Here and There

• "I'm a Catholic too" - Fr Dwight Longenecker (Standing on My Head):

  When I was an Anglican priest I once said to the (Catholic) Abbot of Quarr, "I'm a Catholic too, but in the Anglican Church." He smiled and said, "You should understand that we Catholics define what being Catholic is rather differently than you do."

• Some News about the SSPX Discussions Via the website Panorama Católico Internacional (found via messainlatino.it) come news about the doctrinal discussions between the Holy See and the SSPX.

• The Lost Wisdom of the Three Wise Men - Umberto Eco (author of ) laments the loss of religious and biblical literacy: "It’s impossible to understand roughly three-quarters of Western art if you don’t know the events of the Old and the New Testaments and the stories of the saints."

• Fidel Castro: Hollywood Screenwriter - Humberto Fontova (Big Hollywood) takes on Soderbergh’s and del Toro’s, “Che.”

• Pius XII - Ready for sainthood? Joe Hargrave (The American Catholic) answers in the affirmative.

• A Composer's Ties to Nazi Germany Come Under New Scrutiny (Chronicle of Higher Education). "More than 50 years after the Finnish composer died, in 1957, at the age of 91, a musicologist in Texas is claiming that [Finnish composer Jean] Sibelius was culpably entangled with Nazi Germany, and should join Pound, Richard Wagner, and Louis-Ferdinand Céline in the select group of artists who have been cast into anti-Semitic ignominy." (Though it seems to me that his complicity with National Socialism was much, much less than that of Martin Heidegger).

• Edward Feser: "Over at my own blog, I provide a detailed critique of materialist philosopher Paul Churchland’s critique of mind-body dualism in his widely-used textbook Matter and Consciousness. In three parts: here, here, and here. If philosophy of mind is your bag, clear your schedule."

• From Lee Gerhard, geologist and reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a concise summary of the "climate change scam" (Hat tip: PowerLine):

  It is crucial that scientists are factually accurate when they do speak out, that they ignore media hype and maintain a clinical detachment from social or other agendas. There are facts and data that are ignored in the maelstrom of social and economic agendas swirling about Copenhagen. Greenhouse gases and their effects are well-known. Here are some of things we know ...

• Theologian Edward Schillebeeckx, dead at 95 (National Catholic Reporter).

• A Walker Percy documentary is in the works! (Via Philokalia Republic)

• Bill Cork teaches us how to count.

  

• Lastly - Dissertations on His Dudeness Dwight Garner (New York Times) on the cult appreciation of the Coen brothers' film "The Big Lebowski", together with a new genre of literature:

  “The Big Lebowski” has spawned its own shaggy, fervid world: drinking games, Halloween costumes, bumper stickers (“This aggression will not stand, man”) and a drunken annual festival that took root in Louisville, Ky., and has spread to other cities. The movie is also the subject of an expanding shelf of books, including "The Dude Abides: The Gospel According to the Coen Brothers" (Zondervan, 2009) and the forthcoming “The Tao of the Dude.”

  Where cult films go, academics will follow. New in bookstores, and already in its second printing, is "The Year's Work in Lebowski Studies." (Indiana UP, 2009).

  (A favorite film of my brother Jon and I, howbeit not to this extent).