Comments for The Modern Mind, As It Were at http://www.thecatholicthing.org , comment 1 to 41 out of 20 comments http://www.thecatholicthing.org Thu, 23 May 2013 13:14:24 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-modern-mind-as-it-were.html#comment-12002 Coming a little late to this party, but loved this article (and it's sequel, which I read first). I don't know if you guys in the States have 'use by dates' on your food, but here in the UK it is, for me, the number 1 symptom of that abandonment of the senses to the anonymous authority. The number of people who throw out perfectly good milk, bread, and other basics which weren't taken for granted by the Medieval with whom Dr. Esolen compares us, is staggering! Do they think it goes off at the chime of midnight?? How hard is it to tell that your milk has soured, seriously?? Baffling. Yet I've had arguments with housemates who will not be convinced to employ their senses when assessing the condition of a loaf. The 'use by date' has passed, therefore they throw it out. God save us! - Chatto Sat, 16 Jun 2012 23:35:30 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-modern-mind-as-it-were.html#comment-11645 Scotty: Thank you. - John Mon, 28 May 2012 11:24:47 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-modern-mind-as-it-were.html#comment-11634 John: I am a baptized and confirmed Catholic. - Scotty Ellis Sun, 27 May 2012 18:27:03 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-modern-mind-as-it-were.html#comment-11633 @Scotty Thank you for the response. I don't mean to waste your time with silly questions. I'm just trying to figure out whether or not you are Catholic. Simply attending Mass does not mean one is Catholic, nor does appreciating the beauty in the liturgy or affirming that the Church teaches a great deal of truth. Are you Christian? If so, are you a Catholic Christian? Thank you. - John Sun, 27 May 2012 15:47:53 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-modern-mind-as-it-were.html#comment-11629 Scotty: Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I'm not a metaphyisician, but I do accept a combination of Thomism and Platonism: I actually believe in the objective existence of mathematical realities. Smitty: No, I actually don't think that we have to wait too long to be sure that Tempest 1.1 bears more interpretive potential than the first page of the greatest novel ever written, The Brothers Karamazov. This is my profession, after all.... But you guys are not the trouble. You must be aware that at many colleges, the study of Aristotle or of Dante has been all but abandoned. That is also true of the study of literature written before 1900, in our public schools. I now meet college freshmen who have never heard the names of any number of great poets in English, including Milton. - Tony Esolen Sun, 27 May 2012 09:35:19 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-modern-mind-as-it-were.html#comment-11627 OK Tony, thanks for your thoughtful reply. You and the other recent commenters have given me much to ponder and for that I am appreciative. Off the top of my head here's my reaction to your latest. You write re. critical thinking: It is always used, in academe, to apply to the traditions and the beliefs that students bring with them, and never applied to the traditions and beliefs that academics bring to the students. me: The observations that "critics are critical of all but their own theories" is not a new one. There is a kernel of truth here, but I would suggest this is a chronic problem across the spectrum of academia and not simply places like Brown. I've taught at very conservative "fortress" or "sanctuary" Catholic institutions who are just as hostile to responsible critiques of their own presuppositions as are adversary institutions such as you have in mind. Perhaps feeling beleaguered and heavily outgunned they lack the intellectual security to be comfortable subjecting their own ideas to scrutiny--lest they lend any support or credence to their foes. But this is a problem there too with the unfortunate side effect of politics pervading every dimension of life. From where you sit where literary criticism has been in many places supplanted by a corrosive deconstructionism--I can see where you are coming from, as one trying to hold onto a legacy. But it doesn't follow that say, Aristoteleans can't learn anything from today's social scientists, or that say, scholastic theologians cannot learn from German Biblical critics, or that, say, modern TV shows like The Wire do not probe into the mystery of iniquity and redemption, while offering social criticism every bit as trenchant as Jonathan Swift, Charles Dickens or for that matter the prophet Amos. You write: If a position implies what would strike an ordinary person as prima facie absurd -- not "hard to see" or "counterintuitive" or "surprising", but nonsensical -- then that position carries a tremendously heavy burden of proof. me: I agree, but only with the caveat that its a bit harder to tell the difference in practice between the "absurd" and the merely "counter-intuitive" than you seem willing to admit. For instance, you earlier let it be known that you considered it absurd that our society should ever offer debt-amnesty to college graduates who cannot find jobs. Implicitly you invoked unspecified ancient wisdom to attest that doing this would only delay the students' maturing into adults who can take full responsibility for their choices. I pointed out that this is true as far as it goes, but more complicated. Students who are too saddled with debt will be less able to buy homes, get married and raise families and this too would be quite bad for them and the country in aggregate. Moreover, our society has offered bankruptcy protection for centuries as a way of cushioning the impact of big loans going bad for companies and later individuals. The reasons for this should be obvious. A capitalist system requires debt at times and risk and sometimes debts go bad. Such a posture might be "absurd" from your purely moralistic perspective but to me it just seems a little counter-intuitive balanced solution to a difficult problem. And frankly your obtuseness on difficult issues