Reflections on Faith and Culture

from the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 42

noreply@blogger.com (Randy Coleman-Riese) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 10:44:00 +0000

The Transfiguration Part 1

from the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 41

noreply@blogger.com (Randy Coleman-Riese) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 16:26:00 +0000

"There are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God"....Jesus' big mistake?

from the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 40

noreply@blogger.com (Randy Coleman-Riese) — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 10:23:00 +0000

"The son of man must undergo great suffering and be rejected by the elders chief priests and scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised..."

from the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 39

noreply@blogger.com (Randy Coleman-Riese) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 18:32:00 +0000

"Who do you say that I am?" The birth of real individuality.

from the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 38

noreply@blogger.com (Randy Coleman-Riese) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 21:25:00 +0000

Feeding of the 5,000 continued....when all were fed the disciples gathered together twelve baskets of broken pieces.

from the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 37

noreply@blogger.com (Randy Coleman-Riese) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 17:46:00 +0000

Following the return of the apostles after having been sent out to preach the Gospel (and having shaken some of the dust from their feet when they were, at times, rejected...) Luke begins the story of the feeding of the 5,000 - Luke's eucharistic image

from the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 36

noreply@blogger.com (Randy Coleman-Riese) — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 22:49:00 +0000

the apostles as scapegoats of the world...collective masochism or a homeopathic dose of social scorn

Note: Gil in this excerpt refers to a 'martyr spirit' mentioned in the Mark Twain essay entitled "The United States of Lyncherdom"

from the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 35

noreply@blogger.com (Randy Coleman-Riese) — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 04:22:00 +0000

More on the effects of the experience of rejection...

from the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 34

noreply@blogger.com (Randy Coleman-Riese) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 01:17:00 +0000

Forging the remnant...continued.

from the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 33

noreply@blogger.com (Randy Coleman-Riese) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 20:18:00 +0000

"If they do not welcome you - go out into the street and shake the dust from your feet..." Jesus sends the disciples out to preach the Gospel and so the post-crucifixion remnant begins to be formed in the crucible of rejection - inoculated against the mystifications of the sacrificial vortex awaiting them.

Year End Note from Gil & Randy

noreply@blogger.com (Randy Coleman-Riese) — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 09:36:00 +0000

Thank you for making our work possible...

A Rene Girard Christmas card...

noreply@blogger.com (Randy Coleman-Riese) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 09:39:00 +0000

courtesy of National Review Online - Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson...

A Cornerstone Forum Christmas Card...

noreply@blogger.com (Randy Coleman-Riese) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 18:05:00 +0000

David Walsh

noreply@blogger.com (Gil Bailie) — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 18:29:00 +0000

‎"Liberalism in our own time has finally revealed its loss of spiritual direction and, as a consequence, its responsibility for the progressive destruction of human nature. In light of the bankruptcy now exposed at its core, it is difficult to claim that liberalism stands for any higher idea of the dignity and worth of the person. We recognize that the uneasy compromise at its inception, which has indeed been a source of stability for three centuries, is now on the verge of falling apart. Possessive individualism, the rights of an acquisitive self-interested liberty, and the pull of our true self, fidelity to the obligations of the natural moral order, could only be held together for so long." - David Walsh

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from the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 32

noreply@blogger.com (Randy Coleman-Riese) — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 23:29:00 +0000

Preparing the disciples for the Lukan long haul...sending of the 12

from the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 31

noreply@blogger.com (Randy Coleman-Riese) — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 09:47:00 +0000

Herod 'sets eyes on' Jesus. but the ruler's epistemological handicap prevents him from seeing him.

Jesus before Herod continued...

