tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-91331660261291696002024-03-14T01:18:40.270+11:00The Divine WedgieAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02632900943920330793noreply@blogger.comBlogger294125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9133166026129169600.post-21849499116152442322016-03-01T11:06:00.000+11:002016-09-05T21:56:12.293+10:00The Blog is Moving to Patheos<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It is official, <em>The Divine Wedgie</em> has now moved to <em>Patheos Catholic</em>, and so the new blog URL is <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/divinewedgie/">http://www.patheos.com/blogs/divinewedgie/ </a></div>
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We at <em>The Divine Wedgie </em>are thankful for your continued readership and look forward to seeing you at <em>Patheos</em>.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02632900943920330793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9133166026129169600.post-17844850329034373362016-02-22T07:17:00.000+11:002016-02-22T07:26:45.727+11:00The Rampage of Sloth<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Nowadays, we tend to associate the capital sin of sloth with laziness and listless inactivity. Because of this association, there is a tendency to associate its opposite, which is vigorous activism, with virtue. The more active, the better one's moral disposition is.</div>
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In the face of this, it is interesting to note the writings of the fourth century ascetic Evagrius of Pontus - parts of which will be covered at a course on moral and sexual integrity at Campion College - who is one of the earliest authorities on the vice of sloth, or what he called <i>acedia </i>and also termed "the noonday demon". In reading a famous passage in his <i>Praktikos </i><a href="http://www.earlychurchtexts.com/public/evagrius_of_pontus_eight_logismoi.htm">on how the "noonday demon" acts</a>, the reader may notice that <i>acedia</i> was never associated with inactivity. Rather, for Evagrius, the "noonday demon" acts by causing the Christian to engage in fidgety and meaningless activity. It is precisely through such activity that the sin of sloth is made manifest. And what the person will see is not idle lazing, but wanton destruction. This will explain why Psalm 91, on which Evagrius' writing on sloth is based, refers to sloth in active terms, as a "scourge that lays waste".</div>
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One gets a sense of this when reading the devastating introductory chapter of a new book on <i>acedia </i>by RJ Snell entitled <i><a href="http://angelicopress.com/snell-acedia-and-its-discontents/">Acedia and Its Discontents</a></i>, published by Angelico Press. Snell uses passages from Cormac McCarthy's novel <i>Blood Meridian</i>, describing a blanket of rape, torture, murder, mob violence and pillage covering a post-apocalyptic earth. The reason suggested is not profound: it is because one simply can.</div>
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Despite appearances, Snell says that this chain of seemingly meaningless activity is the stuff of the sin of sloth. Sloth is not passive indolence, but is a "frenzy of pointless action". Moreover, it is an action that is motivated by an active "disgust at the actual work given them by God".</div>
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What this points to is a link between sloth as a "frenzy of pointless action", and what Snell calls a "breezy lightness of freedom". More accurately, it is the desire to save one's freedom - defined as the exercise of the will with no end - at any cost, which he links with a love of self overtaking the love of God. </div>
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Thus, counterintuitive though it may seem, our drive for greater productivity, our drive for more forms of entertainment, our tendency to respond to "how are you" with "busy", our drive to "do something" for every thing, is part of the institutionalisation of sloth. Snell writes later in the book that "sloth seeps into our loves and lives in virtually every domain, before finally transforming itself into boredom and nihilism. <br />
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It is because it is so pervasive, yet so unnoticable, that <i>acedia</i> was regarded by Evagrius as the most insidious of demons.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02632900943920330793noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9133166026129169600.post-15947289654104729212016-02-16T08:03:00.000+11:002016-02-16T15:58:34.858+11:00New Essay: Sarah Coakley and the Prayers of the Digital Body of Christ<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Janice McCrandal, <a href="http://trinity.qld.edu.au/people/teaching-staff/janice-mcrandal">lecturer in theology at Trinity Theological College</a> in Brisbane, has edited a new volume, published by Fortress Press this year. The new work focuses on the impact of the work of the Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity at Cambridge University, <a href="http://www.divinity.cam.ac.uk/directory/sarah-coakley">Sarah Coakley</a>, in the field of Systematic Theology, hence the title <i><a href="http://fortresspress.com/product/sarah-coakley-and-future-systematic-theology">Sarah Coakley and the Future of Systematic Theology</a></i>.</div>
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The edited book grew out of a symposium on Coakley's work, held in 2010 at the United Theological College, featuring a collage of theological voices from a number of ecclesial traditions. Coakley herself was present to respond to the presentations. </div>
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<i>the Divine Wedgie's </i>Matthew Tan was one of those who contributed to the symposium and to the volume. The chapter, entitled "<a href="https://www.academia.edu/21703788/Sarah_Coakley_and_the_Prayers_of_the_Digital_Body_of_Christ">Sarah Coakley and the Prayers of the Digital Body of Christ</a>", interfaced the use of the internet and Coakley's work on trinitarian prayer, arguing that the practice of the internet paralleled and ultimately parodied, the practice of Christian prayer. </div>
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Thanks is due to Dr. McCrandal and to Fortress Press for bringing this work to the light of day.</div>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02632900943920330793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9133166026129169600.post-84522843404626696572016-02-08T07:39:00.000+11:002016-02-08T07:42:23.140+11:00Free Theology PDFs from Syndicate Theology<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The new theological project <i><a href="https://syndicatetheology.com/">Syndicate Theology</a></i> are slowly but surely attracting a growing list of avid readers. As they approach their second anniversary, <i>Syndicate Theology</i> have begun a special offer of their six most popular symposia in 2015, all in PDF format to readers who sign up for their weekly newsletter. Furthermore, Syndicate are offering readers refer their friends to the newsletter (using a unique link after signing up), where Syndicate offers a back issue of their print edition for each friend that signs up for the newsletter.</div>
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For the sake of full disclosure, <i>the Divine Wedgie </i>has made a written contribution to the symposium on John Milbank's <i>Beyond Secular Order</i>, which can be accessed by clicking <a href="https://syndicatetheology.com/symposium/beyond-secular-order/">here</a>, and with Matthew Tan's contribution by clicking <a href="https://syndicatetheology.com/commentary/the-800-year-old-simulation/">here</a>. </div>
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To take advantage of the free PDF offer, simply click <a href="http://www.syndicateweekly.com/?kid=8ETD7">here</a> to sign up for their newsletter. </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02632900943920330793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9133166026129169600.post-45859159436654696252016-02-01T07:48:00.000+11:002016-02-01T07:48:12.986+11:00What the Incarnation Does to Consumption<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Richard Aleman has taken over the helm of <i><a href="http://distributistreview.com/">The Distributist Review</a></i>, arguably one of the most famous English-speaking web magazines on the economic outlook known as distributism, advocated by the likes of GK Chesterton in the early twentieth century and who still has advocates and practitioners today (notable examples include the Mondragon group of cooperatives in Spain). </div>
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The site had been on an extended hiatus, but has seen a revival in late 2015 under Aleman's editorship. <i>The Divine Wedgie's </i>Matthew Tan is included among the list of contributing editors, which also includes writers from the American online thinkspace <a href="http://solidarityhall.org/" style="font-style: italic;">Solidarity Hall</a> (edited by Daniel Schwindt)<i>, </i>such as Susannah Black of <a href="https://radiofreethulcandra.wordpress.com/" style="font-style: italic;">Radio Free Thulcandra</a>, John Medaille, Jack Ryan, Thomas Storck and Dale Ahlquist.</div>
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While distributism continues to be a central focus of the magazine, it has nonetheless broadened its scope to include articles in other areas that have a bearing on the distributist outlook. An example is an <a href="http://distributistreview.com/an-incarnate-economy/">article on the weight the doctrine of the Incarnation</a> of the Word would have on one's attitude to the material world and, by extension, the act of consuming the goods of this world. With all the denunciation of a wasteful consumerist culture as "materialist", the article submits that what is actually at play is a kind of dematerialised gnosticism (a point made in William Cavanaugh's <i><a href="http://www.eerdmans.com/Products/4561/being-consumed.aspx">Being Consumed</a></i>), and the waste can only be countered by a proper materialism, with the Incarnation as a central informing principle.</div>
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The article can be found by clicking <a href="http://distributistreview.com/an-incarnate-economy/">here</a>. </div>
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Another article that gives a sense of the new direction of the revived <i>Distributist Review </i>is an article on the thought of the German theologian Romano Guardini on the power of humility in a technocratic age, which can be found by clicking <a href="http://distributistreview.com/the-power-of-humility-in-the-technocratic-age/">here</a>.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02632900943920330793noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9133166026129169600.post-79537022837262812132016-01-24T16:23:00.000+11:002016-01-24T16:23:34.058+11:00When a Dead Body Attends Mass<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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One morning, probably due to a combination of liturgical illiteracy and bad timing, a coffin with a body was casually wheeled into a suburban parish in the middle of the Eucharistic liturgy, in preparation for a funeral which was to come immediately after.</div>
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So there it was, a dead body, cutting through the almost boring familiarity of the space between "Let us pray" and "One God forever and ever".</div>
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At first glance, a dead body casually gliding into a non-funerary liturgy might seem to some slightly odd. Other folk might seem irritated at the funeral director's awkward sense of timing. After the initial awkwardness and rage, however, the presence of the coffin and the corpse therein can be seen to be not an interruption but a correlation, a visible reminder to those attending the Eucharist at just what the Eucharist is about.</div>
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What is striking in this action is the sight of two bodies facing each other. On the one hand there is the dead body of the deceased, while on the other is the paradoxical body of Christ, the body that is sacrificed yet is brimming with life that is passed onto those who receive it.</div>
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In a way, the Eucharistic body is not completely juxtaposed with the dead body. Indeed, as Graham Ward reminds us in an essay on the Eucharist in his <i>City of God</i>, the Eucharistic body is the archetype of the human body. It is no accident that St. Augustine, in his sermon on the Eucharist, once described the Eucharistic Body as "who you [the congregant] are". </div>
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Set against this backdrop, the body of the deceased is not longer a mere dead piece of flesh. As mentioned in a <a href="http://divinewedgie.blogspot.com.au/2014/12/theology-of-body-torture-report.html">previous post</a>, bodies also prophecy to a future moment. The ancient Church looked to the body as a signal to the last day when these bodies, long waiting for their restoration, are brought back to life as it was on the day of Christ's death. The dead body, in other words, is a signal to that end of history where the glorified body of Christ is made fully manifest. </div>
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As the body - both the Eucharistic Body of Christ and of that of the deceased - catapults our imagination to that future moment, they also pull as back to another moment in the past, indeed the very first moment in history in the Garden of Eden. For in was in that garden when creation enjoyed uninterrupted communion with its Creator, and the Eucharistic Body of Christ, in drawing us to Communion with Him, draws us also to a restored Eden. The flowers arranged on top of the coffin offer this little hopeful glimmer of that thing both ever ancient and ever new.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02632900943920330793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9133166026129169600.post-20972780056738054032016-01-16T11:52:00.003+11:002016-01-16T11:52:59.080+11:00Jesus, Jazz and Who We Are<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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A previous post explored the assertion by Lacanian psychoanalysis that a subject undergoes a kind of death when exhaustively encased within language, or more precisely, linguistic symbols. This is due to the limitations of symbols in expressing the fullness and the complexity within each subject. True subjectivity, according to Lacanian psychoanalysis, comes when one breaks through the realm of symbols into what Lacan calls the "Real". <a href="http://divinewedgie.blogspot.com.au/2015/11/psychoanalysis-death-through-language.html">That post</a> also hinted at how, in a media-saturated culture, true reality is quashed and broken into a form that fits text-based narratives peddled by media outlets everywhere. </div>
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Another way to view this gap between text and the "Real" is explored in Cynthia Nielsen's latest book <i><a href="http://wipfandstock.com/interstitial-soundings.html">Interstitial Soundings: Philosophical Reflections on Improvisation, Practice, and Self-Making</a>, </i>published by Cascade. The book uses the practice of jazz music as a launch point into a philosophical exploration of subjectivity, weaving jazz theory with diverse philosophical insights from Gadamer, Foucault and MacIntyre. </div>
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Of note is a point in her first chapter concerning the role of the score-sheet in the process of composition. Nielsen highlights a modern tendency towards treating the score as the exhaustive deposit of music making, and embodied performance by the players as mere transmission of the score. Though Nielsen admits that players are in a sense "tied to the score", she nonetheless highlights a gap in composition between the text on the score on the one hand, and the inflections brought out by the individual performances on the other. This embodied performance, Nielsen argues, is as much part of the compositional process as the product encased in the score, meaning that the score is not as complete a musical product as we tend to think it is.</div>
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Moreover, Nielsen argues in that chapter that the performance of music - and the book focuses on the performance of bebop - was also an important part of forming of the subject. In Nielsen's words, the "performer herself is changed [one can say "formed"] through 'dwelling with' the piece and allowing it to become...another aspect of her musical voice" (13). </div>
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What can be drawn from this important chapter is that the reality of music, and indeed all reality, cannot be so easily encased in text or symbol. We must thus be cautious of any attempts by media outlets, elite or otherwise, to convince us that the world can be encased in a headline, hashtag or video clip. Attention to the embodied subject has to be given in order to truly say one knows reality at all. </div>
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At the same time, it must be noted that this is not some injunction of a moral relativist, but is also gleaned from the pattern of the life of the Word that took on a body, who heralded the Kingdom of Heaven by encountering bodies, touching bodies, who brought eternal life by having His followers eat his body, and defeated death by undergoing the death of His body. Finally, as Augustine once said in a homily, it is through the encounter with the Body of the Incarnate Word, that we can finally know and receive who we really are. </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02632900943920330793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9133166026129169600.post-69923859255116101232016-01-06T17:25:00.002+11:002016-01-06T18:05:11.760+11:00Syndicate Theology Symposium: Beyond Secular Order by John Milbank<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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While Christmas and New Year celebrations went on over the last two weeks, the folk at <i><a href="https://syndicatetheology.com/">Syndicate Theology</a> </i>(mentioned in a <a href="http://divinewedgie.blogspot.com.au/2014/04/syndicate-new-forum-for-theology.html">post in 2014</a> - Happy New Year, by the way) were hard at work in putting together a symposium around John Milbank's follow up to his highly anticipated and equally controversial <i>Theology & Social Theory</i>. </div>
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This <a href="https://syndicatetheology.com/symposium/beyond-secular-order/">symposium on <i>Beyond Secular Order</i></a> was edited by Dr. Justin Tse of the University of Washington, who blogs at <a href="http://religioethnicwired.blogspot.com.au/"><i>Religion. Ethnicity. Wired.</i></a> The symposium provided four response essays, each of which was followed by a counter-response by John Milbank and an accompanying discussion. This symposium received the largest response by any of the books reviewed on <i>Syndicate Theology </i>since its inception in 2015. </div>
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Contributors to this symposium included:</div>
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<li><a href="https://syndicatetheology.com/symposium/beyond-secular-order/">Justin Tse</a>'s editorial introduction </li>
<li><a href="https://syndicatetheology.com/commentary/healing-prayer-and-fabricating-animals/">Bethany Joy Kim</a> of the Society of Vineyard Scholars, who looked at Milbank's take on the concept of <i>Homo Faber</i> from a charismatic perspective</li>
<li><a href="https://syndicatetheology.com/commentary/the-800-year-old-simulation/">Matthew Tan</a> of Campion College Australia (and <i>The Divine Wedgie</i>), who examined the metaphysics of simulation and its effects on politics and pop culture</li>
<li><a href="https://syndicatetheology.com/commentary/radicalorthodoxy/">Jonathan Tran</a> of Baylor University, who provided a hopeful yet critical perspective on the viability of Milbank's larger project of Radical Orthodoxy.</li>
<li><a href="https://syndicatetheology.com/commentary/provincializing-christendom/">Devin Singh</a> of Dartmouth College, which critiqued from a postcolonial standpoint, the seeming over-romanticised and Euro-centric thesis of Milbank and</li>
<li><a href="https://syndicatetheology.com/commentary/christendom-take-two/">Eugene McCarraher</a>, arguably the most pointed of Milbank's critics, which builds upon Singh's critiques and critiques what has been labelled a "Dominion Theology", articulating many critics' fears of theocratic goverenance arguably put forward by Milbank's overall project, a charge which Milbank denies in a lengthy response.</li>
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<i>Syndicate Theology </i>have also rung in the new year with a new symposium on <i><a href="https://syndicatetheology.com/symposium/american-apocalypse/">American Apocalypse: A Historical Of Modern Evangelicalism</a> </i>by Matthew Avery Sutton. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02632900943920330793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9133166026129169600.post-31261327739069063822015-12-21T12:44:00.000+11:002015-12-21T12:44:10.059+11:00Mary's Visitation & the Ark of the Covenant<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The Gospel in the Lectionary for the Fourth Sunday of Advent recounts the visitation by Mary to her kinswoman Elizabeth, which is recounted in Chapter 1 of the Gospel of Luke. It is a familiar scene, where Elizabeth breaks out into prophetic utterance, asking rhetorically "But why am I so favoured that the Mother of my lord is coming to me?", declaring Mary as "the Mother of my lord", and Mary responds with her famous hymn of liberation, the <i>Magnificat</i>.</div>
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While an endearing scene, the homily for that Sunday also alerted the congregation to another reason for this episode's significance: for this scene provides one of a number of typological links between Mary on the one hand and the Old Testament motif of the Ark of the Covenant on the other, and from that, providing a glimpse into what is to come in the adult life of Jesus. </div>
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The Old Testament evidence is another famous bible story: the return of the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem in 1 Chronicles 13. More specifically, it is the prelude to this episode. 1 Chronicles 13 recounts David going up into Kiriath-Jearim (a hillside town belonging to Judah) to bring back the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem, where David and all Israel danced and sang before God (1 Chronicles 13:8). As this episode unfolds, David asks a question that sounds very much like the question of Elizabeth: "How can I bring the ark of God to me?", before settling the Ark into the house of a man from the priestly tribe of Levi for 3 months, while David establishes himself as king in Jerusalem, and defeats the militarily stronger Canaanite tribe, the Philistines (1 Chronicles 14). </div>
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These two reference points, David's question and the storing of the Ark for 3 months in a priestly house, find their New Testament counterpart in the account of the visitation. Elizabeth asks how another Ark that held the word of God could be brought to her, and Mary stays 3 months in Elizabeth's house (more specifically, the house of Zechariah who "belonged to the priestly order of Abijah" [Luke 1:5]). With her <i>Magnificat </i>then, Mary as carrier for the Word of God, stands as a harbinger for that important third element: the establishment of a Kingdom that will begin in Jerusalem, and the overcoming and final defeat of an enemy that so many deem unassailable. </div>
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We in our day thereby have typological grounds to anticipate the final installation of the Kingdom of heaven, and the final defeat of a mighty enemy, and only the contents of the Ark of the Covenant, and it is only our fidelity to those contents, could bring about that liberation prophesied by Mary's hymn.</div>
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A happy Christmas to all!</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02632900943920330793noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9133166026129169600.post-43020869945244772782015-12-14T15:46:00.001+11:002015-12-14T15:50:06.981+11:00Changing Sex & Living Forever<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/150716070949-02-caitlyn-jenner-espys-super-169.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/150716070949-02-caitlyn-jenner-espys-super-169.jpg" height="225" width="400" /></a></div>
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The editor of the <i>Mars Hill Audio Journal</i>, Ken Myers, recently released some bonus material under the title "<a href="https://marshillaudio.org/page/possibility-or-potency-medieval-theology-transhumanism-and-human-identity" target="_blank">Possibility or Potency?</a>". The materials include two stimulating interviews, the first being with Dr. <a href="http://markshiffman.weebly.com/" target="_blank">Mark Shiffman</a>, Associate Professor Humanities at Villanova University. The second interview is with Gilbert Meilaender, a senior research professor at Valparaiso University.</div>
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The unifying arc of these two <a href="https://marshillaudio.org/page/possibility-or-potency-medieval-theology-transhumanism-and-human-identity" target="_blank">interviews</a> is the topic of transhumanism, the radical strands of which seek to technologically enhance the human person and overcome the limitations that come with having a body. These can include matters of sexual identity on the one hand, and death on the other . What was commonly observed by interviewees is that in an age of technological hyper-advancement, the body has come to act as a prosthetic to the will or a brake on the ability of the will to get what it wants. This runs up against the cultural <i>zeitgeist</i> that has normalised an attitude of "mind over matter", which ends up metaphysically connecting two seemingly unconnected cultural phenomena of transgenderism on the one hand, and the transhuman attempts at immortality on the other (as an aside, it is interesting that Herve Juvin praised the capacities of transgenderism in embodying the unlimited possibilities of the will, aided by medical technology, in his <i><a href="http://www.versobooks.com/books/354-the-coming-of-the-body" target="_blank">The Coming of the Body</a></i>). </div>
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Shiffman's interview is particularly interesting, because it identifies the root of this transexual and transhuman assertion of the primacy of the will in a medieval theological move by Bl. Duns Scotus to preserve the omnipotence of God. This omnipotence was protected by Scotus' claim that the structure of nature cannot be explained by anything other than the will of God. What this did, says Shiffman, is to remove the ability of the material world, including bodies in that world, to say anything meaningfully about God. This had the secondary effect of reducing God to an absolute will, and in turn reduced the conception of the human person - who is made in the image of God - to be primarily a will that just so happens to have a body, rather than the Aristotelian idea of the body <i>being </i>a person, with predetermined potencies set by God as a means of helping man understand heavenly realities.</div>
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When the body becomes an accidental category to what makes up a human person, it is not hard to conceive of the will, unfettered by any limit imposed on the body, to expand its capacities or self-identity that does not have any material anchor. A person is exactly the same regardless of whether he or she has a biological body, a surgically enhanced body that looks like any gender imaginable, a computer chasis or <a href="http://www.popsci.com.au/science/medicine/humai-wants-to-resurrect-humans-within-30-years,412164" target="_blank">freely floating in cyberspace</a>. All these phenomena, the two interviewees suggest, find their root in the uncoupling of embodiment with personhood, which is found not only in the most radical edges of transhumanism, but also in the minutiae of consumer culture.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02632900943920330793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9133166026129169600.post-51243809260666514832015-12-07T17:40:00.000+11:002015-12-07T17:40:22.458+11:00Fundamental Joy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://espngrantland.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/inside-out-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="356" src="https://espngrantland.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/inside-out-1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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It finally happened. In an interstate flight, the Pixar movie <i>Inside Out </i>was watched and, oddly enough, it was quite the charmer. Even more surprisingly, <i>Inside Out </i>proved to be rather philosophically and theologically astute.</div>
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Whether conscious or not, whoever conceptualised the movie has rather deftly brought together elements of Augustinian theology, as well as an appreciation of Terrance Malick's <i>Tree of Life</i>, in which <a href="http://divinewedgie.blogspot.com.au/2014/11/souls-in-space.html" target="_blank">interior states folded outwards</a> to form landscapes that were inhabited, rather than mere heremetically sealed feelings, giving the sense that one's psyche is a cosmos very similar - and very connected - to the natural universe in which we live.</div>
