Death Comes For the Archbishop III

I have just finished Willa Cather's Death Comes For the Archbishop. It is a shame I took thirty years to read it. Cather, who died the year after I was born, creates a Santa Fe I recognize and, in Bishop Latour, a character worthy of Bishop Lamy.

Cather draws an insightful contrast between Fr. Joseph Vaillant and his companion and bishop, Jean Latour. Early in the book, she puts a most memorable sentence in the down-to-earth Fr. joseph Vaillant's mouth: "I noticed that scholars always manage to dig out something belittling." Willa Cather, Death Comes For the Archbishop (Thorndike, Me: Thorndike Press, 1984) p. 62.

Too true.

Death Comes For the Archbishop II: The New Mexico Sky

Willa Cather's description is clear, vibrant, and true. Images of New Mexico came tumbling back into my consciousness as I read her words. Consider how she captures that enormous sky:

"The sky was as full of motion and change as the desert beneath was monotonous and still, – and there was so much sky, more than at sea, more than anywhere else in the world. The plain was there under one's feet, but what one saw when one looked about was that brilliant blue world of stinging air and moving cloud. Even the mountains were mere anthills under it. Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth was the floor of the sky. The landscape one longed for when one was far away, the thing all about one, the world one actually lived in, was the sky, the sky!" Willa Cather, Death Comes For the Archbishop (Thorndike, Me: Thorndike Press, 1984) pp. 292-3.

Death Comes For the Archbishop I

I have just finished Willa Cather's Death Comes For the Archbishop. It is a shame I took thirty years to read it. Cather, who died the year after I was born, creates a Santa Fe I recognize and, in Bishop Latour, a character worthy of Bishop Lamy.

Cather draws an insightful contrast between Fr. Vaillant and his companion and bishop, Jean Latour. Early in the book, she puts a most memorable sentence in the down-to-earth Vaillant's mouth: "I noticed that scholars always manage to dig out something belittling." Willa Cather, Death Comes For the Archbishop (Thorndike, Me: Thorndike Press, 1984) p. 62.

Too true.

Thirty Eight Mulims respond to Benedict/Benedikt XVI

Pope Benedikt challenged both Muslims and secularists in address to the faculties at Regensburg on "Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections." The initial reaction from the Islamic world seemed negative and violent. A more reflective response came from a group of thirty eight moslem thought leaders from a variety of countries and including some very prominent names. As Sandro Magister puts it: "A Sprig of Dialogue Has Sprouted in Regensburg." Should a hymn of that tittle be set to Palistrina?

Are Liberals Intolerant?

I have often felt that liberals are not very liberal. That is too much of a generalization, true. But whether we are talking of Catholics who characterize themselves as "liberal' or "progressive," or we are speaking of liberals in the sense of those on the left side of the American political spectrum, far too many get rapidly wroth at the very mention of opposing views or the opponents who might hold them.

Two weeks ago I was graced with meeting some marvelous young theology faculty of orthodox inclinations who teach at Catholic institutions. They were in dread that they might be forced out of their intellectual closets. They perceived the consequences for tenure, promotion, and feeding their families to be dire. Those who control the commanding heights of academe "in the Catholic tradition," define diversity in purely demographic terms.

In the Wall Street Journal over the weekend, Peggy Noonan observes that those on the political left "don't always recognize themselves to be bullying. So full of their righteousness are they that they have lost the ability to judge themselves and their manner." She notes"What is most missing from the left in America is an element of grace -- of civic grace, democratic grace, the kind that assumes disagreements are part of the fabric, but we can make the fabric hold together."

Noonan goes on to say "all this continues to come more from the left than the right in America." I believe that such behavior results from the triumph of ideology over our common humanity. Perhaps the left is more susceptible to the virus of ideology, but neither seems inoculated against it.

Certainly, the right too can fall under the Siren's spell. The only true prophylactic against her song is grace and the truth that St. Martin learned on that bitter cold night in Gaul: how we treat each other is how we treat Christ. Ideological man lets his model of the world blind himself to God's grace in the form of his fellow man. He is no longer restrained by the existential reality of the man or woman in front of him. He then ceases acting with that grace of civility due a fellow creature made in the divine image.

Ultimately, the civil order itself rests on "things unseen."

Peggy Noonan on Bob Woodward's new book

Peggy Noonan, Ronald Reagan's chief wordsmith reviewed Bob Woodward's new book, State of Denial in the Wall Street Journal. She writes, "This is a primer on how the executive branch of the United States works, or rather doesn't work, in the early years of the 21st century."

Particularly interesting is her insight into the attitude of key administration folks toward the State Department: "The young Reagan guys at the table grew up to be the heavyweights of the Bush era." When Reagan took on the Evil Empire, it was always the State Department that fought him and turned out wrong. I grew up reading National Review. I thought Bill Buckley made up "Foggy Bottom" as a derogatory nickname for the State Department. Little did I dream there was an actual piece of our national capital's geography with that name. The possiblity that the State Department might be right for once never occured to those "young Reagan guys!!"

The Word from KC: "Misappropriations of... the Council"

Whispers in the Logia noted Bishop Finn's homily to the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars.