies of the man, and despite my deep admiration for him, I find it hard to think of him as a saint-- although that might reflect my own poor understanding of sainthood. I also feel rather troubled by the way causes are being fast-tracked these days, especially the way Pope Francis waived the requirement of a second miracle in the case of John XXIII.
But, if he is proclaimed a saint, I will happily cry "Credo!", like Archbishop John MacHale the apocryphal story told in Dubliners.
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 25, 2013 16:53:03 GMT
I have no particular opinion one way or the other - partly because having been an enormous hero-worshipped of him when I was a teenager I have for various reasons never got round to going back over him systematically to decide what stands up and what doesn't. Private devotion is a matter for your own judgement - it's only when you start actively promoting devotion to him without official approval that things get iffy
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Post by assisi on Oct 6, 2013 20:24:42 GMT
Just recently re-read a couple of Oscar Wilde’s short stories, the ‘Happy Prince’ and the ‘Selfish Giant’. Both are striking little parables of love and generosity and both end with the promise of paradise. These are great stories for children and are memorable because of their simplicity and their message. It made me think that, outside Wilde’s reputation as someone who adored beauty before all else, there was a genuine search for God. It was almost as if he couldn’t resist the attraction of being the clever wit and controversialist, and the sensitive religious soul within was demoted.
Chesterton said of Wilde: But while he had a strain of humbug in him, which there is not in the demagogues of wit like Bernard Shaw, he had, in his own strange way, a much deeper and more spiritual nature than they. Queerly enough, it was the very multitude of his falsities that prevented him from being entirely false. Like a many-coloured humming top, he was at once a bewilderment and a balance. He was so fond of being many-sided that among his sides he even admitted the right side. He loved so much to multiply his souls that he had among them one soul at least that was saved. He desired all beautiful things – even God.
At the very centre of his most famous novel, the ‘Picture of Dorian Gray’, there is the message that the pursuit of and achievement of personal physical perfection, and indeed eternal worldly life, ends in self loathing and corruption. It would make good reading for the increasing numbers of people intent on defying age or seeking physical perfection through surgery, drugs and other dubious means. As well as the message of ‘Dorian Gray’ the novel is well worth reading for the usual Wilde epigrams which are funny and silly (these are mostly delivered in the novel by the cynical character of Lord Henry Wotton, perhaps the character most like Wilde’s real life exuberant public persona).
In the introduction to Wilde’s Complete Works, his son Vyvyan, says that:
All his life , my father had an intense leaning towards religious mysticism and was strongly attracted to the Catholic church, into which he was received on his deathbed in 1900.
After his release from prison in 1897 he requested a retreat with the Jesuits but was refused. It is hard to avoid the feeling that Wilde was a genuine seeker of God who wasn’t strong enough to resist the temptations and adulation of society. The short stories show an innocence and simple faith that mark him, for me, as a character more to be pitied than condemned.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Oct 6, 2013 20:59:25 GMT
I think Wilde had a deeply spiritual nature. Take these lines from the Duchess of Padua:
I begin To see a nobler and a holier vengeance In letting this man live, than doth reside In bloody deeds o’ night, stabs in the dark, And young hands clutching at a palsied throat. It was, I think, for love’s sake that Lord Christ, Who was indeed himself incarnate Love, Bade every man forgive his enemy.
MORANZONE [sneeringly] That was in Palestine, not Padua; And said for saints: I have to do with men.
GUIDO It was for all time said.
Or take his sonnet on the massares in Bulgaria:
CHRIST, dost thou live indeed? or are thy bones Still straightened in their rock-hewn sepulchre? And was thy Rising only dreamed by Her Whose love of thee for all her sin atones? For here the air is horrid with men’s groans, The priests who call upon thy name are slain, Dost thou not hear the bitter wail of pain From those whose children lie upon the stones? Come down, O Son of God! incestuous gloom Curtains the land, and through the starless night Over thy Cross the Crescent moon I see! If thou in very truth didst burst the tomb Come down, O Son of Man! and show thy might, Lest Mahomet be crowned instead of Thee!
Or the opening lines of another sonnet:
Dear Heart I think the young impassioned priest When first he takes from out the hidden shrine His God imprisoned in the Eucharist, And eats the bread, and drinks the dreadful wine, Feels not such awful wonder as I felt When first my smitten eyes beat full on thee, And all night long before thy feet I knelt Till thou wert wearied of Idolatry.
Or the famous lines from the Ballad of Reading Gaol:
And thus we rust Life's iron chain Degraded and alone: And some men curse, and some men weep, And some men make no moan: But God's eternal Laws are kind And break the heart of stone.
And every human heart that breaks, In prison-cell or yard, Is as that broken box that gave Its treasure to the Lord, And filled the unclean leper's house With the scent of costliest nard.
Ah! happy day they whose hearts can break And peace of pardon win! How else may man make straight his plan And cleanse his soul from Sin? How else but through a broken heart May Lord Christ enter in?
Or another of his poems:
O well for him who lives at ease With garnered gold in wide domain, Nor heeds the splashing of the rain, The crashing down of forest trees.
O well for him who ne'er hath known The travail of the hungry years, A father grey with grief and tears, A mother weeping all alone.
But well for him whose foot hath trod The weary road of toil and strife, Yet from the sorrows of his life. Builds ladders to be nearer God.
There are reports that he converted to the Faith on his death-bed. It's hard to tell. His lover Lord Alfred Douglas in later life became a devout Catholic.
On a lighter note, I've always liked his aphorism that the Catholic Church is for saints and sinners; for respectable people, the Church of England will do.
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Post by chercheur on Oct 6, 2013 22:56:26 GMT
Slightly off subject perhaps but I had an interesting little insight today.
My 10 year old nephew was playing a game called Assassisn's Creed on his X-Box. Gentlemen I cannot begin to tell you how little I know about these games. Nothing at all.
I asked him who the hero was. he was an assassin in Renaissance Italy. I asked who the "baddies" were.....apparently the Templars were the baddies. The Templars. He told me that the Templars had a logo or sign. I asked what it was. In all innocence he told me it was a cross. This game is widely played. The baddies are the Templars with a cruciform insignia.
Satan hidden in open view.
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