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Of particular interest, however, was the sequence at the beginning of the movie in which the girl whose emotions are the main protagonists, Riley, is born, and her emotions gradually come into being. Interestingly, it is Joy that makes the first entrance. She smiles in wonder at everything she beholds, and it is her presence that marks Riley's most fundamental orientation to the world, marked by the construction of largely happy core memories as theme parks. Her absence, while a key driver in the plot, is also portrayed as an abnormal development.</div>
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What is interesting about this very short but very fetching sequence is that it gives an optical statement concerning not only the fundamental orientation of the human creature, but also the fundamental structure of creation. In David L. Schindler's book <i><a href="http://www.eerdmans.com/Products/6430/ordering-love.aspx" target="_blank">Ordering Love</a></i>, the point is made that order in the universe is not only a dry abstract structure, but also a statement about the amount of care and concern shown by the Creator for creatures. Love, Schindler boldly states, is the metaphysical bedrock of the universe. </div>
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This bedrock of love then demands a proper response, a response is gleaned in the second creation account in the second chapter of the Book of Genesis. In an <a href="https://marshillaudio.org/addenda/rj-snell-acedia" target="_blank">interview on his book <i>Acedia & Its Discontents</i></a>, R.J. Snell made the point that the first words that Adam spoke came out in a cry of delight, an exclamation of joy. This exclamation of joy, however, is not just a delight at the sight of Eve. As John Paul II's work on the Theology of the Body makes clear, Adam's first cry is also a statement of the fundamental nature of the human creature. It is joy, not sadness, that forms the fundamental makeup of the human person. It is for this reason that the sight of so much sadness in our world evokes the conviction that something abnormal has taken place.</div>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02632900943920330793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9133166026129169600.post-7729528392796114942015-12-02T09:16:00.001+11:002015-12-02T09:16:36.412+11:00Lament as Neo-Genesis<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://darknessvisible.christs.cam.ac.uk/images/Blake,%20Creation%20of%20Eve.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://darknessvisible.christs.cam.ac.uk/images/Blake,%20Creation%20of%20Eve.jpg" height="400" width="321" /></a></div>
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In a previous post, mention was made of a <a href="http://divinewedgie.blogspot.com.au/2014/01/crying-and-life-of-world-to-come.html" target="_blank">quote by St. Isaac the Syrian</a>, in which tears bore the capacity for renewing the self and the world. To paraphrase St. Isaac, the "place of tears" lays the foundations upon which the "path to a new age" can be paved.</div>
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It is arguable that such words come, not from mere mystical reflection, but upon an interface between one's sufferings and the words of scripture, in particular the first two books of the Pentateuch. This becomes more apparent when one reads the first chapter of Walter Brueggemann's <i><a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/paperbacktheology/2007/10/prophetic-imagination-by-walter-brueggemann.html" target="_blank">The Prophetic Imagination</a></i>. </div>
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To foreground his coverage of the prophetic literature, Brueggemann considered the narrative of the liberation of Israel, recorded in Book of Exodus. He noted how the process of liberation began with an act of grieving. To use Brueggemann's words, he calls the Exodus a "primal scream that permits the beginning of history". An act of grieving, he continues, is what stirs God into acting, freeing Israel from the yoke of Egypt.</div>
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But Brueggemann goes further than leaving the liberation narrative as just a liberation from slavery. He suggests that this episode is also an act of creation, a forging of a new reality, founded upon an act of lament. "Bringing hurt to public expression", he writes, "is an important first tep in the dismantling criticism that permits a new reality". Brueggemann then notes how the plagues that precede the final act of liberation, function as challenges to the gods of Egypt, exposing the limitations of Pharoah's magicians and Egypt's gods.</div>
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Why this is significant is because a similar act of challenging alien gods is taking place in an earlier narrative, in the first creation account of the Book of Genesis. The acts of creation are not just creating a new world, but also Israel's narrative of putting alien gods in their place, as mere creations by the God of Israel.</div>
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Seen in this light, the Exodus narrative of liberation provides us with a comforting outlook as we enter the Advent season. The arrival of the Messiah is not just a time of liberation from sin. If we have cause to lament as a result of the fruit of our sin or the sins of others, we may do so in the confidence that we also play our part in laying the foundation of a new Genesical episode, a new act of creation which will end with the familiar refrain from the Book of Genesis, "indeed it was very good". </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02632900943920330793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9133166026129169600.post-13127573399389940342015-11-22T14:39:00.000+11:002015-11-22T14:39:33.802+11:00Fascism, Simulation & Christ the King<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://marcuscurnow.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/pantokrator-climate-change-clouds-close.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://marcuscurnow.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/pantokrator-climate-change-clouds-close.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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In 1925, Pope Pius XI instituted the solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe - more commonly known as the feast of Christ the King. Originally celebrated on the last Sunday of October, the Solemnity was shifted in 1970 to the last Sunday of Ordinary Time. </div>
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The historical matrix behind the institution of this feast is complex, but one immediate factor that loomed large in the mind of Pius XI was the rise of Benito Mussolini's Fascist Party (Mussolini had become Prime Minister the same year Pius instituted this feast). In addition, nationalist movements had begun to spring up or consolidate in Europe in response to the ravages of the First World War, with one important example being the <i>Action Francaise, </i>which existed before the War, and what was later to become the National Socialist German Workers Party in Germany.</div>
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Many of these movement had come to equate the nation state with a semi-divine status, which became manifest in subordinating everything and everyone to the nation-state. The nation was to be seen as the ul<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">timate concern in all aspects of everybody's life, becoming as Pius XI put it in his encyclical <i><a href="http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_11121925_quas-primas.html" target="_blank">Quas Primas</a></i>, "<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px;">natural religion consisting in some instinctive affection of the heart."</span></span> This was a concern, not only because of the presence of these movements, but also the growing allure of these movements among Catholics, such that their Catholic faith was not a path to discipleship under the tutelage of Christ, but a placeholder for a national identity that was forged under the tutelage of the nation. The nation, in other words, had come to override and define what it meant to be a Catholic.</div>
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The feast was thus instituted as a reminder to Catholics that their constitution as members of the Church made their national belonging subordinate to what Benedict XVI would call in a <a href="http://www.news.va/en/news/pope-benedict-angelus-for-the-feast-of-christ-the" target="_blank">2012 Angelus address</a> "the full realisation of the Kingdom of God, where God will be all in all". This call, as the interwar period attests, went largely unheeded by Catholics in Europe who, in large numbers, threw their support behind these nationalist movements who made the national interest their primary, if not sole, interest.</div>
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It is easy to say "we will never be fascists". It will be easy to distinguish our times from the turmoil of the interwar period on the vague grounds of having made great strides in civilisational progress in the last century. Nevertheless, it is important to note one important material constant that made mobilisation by nationalist and fascist movements possible - the normalisation of mass forms of communication, of which that the new nationalist movements and governments had a vastly superior command to that of the Church. It might be argued that our age of social media, marked by dazzling feats of technological wizardry, has little common with the technologically primitive forms of newspapers, radios and televisions. </div>
