Sunday, March 28, 2004

Around the Blogosphere . . .

  • Peter Sean Bradley ("Lex Communis") blogs his review of The Passion:
    I have often reflected on the fact that in my religious tradition, we casually accept the presence of a statue depicting a man being tortured to death! It's a violent, gruesome statue which is found in every Catholic church! And, yet, we treat it as common place. Now that I have children I wonder about the easy acceptance of the Crucifix. My girls run out of the room if the television shows a fight scene. But they stay without comment in a church which has a life size, fully life-like depiction of a human being nailed to wood who is dying a horribly gruesome death.

    If the Passion corrects that casual attitude toward the Passion, then it will have done a major service to Christianity.

  • Michael S. Rose doesn't like the look of Ave Maria University's proposed chapel on its newly-founded campus near Naples, Florida: "Requiring three thousand tons of structural steel and aluminum, the 60,000-square-foot glass-skinned church is set to be the nation’s largest. Unfortunately, the design unveiled by school officials is an impractical eyesore." I agree -- a modern design of this nature seems implicitly counteractive to the goal of establishing an authentic Catholic university marked by faithfulness to the Magisterium and "the finest classical liberal arts curricula available." How about a return to some traditional architecture as well? Thanks to Domenico Betteneli for the link.

  • New blog! -- Thoroughly Modern Mary, "An enlightened weblog from from the paradigm of religious community. Sister Mary Biko PhD -- of "The Sisters of Divine Progressiveness" -- guides you along the way of traditional deconstruction." (Seems real enough, but it's actually a parody by The Curt Jester).

  • Speaking of real sisters, Commonweal recently complained about the lack of blogs by women religious. Theoscope is authored by a young Catholic who recently discovered her vocation -- so, Lord-willing, it's only a matter of time before Rachelle Linner's hopes are answered.

  • Lenten reading - I. Shawn McElhinney has been posting excerpts and commentary on Dark Night of the Soul; Steven Riddle the same from The Science of the Cross, the magnum opus of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein).

  • Good advice from J.R.R. Tolkien, from a commentator on Mark Shea's blog:
    The only cure for sagging of fainting faith is Communion...Like the act of Faith it must be continuous and grow by exercise. Frequency is of the highest effect. Seven times a week is more nourishing than seven times at intervals. Also I can recommend this as an exercise (alas! only too easy to find opportunity for): make your communion in circumstances that affront your taste. Choose a snuffling or gabbling priest or a proud and vulgar friar; and a church full of the usual bourgeois crowd, ill-behaved children - from those who yell to those products of Catholic schools who the moment the tabernacle is opened sit back and yawn - open necked and dirty youths, women in trousers and often with hair both unkempt and uncovered. Go to Communion with them (and pray for them). It will be just the same (or better than that) as a mass said beautifully by a visibly holy man, and shared by a few devout and decorous people."

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