Waiting for Godot to Leave

There's an excellent article in the current New Yorker  by Lee Siegel about the strange friendship of Groucho Marx and T. S. Eloit - or perhaps the "strained" friendship. And from Siegel's article we can conclude one thing: Eliot may have been a better poet than Groucho, but Groucho was a lot funnier than Eliot. Of course, this will come as no surprise to anybody.  But what may surprise most of you (who aren't huge Marx Brothers fans as I am) is that Groucho was a very gifted writer, especially when it came to his correspondence.  Siegel quotes from Groucho's letters and highlights the antagonism buried beneath the superficial cordiality of the Marx-Eliot friendship ... In response to Eliot’s polite letter, Groucho, who was born Julius Henry Marx, reminded Eliot that his name was Tom, not T.S., and that “the name Tom fits many things. There was once a famous Jewish actor named Thomashevsky. ... All male cats are named Tom—unless they have been fixe...

Bill McClellan writes an open letter to Archbishop Carlson in today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch.  Some excerpts ... Good morning, Your Eminence. How you doing? Don’t answer. I know how you’re doing. You’re still reeling from the  release of that transcript of a deposition from Minnesota  in which you claimed you couldn’t remember whether you used to know it was a crime for an adult to have sex with a child. That didn’t play too well, did it? Especially because at the very time you supposedly weren’t sure about the legality of molesting kids, you were writing memos to your boss about the statute of limitations for such a crime. If you knew about a statute of limitations, you had to know it was a crime. Or am I missing something? Again, don’t answer. I am not here to harangue you. I’m on your side. As far as I’m concerned, “Thou shalt not lie” is strictly Old Testament stuff. You need some public relations help, Your Em. Nothing against the people you have on s...

After 129 lectures spanning nearly a five year period, Pope John Paul II gave a summation of his "Theology of the Body" in his final lecture. I'm going to emphasize here some of the main points JP2 makes in summing up these sometimes abstruse and difficult talks. He notes at one point that the term "Theology of the Body" is a "working term", and he says that while these lectures focused on "the redemption of the body and the sacramentality of marriage," he was presenting only a portion of the full Theology of the Body.  What he was leaving out in focusing on the significance of the body from the point of view of sex and marriage was "the problem of suffering and death, so important in the biblical message".   (Perhaps young eager theologians can get to work on that side of the Theology of the Body). But while he was not touching upon the body's experience of suffering and death, he was placing "the redempt...

A great archeological find.  I provide translation below. Q. Are you the Son of God? JESUS. I really don't remember. Q. Did you say you would destroy the temple and build it in three days? JESUS. I have no recollection of that.  Do you have that in a document? Q. I have a document here that quotes a number of things you said. JESUS. I don't remember that document.  May I see it? Q. Before I show it to you, I'm asking if you recall the events it describes, such as chasing the money changers out of the temple.  Did you do that? JESUS. Is that recorded in the document? Q. I'm asking you if you have any recollection of that outside the document? JESUS. I have done many things.  I don't remember every one of them. Q. Did you heal a blind man on the Sabbath? MR. THURM. Objection.  Leading the witness, and a vague time frame.  Which Sabbath? Q. I'm asking if you healed a blind man on any Sabbath. JESUS. I would not dispute th...

Unreality is the shirking of the cross. What is Unreality?  It is the creation of a controllable substitute for reality, a house of cards, a false life that excludes from its borders anything that would challenge us or take us out of our comfort zones; it excludes therefore the Holy Ghost.  Art and fiction are not necessarily examples of Unreality, for art and fiction can convey elements of reality that non-fiction can not.  But our lives can be examples of a kind of fiction that avoids reality rather than imaginatively portraying it or celebrating it. Tools of Unreality can include Drugs, which help us find a false contentment and a seemingly manageable paradise. Contraception and Pornography, which help us find sexual pleasure without the great and frightening reality of love and marriage. Hand-wringing and Crocodile Tears, which help us to convince ourselves that we are not nearly as selfish as we are. Of the latter, psychologist  Carl Jung  sai...