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However, as <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/baudrillard/" target="_blank">Jean Baudrillard</a> put forward in his 1981 work <i>Simulacra and Simulation</i>, what had occurred with the growing availability of mass media - such as the newspaper and telegraph - was a cutting of any organic link between real things and the images and texts that were meant to represent them. Indeed, by the twentieth century images and texts have come to be regarded as more real than the real. It was this crucial break that then gave mass media its incredible powers of mobilisation, something demonstrated to devastating effect in the depictions of enemies in World War I as being only worthy of destruction, then similarly and later the depictions of ethnic groupings in the interwar period.What has changed now, according to Baudrillard, is that we now live in an age of "hyperreality", such that texts and images do not even need to have any <i>reflection</i> with the real world in order to be believed. Indeed, <a href="http://divinewedgie.blogspot.com.au/2015/11/psychoanalysis-death-through-language.html" target="_blank">texts and images now have the power to <i>create</i> the real world</a> in its image. </div>
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After ninety years, the feast of Christ the King continues to be relevant then, not only because of the demonstrably enduring vulnerability of Christians to the allure of elements of nationalism and even fascism in times of perceived crisis. It is relevant also because the Kingship of Christ is made manifest on earth firstly through a Eucharistic presence, a sacramental presence where signs actually signify what meant to be signified. As even the marxist Baudrillard suggested, it was a sacramental imagination that held in check the risk of simulation overtaking reality. The Christian can honour this feast by making his or her looking forward to the life in the world to come translate into a resistance to letting cheap simulations shape their conception of life in the now. </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02632900943920330793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9133166026129169600.post-9665956133463487092015-11-14T13:47:00.000+11:002015-11-14T13:57:41.855+11:00Psychoanalysis & Death Through Language<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://www.wallpapername.com/thumbnails/detail/20130117/death%20minimalistic%20text%201680x1050%20wallpaper_www.wallpapername.com_47.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.wallpapername.com/thumbnails/detail/20130117/death%20minimalistic%20text%201680x1050%20wallpaper_www.wallpapername.com_47.jpg" height="396" width="640" /></a></div>
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To say that much of the world has lost the sacramental mode of viewing and engaging the world may not come as a huge surprise for many Christians. What may surprise, however, is the extent to which the subsequent loss of sacramental presence has become the norm for a Christian engagement with the world around them. With this loss of presence, words and linguistic symbols has now become the default in perceiving things in the world and events that happen within it. </div>
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Think of the way in which headlines, polls and social media feeds now shape the responses, attitudes and actions of Christian and non-Christian alike. All of us are now caught up in a process whereby we let the words depicting things or persons become the exhaustive means by which we communicate, and the presence of the thing or person itself - the thing the symbol points to - becomes erased under a tsunami of text.</div>
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A few pages of Marcus Pound's highly insightful book, <i><a href="https://www.bookdepository.com/Zizek-Marcus-Pound/9780802860019" target="_blank">Zizek: A (Very) Critical Introduction</a></i>, provides a succinct evaluation of the damage that is done when entire cultures simultaneously lose the sacramental connection between the sign and signified, and also become so enthralled at the dominance of linguistic signs as a means of understanding the world that nothing else can gain any traction in prompting us to see or think differently or with any nuance about something or someone.</div>
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Drawing on the psychoanalytical work of Jacques Lacan, Pound draws the reader's attention to the way that symbols (including language) have a tendency towards reductionism, obscuring the full presence of the reality that lies beyond the symbol. This reductionism becomes particularly dangerous when it comes to people. No doubt, it is necessary for people to communicate through symbol, but what Lacan alerts us to is that, when all you have is symbol, the subject becomes "lost... as an object". The subject becomes objectified and reduced to a mere placeholder for a headline. A migrant is now reduced to a news story about terrorism, academia reduced to mere shrill protests, leaders reduced to corrupt oprichniks, and so on. </div>
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The counter to this is not <i>another</i> headline, according to Pound. Pound suggests the alternative is a restoration of sheer presence. Pound does this with reference to Conor Cunningham's <i><a href="http://www.bookdepository.com/Genealogy-of-Nihilism-Conor-Cunningham/9780415276948" target="_blank">Genealogy of Nihilism</a></i>, in which he exhorts a return to the presence of the object or thing. This presence is what Cunningham associates with "being", but it is a presence that breaks through all symbols or markers, and indeed goes beyond any ability of a symbol to capture it. The presence of this object, Cunningham writes, calls us "by a name that we too exceed", because the presence of the object represents the presence of "being beyond thought", that is, beyond any linguistically mediated thought or articulation.<br />
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When Jesus saves, thus, he not only saves our souls. He also saves with a robust protection of sacramental presence, a presence that is repeated through our own presence and the presence of every creature and person on this planet. </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02632900943920330793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9133166026129169600.post-69561345005628270542015-11-09T19:26:00.000+11:002015-11-09T19:26:03.876+11:00The Dedication of St. John Lateran: Temple, Market & Apocalypse<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mmpowrs/images/200_27.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mmpowrs/images/200_27.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
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The Gospel reading for the liturgy marking the feast of the dedication of the Basilica of St. John Lateran depicts the infamous scene of the cleansing of the temple by Jesus, as narrated by the Gospel of John (2:13-22). Instead of the Synoptic Gospels' more familiar rebuke of turning a place of worship "into a den of thieves", John's Gospel depicts Jesus making the more matter-of-fact exhortation "stop using my Father's house as a market" (2:16), before then drawing an identification of the temple with his own body (2:21). The Gospel then not only identifies the Body of Christ with the temple, but also identifies the proper use of the temple, which is worship. </div>
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The motif of the market in John may sound far less dramatic than the angry denunciation in the Synoptic counterparts, until one considers that there is a high probability that the Johannine author also penned the Book of the Apocalypse. The significance of this link can be gleaned when the reader goes to chapter 13, which depicts a famous scene of the emergence of the first beast. </div>
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The beast's significance lies in its attempts to mimic the lamb (Christ) depicted in earlier chapters. Like the lamb, this beast has a great wound which does not it. Like Christ in the Gospels, the first beast has a disciple that "worked great miracles" (13:15). Like the lamb, the beast is positing itself as the centre of a liturgical act, as depicted in a great song of praise by a multitude in Chapter 4. </div>
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More significantly, however, like Christ in the Gospels, the first beast also obliquely identifies himself with a kind of temple, where worship comes in the form of buying and selling (13:17). In an inversion of the cleansing of the temple, the beast is attempting to be like Christ by itself being used as a market. </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02632900943920330793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9133166026129169600.post-45805459521452257112015-11-04T07:40:00.002+11:002015-11-04T07:40:49.407+11:00The Curse of the Conference Q&A Oration<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Conferences can be enlightening. They can also be forums when otherwise even mannered intellectuals descend into displays of uncouth narcissism. This <a href="http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2015/7/17/technology/beware-narcissists-your-social-media-feed" target="_blank">streak of narcissism</a> has become even more acute in the age of high saturation of social media and its associated proliferation of echo-chambers. Conferences have now become absorbed into this ecology, very often with live tweeting or posting of persons, comments, and photos. </div>
