The quality of one’s life resides in something immediately felt, not reasoned about—something that does not have to be sought by the indirect path of usefulness. —Barzun, “Present-Day Thoughts on the Quality of Life (1969)"
An attempt to explain the fall of the Jesuits
Can you explain it?"
“Yes, Judith, I think I can,” Edmund replied. “You see, Father McE. and myself have much in common. We are both cradle Catholics who have taken the certainties of our religion for granted. Moreover, he is a Jesuit priest and I am Jesuit-educated. The Jesuit system tried to rationalize these certainties in an attempt to drive them home. This, I think, was fair enough as far as it went, but I rather doubt if it went the whole way. It tended to reduce certainty to its intellectual formulation. In your notes I seem to remember that McEnery equated ‘believe-belove.’ It is true, but I do not think that it is typically Jesuit. The emphasis tended to be that ‘to believe equals to act’. Our actions, consequently, became very closely linked to our certainties.
“That is perhaps why you, as a convert, can have little idea of the impact it made on people like McEnery and myself to have all our certainties questioned – and questioned, if not exactly by the Church, at least in the Church. The moment they were even allowed to be questioned, they ceased to be certain. And this all along the line: it was certainty itself which had become doubtful. There could no longer be certainty between truth and error, between good and bad. And our actions, so closely wedded to our beliefs, lost all sense of direction. There was no longer any purpose in anything; nothing seemed worthwhile.
“I express myself badly, but do you follow me?”
Bryan Houghton, Judith’s Marriage
The worst, and even the mediocre, must be taken for granted as a cultural constant. —Barzun, The House of Intellect, Note to the Reader
Most of us will improve most in Purgatory.
You cannot step into the same river twice. Heraclitus.
In so far as this is true, attending the TLM is not “going back”.
Even in this life, spend more time with Abraham and Lazarus and less time with Dives.
They who would pass from here to you cannot, nor can they pass to us, who come from you. Sc. 67, Luke 16:26
AI is the answers in the back of the book.
Nobody talks like him.Sc. 56, John 7:46
Plato left everything that he left in writing; Jesus Christ left nothing in writing. —H. Lyman Stebbins
Suppose we were to progress one step tomorrow – really progress. —H. Lyman Stebbins to C. S. Lewis, in Madeleine F. Stebbins, “Correspondence between C.S. Lewis and H. Lyman Stebbins”
People who believed in the COVID shots, masks, and lockdowns also believed in the 2020 election.
Galbanum has a foul aroma to remind us that everyone’s prayers were allowed to be uttered—even those of sinners. —Natan Lawrence, “The Altar of Incense …
Different from other men – anti-vaxxers, election-deniers, transphobes – and from that trad. —after Sc. 69 and Luke 18:11
Since I am made in the image of God, what I prefer may be what God prefers. This is the basis of parables.
Peter Brook, “Sinéad O’Connor: An Event in Irish History” (2021)
There was a wind, and now we’ll have a little more sky.
Remember me and do this. Sc. 82, Luke 22:19
We don’t go back, we remember by doing.