Waiting for Godot to Leave

It has long been a teaching in the Catholic Faith, as well as something recognizable in natural philosophy, that there is only one Truth. There is not a truth for you and a truth for me; a truth for science and a truth for religion, a truth for Monday and a truth for Tuesday. But the Church now teaches, with the authority of the Magisterium , according to D. C. Schindler in a brilliant essay on Pope Benedict's papal encyclical Deus Caritas Est , that there is only one love - that eros (passionate and affective love) and agape (disinterested love of neighbor) are really two aspects of the same thing - or really, two faces of the same God. This cuts right to the heart of our troubled world today. Schindler notes: Allan Bloom describes the boredom, the self-protectiveness, the banality, the absence of a sense of mystery and adventure, and the general disenchantment, that characterize a “de-eroticized” world such as that of contemporary America. Now hold on a minute, I can hear y...

"All healthy men, ancient and modern, know there is a certain fury in sex that we cannot afford to inflame, and that a certain mystery and awe must ever surround it if we are to remain sane.” - G K Chesterton Below I have copied a transcribed portion of an interview with Christopher West , who, after a bit of a sabbatical, is apparently back with a vengeance. My friends, read what West says below and tell me (even if you know nothing of the Theology of the Body) if this sounds right to you. Tell me if you smell something a little funny. Tell me if this doesn't remind you of a kind of "grooming behavior". I'm not saying West is "grooming", but I am saying that if the wrong kinds of folks buy into this kind of language and what seems to be an apology for sexual license, they can use it for "grooming". Let me say that I agree with the general points he's making: sex is good, the body is good, and the marital act is good. It's wrong to b...

On Monday I returned from nearly two weeks on the road, our Great North Tour, in which we gave 15 performances of 7 scripts in 13 days in 6 states – from Grand Forks, North Dakota, to Holt’s Summit, Missouri. In all of that wonderful chaos God gave me the great blessing of being away from the internet . And two weeks away from the Lying for Jesus issue was very therapeutic. But as therapy ends and Lent begins, I’d like to conclude my thoughts on the firestorm that swept us all up into the single most divisive issue I have encountered in ten years as a Catholic. My Role in This Back in August, James O’Keefe was invited to give what amounted to the keynote address at the American Chesterton Society Conference in Emmitsburg, Maryland. O’Keefe electrified the crowd by telling us that he was inspired by G. K. Chesterton (he did not mention his other role model, quasi-Satanist Saul Alinsky) and that he, James O’Keefe, was willing to live a monk –like existence harassed by leftists and...

(A view from the fourth summit of Buford Mountain) Buford Mountain is the third highest mountain in Missouri, and the trail that climbs it and loops back is 12 miles or so in length, if measured from where you have to park. The first two or three miles of the trail is a steep and relentless rocky ascent, with a 700 foot gain in elevation. Once you’ve climbed to the top, the trail continues for about three miles along the ridge of the mountain, then descends on the eastern side, making its way through dry creek beds, until it ascends again 700 feet steeply to the crest and retraces the path to the parking area. So two ascents up the same mountain that are not so bad if you’re in shape, unless it’s 95 degrees and humid, which it was. I’ve hiked all over the world, and this is by far the most remote hike I’ve ever been on. I saw not only no other hikers, but no signs of hikers – no footprints in the two or three spots where the ground was soft, and this being a Missouri “conservation ...