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Such egotistical self-referentiality can be made manifest in the presentation of papers, but conferences in recent times seem to indicate that the real displays come during the post-paper question and answer sessions, where ego-driven faux pas really come to light, with the most common of these being the question that converts into an oration. Recent conferences indicate that a misstep can be further broken down into 8 sub-types of increasing severity:</div>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">The oration that <i>does not pretend </i>to be a question pertaining to the paper</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">The oration that pretends to address the paper but <i>dragoons </i>said paper into the hobbyhorse of the orator/question-asker.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">The oration that ignores the paper and asks the presenter why s/he is not interested in the hobbyhorse of the orator/question-asker.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">The oration that ignores the paper and the presenter entirely and addresses the hobbyhorse of the orator/question-asker, whilst <i>trying </i>to keep within the overall theme of the conference.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">The oration that ignores the paper and the presenter entirely and addresses the hobbyhorse of the orator/question-asker, whilst <i>pretending </i>to keep within the overall theme of the conference<i>.</i></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">The oration that ignores the paper and the presenter entirely and addresses the hobbyhorse of the orator/question-asker, and <i>deliberately</i> <i>strays </i>beyond the frontiers of relevance for the conference. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">The oration that sparks a<i> group frenzy</i> concerning a hobbyhorse that strays beyond the frontiers of relevance for the conference.</li>
</ol>
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This list is not intended to be exhaustive, and other suggestions are possible. Be that as it may, it would seem that a good panel chair is vital in insisting that questions be explicitly framed as such, with discussion being kept not merely to the conference, but to the specific paper. </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02632900943920330793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9133166026129169600.post-80529031347742687722015-10-24T19:24:00.000+11:002015-10-24T19:24:02.457+11:00The Porn Again Christian<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.hercampus.com/sites/default/files/2014/04/16/birds-and-bees_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.hercampus.com/sites/default/files/2014/04/16/birds-and-bees_1.jpg" height="278" width="320" /></a></div>
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Human sexuality is a vital thing in the Christian tradition. Set in a sacramental register, human sexuality becomes more than genital activity. As the writings of St. John Paul II remind us, the experience of human sexuality and, extending from that, marriage, can become a microcosm of the covenantal bond between God and His creation, and the redemption by God of His creation. Christians thus are right in their concern over civic actions that impact upon this sacramental understanding.</div>
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The only problem, however, is that somewhere in the course of resisting any undermining of this sacramental understanding of human sexuality, the "sacramental" disappeared in favour of a lop-sided focus on "sexuality". With this disappearance of the sacramental, the covenantal dimension similarly disappeared with it. Shorn of the covenantal outlook, public pronouncements of human sexuality by Christians has now become a self-contained discourse, with little reference to anchor any talk about the biological activity and its natural flow-on effects. Thus, sex has become confined to the physical.</div>
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What is worse, however, is that shorn of the sacramental and the covenantal ecology to house the discourse on sexuality, Christians seem to have entertained the notion generated by media entrepreneurs that the only thing that they can uniquely contribute to the public discourse is an already impoverished discourse of human sexuality. Beyond the groin, it is presumed that non-Christian concepts, institutions and practises and the cultural and financial elites that deploy them can safely have the monopoly on ecology, economics, war, peace, art, education, culture, food, city life, urban life and conceptions of what the good life is. </div>
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This supposed division of labour is not benign, but is a form of commodification by what St. Paul calls the "powers and principalities of this world", creating that bourgeois Christianity so loved by political pundits and marketeers. Being so commodified, the Church has now become little more than a zone where people get told about how to sleep with each other. In so doing, the Church has become distorted from this wide-spanning reality (which is what a sacramental ecology calls for), into a virtual world where sexual practice, and only sexual practice, is the central public concern. Commodified in this fashion by the powers and principalities of this world, the Church has become the strange inversion of the pornified culture it is trying to resist. </div>
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The key here is not in the rejection of resisting a pornified culture, but in realising that the Church's resistence to that culture is founded on an infinitely richer understanding of what the world - and within that, human sexuality - is. This understanding must be coupled with the resisting of pressures to bring to public discourse and practice, even in translated form, of its sacramental and covenantal heritage. </div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02632900943920330793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9133166026129169600.post-62740666310430037192015-10-14T21:40:00.000+11:002015-10-14T21:40:39.716+11:00Being Someplace Else: The Theological Virtues & the Anime of Makoto Shinkai (Podcast Now Available)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://cradio.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/5CentimetersPerSecond.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://cradio.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/5CentimetersPerSecond.jpg" /></a></div>
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In a <a href="http://divinewedgie.blogspot.com.au/2015/09/speaking-dates-in-victoria.html" target="_blank">previous post</a>, mention was made of a presentation at the <a href="http://www.cclibrary.org.au/" target="_blank">Caroline Chisholm Library</a> in Melbourne entitled "Being Someplace Else". </div>
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The <a href="http://cradio.org.au/cradiotalks/being-someplace-else-theological-virtues-makoto-shinkai/" target="_blank">talk</a> explored how the animated films of Makoto Shinkai can act as a useful guide to consider the theological virtues of Faith, Hope and Love. The paper then went to put the films of Shinkai with two German theologians, Josef Pieper and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. It concluded that Shinkai's constant exploration of the longing to be in other places can provide a good launch point to see in a new light these otherwise ancient theological virtues. Be that as it may, the parallels are far from complete, as becomes apparent in the exploration of Hope. </div>
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Thanks to the help of the good people of the Sydney-based online radio station <a href="http://cradio.org.au/" target="_blank">Cradio</a>, the podcast of that presentation is now available, and readers can listen to the presentation in full by clicking <a href="http://cradio.org.au/cradiotalks/being-someplace-else-theological-virtues-makoto-shinkai/" target="_blank">here</a>. </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02632900943920330793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9133166026129169600.post-70659859492726021562015-09-30T10:19:00.000+10:002015-09-30T10:19:30.519+10:00Climate and Family: A Question of Covenant<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://timedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/pope-francis14.jpg?quality=65&strip=color&w=838" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="203" src="https://timedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/pope-francis14.jpg?quality=65&strip=color&w=838" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Pope Francis has left North America to return to Rome, after a trip that brought to the fore issues of climate and poverty and ended with a conference focussed on the defense of the family. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">The Catholic or
conservative social mediascape would no doubt express disappointment over the
lack of the longed for a showdown with the President over issues pertaining to
gay marriage, abortion, or other issues that political pundits both left and
right fall under the ambit of “family” or “life”. In light of this, such pundits might portray a lack of cohesion in the topics covered in the papal visit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">The Christian
might be tempted to use the rubric of “family” or “life” to see a contradiction
in the various actions or speeches the Pontiff made over the course of
his visit. This is a pity, considering that Christianity has resources that tap
into the roots of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Key among these is the notion
of Covenant as a hermeneutic of events within Scripture, explicated and made
popular by biblical scholars such as Scott Hahn. Using a covenantal lens, the
Christian might actually find more continuity between the Pope's references to
climate and family than the commentariat would suggest.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">In the biblical
tradition, covenants are not just contracts, but agreements through which a
family unit is created by God. Furthermore, one might find a covenantal motif
in looking at the first two chapters in the Book of Genesis. According to Scott
Hahn, the earth was created with the covenant in mind, for the earth was meant
to be a temple, used for worship and communion between God and humankind. Seen
through the covenantal lens, the creation of the family also included the
creation of a home for that family. In addition, the attention to that home in
the first creation account, seen as “very good”, becomes the backdrop against
which a man and a woman become one flesh in the second account. Seen through a
covenantal lens, the questions of “family” and “life” share a seamless link
