Comments for The Culture of the Lie at http://www.thecatholicthing.org , comment 1 to 10 out of 10 comments http://www.thecatholicthing.org Fri, 24 May 2013 14:49:29 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/the-culture-of-the-lie.html#comment-9261 Yes Yes I was thinking of the movie The Christmas Carol. What about the main point of the essay? - Fr. Bramwell Mon, 19 Dec 2011 16:09:14 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/the-culture-of-the-lie.html#comment-9252 In a Christmas Carol the Spirit of Christmas Present speaks of God and so does Bob Cratchit. When Scrooge wakes up of Christmas morning he gets dressed and goes to church. - daisy Sun, 18 Dec 2011 15:52:30 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/the-culture-of-the-lie.html#comment-9251 While usually so right about so many things, Fr. Bramwell, you are too hard on "The Matrix," which actually supports the point you are making. "The Matrix" is anti-lie. Contrast the response of Neo to face reality with the response of Cypher to escape reality. - Martinkus Sun, 18 Dec 2011 15:50:01 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/the-culture-of-the-lie.html#comment-9246 The problem is that a culture solidly based on the history of Jesus Christ and his Church has never been tried. Then the artistic transpositions of this culture would find their relative place. But the key word is 'relative' that is relative to the real meaning of a Christ centered culture. Having the place holders without the Christ centered culture is simply to have an alternative culture, a horizontal one that has lost its center and its purpose of being a true culture. - Fr. Bramwell Sun, 18 Dec 2011 07:22:38 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/the-culture-of-the-lie.html#comment-9245 Michael - hence the phrase in the column "secular place holders" - Fr. Bramwell Sun, 18 Dec 2011 05:21:12 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/the-culture-of-the-lie.html#comment-9244 Very nice article, Father, but I think we can claim Charles Dickens (with some considerable theological confusion) as one of our own. A Christmas Carol is named for the carol the children sing outside of Scrooge's door: God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen; the whole meaning of the Christmas feast, that the redeemer of sinful mankind would come among us as a small child, informs the whole work. So wisdom comes from Tiny Tim, who attends services on Christmas with his father, and hopes that the people will look upon him and "remember who made blind men see and lame beggars walk." So too on the Christmas that thankfully does not come to pass, before Bob comes back home, Peter is reading to the other children: "And he took a small child, and set him in their midst." We know the next sentence of that passage; Dickens would expect us to know it, and to be able to deliver it immediately. That's the context in which to understand Scrooge's exclamation when we wakes up on Christmas: "I don't know anything at all! I am quite a baby." Scrooge does, in fact, attend Christmas Mass ... He is what anybody of the time would recognize as a man born again. What happens to him, in relation to Christmas, is parallel with what happens to Sydney Carton, in A Tale of Two Cities, in relation to Easter. In that book, the keystone quote from the Bible is this: "I am the Resurrection and the Life, sayeth the Lord." - Tony Esolen Sun, 18 Dec 2011 05:08:57 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/the-culture-of-the-lie.html#comment-9242 You flatter me. - Fr. Bramwell Sun, 18 Dec 2011 02:58:53 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/the-culture-of-the-lie.html#comment-9241 But Dickens's "Christmas Carol" presupposes the Christmas Story as its context and would be unintelligible in a culture not familiar with it. Like the legends of Santa Claus ("our holy father, the beautiful and good Nicholas, equal with the apostles and bishop of Myra in Cappadocia" as the Horologion of the Great Church calls him)they are embellishments of the story, not substitutes for it. - Michael Paterson-Seymour Sun, 18 Dec 2011 02:58:19 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/the-culture-of-the-lie.html#comment-9240 I second Achilles. A close acquaintance is a trust fund liberal seeker. Born a Catholic, and educated at one of the top rated universities, he apparently felt he was too smart for organized religion. I have watched him try out and discard countless spiritual poses. From drugs to shaman drumming, from art as transcendence to Buddhism, from chakras to the cult of natural foods, he has turned over every rotting log in the woodlot. All would be well if he were getting somewhere, but through his failed marriage to his latest failed live-in arrangement he has remained self-concerned, impatient, bitter and deeply cynical of the motives of others. Through his "faith journey" I have come to be reminded that when one applies reason, for all of its mystery and anxieties, only the Catholic Church makes real sense of the world as we find it. - Other Joe Sun, 18 Dec 2011 02:43:04 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/the-culture-of-the-lie.html#comment-9237 Fr. Bramwell, this beautiful essay surpasses the high standard I have come to expect from your edifying essays! Please accept my humble gratitude, Pax Chirsti, Achilles - Achilles Sat, 17 Dec 2011 20:06:17 +0100