George Marlin: Margaret Sanger

noreply@blogger.com (Gil Bailie) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 18:32:00 +0000

Margaret Sanger actually stated that: “Birth control does not mean abortion.” Here are her exact words:

“The real alternative to birth control is abortion,” wrote Dean Inge, [Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London]. It is an alternative that I cannot too strongly condemn. Although abortion may be resorted to in order to save the life of the mother, the practice of it merely for limitation of offspring is dangerous and vicious. [Emphasis added] I bring up the subject here only because some ill-informed persons have the notion that when we speak of birth control we include abortion as a method. We certainly do not. Abortion destroys the already fertilized ovum or the embryo; contraception, as I have carefully explained, prevents the fertilizing of the ovum by keeping the male cells away. Thus it prevents the beginning of life.

Michael Knox Beran

noreply@blogger.com (Gil Bailie) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 18:25:00 +0000

"The primitive man famishes; the civilized man despairs," thus writes Michael Knox Beran here. It's well worth reading.

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from the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 30

noreply@blogger.com (Randy Coleman-Riese) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 10:00:00 +0000

Herod's desire to see Jesus...

G. K. Chesterton

noreply@blogger.com (Gil Bailie) — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 20:24:00 +0000

"... the very fitness of the new creeds [whether they are religious, political or "life-style" creeds] makes them unfit; their very acceptability make them inacceptable. Thus they all profess to be progressive because the peculiar boast of their peculiar period was progress; they claim to be democratic because our political system still rather pathetically claims to be democratic. ... These people merely take the modern mood, with much in it that is amiable and much that is anarchical and must that is merely dull and obvious, and then require any creed to be cut down to fit that mood."

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Blessed John Henry Newman

noreply@blogger.com (Gil Bailie) — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 17:16:00 +0000

"Never do men come together in considerable numbers, but the passion, self-will, pride, and unbelief, which may be more or less dormant in them one by one, bursts into flame, and becomes a constituent of their union. Even when faith exists in the whole people, even when religious men combine for religious purposes, still, when they form into a body, they evidence in no long time the innate debility of human nature, and in their spirit and conduct, in their avowals and proceedings, they are in grave contrast to Christian simplicity and straightforwardness. This is what the sacred writers mean by 'the world,' and why they warn us against it; and their description of it applies in its degree to all collections and parties of men, high and low, national and professional, lay and ecclesiastical."

Please join us on Facebook, where I daily share quotations I have found helpful and interesting. - Gil Bailie

from the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 29

noreply@blogger.com (Randy Coleman-Riese) — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 09:20:00 +0000

Gil Bailie begins the 5th cassette tape from the Poetry of Truth series with this quote from Henri de Lubac:

“There is the hacknedely moralizing interpretation of those who have not studied the subject historically, and there is the narrowly historical interpretation of those who have not gone deeply into it spiritually. These are the alternating forms of mediocrity.”

With this he starts a prolonged excursus on the story of Herod, John the Baptist and Jesus. This will continue over the next few posted excerpts.

From Henri de Lubac

noreply@blogger.com (Gil Bailie) — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 19:01:00 +0000

"Do the unbelievers who jostle us at every turn observe on our brows the radiance of that gladness which, twenty centuries ago, captivated the fine flower of the pagan world? Are our hearts the hearts of men risen with Christ? Do we, in our time, bear witness to the Beatitudes? In a word, while we are fully alive to the blasphemy in Nietzsche's terrible phrase and in its whole context, are we not also forced to see in ourselves something of what drove him to such blaspheme?"

Mimetic Influence . . .

noreply@blogger.com (Gil Bailie) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 17:40:00 +0000

"Example is the sole eternal work by which one can influence souls whose attitude to Christ is one of complete rejection," wrote Charles de Foucauld. Likewise the faithful are inspired by example, but, as Hans Urs von Balthasar observed: "In this connection it may be affirmed, not as a daring conjecture but as a simple fact, that even the numerous canonizations make comparatively little impression on the faithful, as does everything, in fact, that can be effected by by organizational machinery. The faithful are impressed not by canonization but by sanctity ..."

from the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 28

noreply@blogger.com (Randy Coleman-Riese) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 10:33:00 +0000

The Gerasene demoniac story continued...the cure for possession is possession