with the questions concerning the planetary home. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">It might very
well be the loss of the supernatural frame of reference that might cause the
rancorous divide between left and right over this papal visit. It is a submitted
that a turning back to an alternative informed by revelation, may be the very
thing needed to heal this divide. Whilst it is still too soon to fully grapple with the implications of this visit, one thread to consider might be the extent to which many Christians make the resources of
revelation becomes secondary to those borne out of political allegiances.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02632900943920330793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9133166026129169600.post-84395990660501125642015-09-22T07:50:00.002+10:002015-09-22T07:50:33.280+10:00Against Spirituality<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://i0.wp.com/vinebrancher.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Spiritualization-of-emotional-wounds.jpg?resize=236%2C236" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://i0.wp.com/vinebrancher.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Spiritualization-of-emotional-wounds.jpg?resize=236%2C236" /></a></div>
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Like everyone else, the Christian is subject to the onslaught of bad news flooding our radiowaves, television screens and computers. Corruption, abuse by those in authority, violence on those who are weak, exploitation of the defenceless have become a staple of what we keep up to date with under the aegis of "current affairs". </div>
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As a defence mechanism against this constant barrage from the exterior, it will be very tempting to retreat into one's own interiority, refusing to materially take on the practices which bring these tales of woe into our view. We may justify this retreat on the grounds that they are someone else's responsibility, thereby leaving what would be weighty moral decisions to them on our behalf. Christians, however, may resort to the added rationalisation that resolving the issues that plague our world is ultimately God's responsibility, and so all that is left for Christians is to retreat to the refuge of the "spiritual", where God resides, indulging in "spiritual pursuits", mysticism or obscure visions.</div>
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As Alexander Schmemann asserted, however, in a chapter in his <i>For the Life of the World </i>entitled "The Time of the Mission"<i>, </i>it is precisely in the "spiritualisation" of Christianity, not its supposed worldliness, which has made it seem irrelevant to the lost, both within and without the Church. To "live as Christians out of time and thereby escape its frustrations", is to feed in turn the world's frustration with Christians. </div>
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Furthermore, such a spiritualising of the Christian faith can only come with an abandoning of its sacramental and incarnational logic - ironically, it is Christians with a long sacramental tradition that display this tendency. We forget that the Christian faith is a corporeal faith, that engages us first and last at the level of our bodies. The Christian faith is not fulfilled by abandoning the body, but in the words of Paul's letter to the Romans (8:23), it is fulfilled in the <i>redemption</i> of the body. To use the words of the French phenomenologist, Maurice Meleau-Ponty, the body is "intervolved" with its world, and commits the person to the world in which the body inhabits. The body, as suggested in an article on <a href="https://www.academia.edu/7912481/Christian_Prayer_as_Political_Theory" target="_blank">prayer and political theory</a>, thereby commits the Christian to the welfare of this world even as he or she relies upon a God that transcends this world. In Henri Nouwen's words, "the spiritual life does not remove us from the world, but leads us deeper into it".</div>
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Furthermore, as Schmemann keeps arguing in <i>For the Life of the World</i>, the spiritual pursuits are meant to be a gift <i>to </i>the world, in that they are supposed to show to the world what life <i>in </i>the world is. The sacraments are not departure lounges where the body is parked and the soul ascends to the spiritual planes. They are meant to show the real meaning of embodiment by grafting themselves onto the Body of Christ. In so doing, the faith is an arrival terminal from which the world's true meaning is unfolded. This is why the Eucharistic Liturgy does not end with a departure from this earth, but a sending back into it with an "it is sent" and a "let us go forth in peace". The body, having received the Body of Christ, is meant to redeem other bodies by committing itself to those other bodies. It is this committment that brings Christ to co-abide with those other bodies, whether it is through binding its wounds, feeding its hunger, quenching its thirst, fulfilling its need for shelter, by pointing to its source of happiness in the field hospital of the Church and in making preparing the Church for this task.</div>
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02632900943920330793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9133166026129169600.post-55674471961766208922015-09-14T18:02:00.001+10:002015-09-14T18:04:06.586+10:00Speaking Dates in Victoria<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://files.tested.com/photos/2012/09/19/40553-5centimeters-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://files.tested.com/photos/2012/09/19/40553-5centimeters-1.jpg" height="360" width="640" /></a></div>
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Blogger at large at <i>the Divine Wedgie</i>, Matthew Tan, will be giving a series of talks this weekend in the State of Victoria. These include</div>
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<li style="text-align: justify;"><b><a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/1452346008427915/" target="_blank">Melbourne Launch</a> of the book, </b><i style="font-weight: bold;">Justice, Unity & the Hidden Christ: </i>To be launched by Dr. Conor Sweeney, Lecturer in Sacramental & Postmodern Theology at the John Paul II Institute of Marriage and Family. This will be held at the Institute (278 Victoria Parade, East Melbourne) this Friday 18 September at 1pm. For catering purposes, please email Owen Vyner at ovyner@jp2institute.org. <b> </b></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><b><a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/937363312989351/" target="_blank">Being Someplace Else</a>: The Theological Virtues in the Anime of Makoto Shinkai</b>: This talk will explore the films of Shinkai, dubbed "the next Hayao Miyazaki" in light of the theological virtues as explored by Josef Pieper and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. The paper will consider how Shinkai's explorations of longing for other places ties in with the journey towards the ennobling of our natures that the virtues put us on. This talk will be held in the Caroline Chisholm Library (3/358 Lonsdale Street) on Friday 18 September at 6 for 6:30pm.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><b>The Sacraments of Pop Culture</b>: Come and see why, instead of the materialist culture we so often believe ourselves to be living, we are instead living in an age of a new spirituality in our cities, one mediated by the commodities we consume within popular culture. The talk will be held in "Casa Siena" (216 Walker Street, Ballarat North) at 6pm, followed by an evening meal. Please RSVP by emailing clara@siena.org.</li>
</ol>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02632900943920330793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9133166026129169600.post-52374018439214332082015-08-28T16:40:00.000+10:002015-08-28T16:40:09.330+10:00Being Someplace Else<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://sites.psu.edu/whothehelldoyouthinkiam/wp-content/uploads/sites/16439/2015/03/children_who_chase_lost_voices-05.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://sites.psu.edu/whothehelldoyouthinkiam/wp-content/uploads/sites/16439/2015/03/children_who_chase_lost_voices-05.jpg" height="360" width="640" /></a></div>
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In the anime film <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmHo_0mgos0" target="_blank">Children who Chase Lost Voices</a>,</i> we are introduced to a girl named Asuna, who meets a boy named Shun. Shun is from Agartha, a world under the ground beneath which Asuna walks to and from school. Through this relationship, both Shun and Asuna are get to know more of each other's worlds. What later emerges is a longing for each to be in the other's world and, for Asuna, this leads to a change in the way she organises her life above the ground. She starts curating a space in the mountains, filled with supplies that later feed that longing to be in Agartha. the centrepiece being a radio which allows her to listen to voices from Agartha. </div>
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A previous post mentioned our longing to be back in places in the past, a longing that is frustrated as soon as the thought to be in that place enters one's mind. While this may lead many to conclude that we should have no further horizons than the here and now, characters like Asuna (and those in a number of other films by Makoto Shinkai like <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiKfn6cFD78" target="_blank">The Place Promised in Our Early Days</a></i>) remind us that we project to the future as well as the past. Furthermore, it is our encounters with persons which spark this longing to be in places that lie in the chapters of our biography that we have not even seen in our mind's eye. There are more mundane examples, such as planning for holidays, whereby the projection forward to places leads to a reorganising of our present life. </div>
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What is interesting also is that the cinematic trope of longing for another world is not alien to the world of theology. In his treatise on the theological virtues, <i><a href="http://www.ignatius.com/Products/FHL-P/faith-hope-love.aspx" target="_blank">Faith, Hope, Love</a></i>, Josef Pieper began his chapter on hope by arguing that we are not just persons, but persons "on the way". We are, as a result of sin and our bodiliness, hindered from completing on this side of the <i>eschaton </i>that encounter with God, which plants the seed of faith. Faith is a promised made by God, which in turn instills that desire to be with God, since it is communion with God for which we are made. Hope thereby constitutes the projection towards that God who awaits for us in the Beatific Vision. </div>
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This hopeful projection is not something eternally located in a future moment. Pieper describes hope as a future projection that is at the same time occurring in the now. The longing for that union with God in a moment outside of history actually reconfigures history, right here, right now. In speaking of the theological virture of hope in <i><a href="http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20071130_spe-salvi.html" target="_blank">Spe Salvi</a></i>, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI spoke of a coming together, not only at the end of time, but in the present moment. In paragraph 14, Benedict says we are not only in the process of coming together, but are in the present moment "coming together once more in a union that begins to take shape in the community of believers". </div>
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That place of the reconfigured present that projects to this place of future union is the Body of Christ. The Church here and now is thus a sign of hope insofar as it constitutes this other place of eschatological union. It might be a faint echo, but that echo is what brings to our purview the prospect of reaching that place of ecstatic union. </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02632900943920330793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9133166026129169600.post-65507945538119454852015-08-20T11:13:00.000+10:002015-08-20T11:13:12.469+10:00The Magna Carta After 800 Years: A Day Conference (28 Nov, Sydney)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nrRpWzHKgpc/Vba4eM47SZI/AAAAAAAADXo/2sXEBIq_GwI/s1600/11204911_10152900275027371_7420481694226643566_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nrRpWzHKgpc/Vba4eM47SZI/AAAAAAAADXo/2sXEBIq_GwI/s640/11204911_10152900275027371_7420481694226643566_n.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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The Centre for the Study of Western Tradition at <a href="http://www.campion.edu.au/" target="_blank">Campion College</a> recently announced that it will be holding a day conference to mark the end of the year of the 8th centenary of the Magna Carta. The conference will also have a distinctly Australian flavour, representing a wide range of perspectives.</div>
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The keynote speakers for the <a href="http://www.campion.edu.au/magnacarta/" target="_blank">event</a> are Queens Council, Order of Australia recipient and refugee advocate, Julian Burnside and the Commissioner for Law Reform in Western Australia and legal scholar at Murdoch University, Dr. Augusto Zimmermann. </div>
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The program will also feature politicians, historians and legal scholars including:</div>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">Tim Wilson, Commissioner at the Australian Human Rights Commission</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Jeremy Bell, Lecturer in History at Campion College Australia</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Keith Thompson, Vice Dean of Law at the University of Notre Dame in Australia and</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Patrick Quirk, Associate Professor of Law at the Australian Catholic University</li>
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Discounts are available for early bird registrations and permanent discounts are available for fulltime students and pensioners. All registrations include a buffet lunch at the Menzies Hotel in Sydney, where the conference will be held.</div>
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More details about speakers, programs and registration are available by <a href="http://www.campion.edu.au/magnacarta/" target="_blank">clicking here</a> for the fully interactive website. To keep updated, please sign up at the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/860583003991634/" target="_blank">facebook events page</a>.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02632900943920330793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9133166026129169600.post-59395279761520720192015-08-07T10:11:00.000+10:002015-08-07T15:07:39.637+10:00The Liturgy of Hiroshima<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1356500/images/o-MUSHROOM-CLOUD-facebook.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><img border="0" src="http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1356500/images/o-MUSHROOM-CLOUD-facebook.jpg" height="420" width="640" /></a></div>
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In <i>Theopolitical Imagination</i>, William Cavanaugh described the nation state as a parody of the Church, with the waging of war as its liturgy. It is a secular simulation of the Divine Liturgy, with highly perverse parallels and even more perverse results.</div>
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No where do we find a more vivid reminder of this when one reads the Lectionary for the Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord on the 6th of August, the Feast on which the atomic bomb was dropped in the Japanese city of Hiroshima. In the first reading, we find the following passage from the Book of Daniel<br />
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<i>I beheld till thrones were placed...his throne like flames of fire: the wheels of it like a burning fire. A swift stream of fire issued forth from before him: thousands of thousands ministered to him, and ten thousand times a hundred thousand stood before him: the judgement sat, and the books were opened... </i>(Dan 7:9-10)<br />
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From there the Liturgy of the Word culminates to the Gospel of Matthew, in which the following passage is found<br />
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<i>And [Jesus] was transfigured before them. And his face did shine as the sun; and his garments became white as snow...</i>(Matt 17:2)<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Survivor of the Hiroshima bomb, dropped on the Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord</td></tr>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02632900943920330793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9133166026129169600.post-17787844167112308812015-08-03T08:04:00.002+10:002015-08-03T08:04:49.870+10:00On Death and Pies<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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A homily at Sunday Mass drew attention to the link between sacramentality and food (a <a href="http://divinewedgie.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/food-last-sacrament.html" target="_blank">previous post</a> has also similarly broached this link). The homily made particular reference to the 1987 Danish film <i>Babette's Feast. </i></div>
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In the movie the erotic dimension of French Catholicism unexpectedly visits a pious Protestant town in the form of opera and food. These seemingly carnal pursuits, far from leading to the downfall of the town, end up stirring and reviving emotions and bonds that were once deemed non-existent or irredeemably broken. One character, a playboy turned cynical military man, is even led to declare his realisation of the infinitude of mercy and a life surging with grace through eating a pie. </div>
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<iframe width="320" height="266" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/5jOn7biSAZo/0.jpg" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5jOn7biSAZo?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
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The homily drew attention to the name of the pie, <i>Cailles en Sarcophage</i> (Quail in a Sarcophagus). The sarcophagus is a tomb, a flesh eater which is, unfortunately for the quail, vividly evident in the pie. The death of the quail, and the flesh-eating properties of the pie, are in turn swallowed up by the diners. </div>
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Read in a sacramental lens, this simple act of eating a pie can be seen as an analogue for the ultimate sacramental action, namely the Eucharist. The Eucharist - which literally means thanksgiving - constantly reminds us that the Eucharistic food is given to us through the goodness of God, mediated through the earth and the vine. The sacrifice of the Mass, remembering the Passion of Jesus Christ, is then eaten by the congregation, and death is quite literally swallowed up. </div>
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In a strange twist, however, Augustine reminds us that in the Eucharist, we are consumed by what we consume. And what ultimately gets swallowed up is our death , as we become swallowed up into the body of Christ that we have previously eaten. The revivifying of emotions and bonds in <i>Babette's Feast</i> is a faint echo of that Eucharistic action where, in our being swallowed up by the Christ that we have swallwed up, the words of 1 Corinthians 15:54 are enacted</div>
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<i>When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: Death is swallowed up in victory.</i></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02632900943920330793noreply@blogger.com0