like this causes me to question the general applicability of the moral and epistemological approach you espouse. Not everything is as clear cut as the question of whether abortion should be legal or not. I too would prefer the culinary folk wisdom of Julia Child to the contradictory and often ill-founded dietary advice of the medical establishment--if I were forced to choose. But human metabolism and appetite is extremely complex and somewhat different for each person and so to suggest that a simple answer for the reasons society has gotten so much fatter in the last 40 years is found in thirty year old books of French cookery is a bit unlikely. If there is one thing that modernity gets right it is this: beware in general of simple sounding solutions to complex problems. Your metaphysics I'm afraid tilts to much to the simple in a world that it anything but! - jsmitty Sun, 27 May 2012 07:03:23 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-modern-mind-as-it-were.html#comment-11624 Tony: "The term is undefined. It's puffy, inflated. What is the difference between "thinking" and "critical thinking"?" I would argue that both are vital; it is as vital an ability to be able to work within a structure - be that a logical structure, literary structure, religious structure - as it is to peer at that structure from the outside (critical thinking). Of course, we must always be thinking from somewhere - we cannot simply sit by the fire in our winter cabin and think away assumptions and structures. But the ability to move from system to system, from structure to structure, in order to offer mutual correction and criticism - that is the role of critical thought. "It is always used, in academe, to apply to the traditions and the beliefs that students bring with them, and never applied to the traditions and beliefs that academics bring to the students." I would call this insincerity on the part of the academics in question. Many of their traditions are critical traditions - that is, they were born of the critical spirit. I suppose the academics of whom you are speaking falsely believe this fact absolves them of the responsibility that they are attempting to inculcate in their students. Of your criteria, I think they are fine except for 5 and 6. I would argue that the venerability of thinkers only carries with it one imperative: give them a fair hearing. Beyond that, I don't see much sense in privileging Aristotle to, say, Kant: they are both flawed thinkers who have a number of interesting ideas, a number of confusing ideas, and a number of abhorrent ideas. For all of his ethical insights (discounting the problematic slavery bit, of course, and his assumption that Greek aristocrats are the only sorts who can be truly great-souled), it never occurred to him to do something as simple to us as test his little theory that heavier things fall faster than lighter things. I use this as a symbol for a greater problem: that for all Aristotle did as an observer of the human scene and nature, he was not equipped with the most rudimentary and important empirical methodologies which have yielded the rich insights of modernity (and which may, as I would agree, have resulted in a fretful tendency to reductionism). Do I think Aristotle was a "bad" thinker for this? No! He was who he was - a quite intelligent fourth century Greek. It would be ridiculous to condemn him for not using 17th century scientific methodology. But does this mean I need to pretend that Aristotle deserves a special privilege - that I need not ask myself with his every proposition - "Is this right, is this true, knowing everything that came after him and all we have learned since then?" Of course not! Nor does it mean that I need to dismiss him or to fail to recognize the current import of much of his thought, even how it might offer a relevant critique of much that is going on now (I am thinking right now of such a critique - MacIntyre's After Virtue). As for 6, I am unimpressed by the notion that Shakespeare somehow has intrinsically "more" interpretive potential than, say, Dostoevsky. Certainly, Shakespeare has been interpreted for much longer, and probably by a wider range of scholars. Only time will tell the full interpretive potential of Crime and Punishment versus the Tempest. After all, The Tempest wasn't exactly initially acclaimed, as you probably know quite well. It is arguable that it took centuries before the play's potential was fully recognized. And we need not forget the plays that Shakespeare wrote that do not have a great depth of interpretive potential and which Crime and Punishment clearly excels as a work: his work on Pericles, Prince of Tyre, Titus Andronicus, for example. Interpretation is half a matter of the material with which you start; the other half has to do with the interpreters themselves, and the time it takes them to recognize greatness. John: "You describe yourself as a Catholic humanist/humanist Catholic. What do you mean by this?" I am either a Catholic who is quite interested in the humanist tradition or a humanist who is quite interested in the Catholic tradition, and I have not made up my mind which. I go to Mass, pay attention to the Church's internal squabbles (unflattering though they may be), read Catholic blogs and sources, and more importantly than that read and continue to read the great sources of Catholic faith and theology. But at the same time, I am a humanist interested in every aspect of human learning and knowledge: philosophy, and more and more importantly, physics, anatomy, the physiology of our phenomenal experiences, and so forth. " Also, you say, "I do not think that the Catholic faith has everything down perfectly". What part does it have "down perfectly"? " I don't know. Possibly nothing. But that is what I am trying to discover. "I am curious, because I wonder how somebody would call themselves a Catholic if they did not believe the claims the Church makes about itself." I find this as silly a question as "why do you call yourself a U.S. citizen, if you do not believe everything the government claims?" I think that Catholic faith is flawed. I also think it is beautiful and has a great deal of truth and life-informing ritual. I also don't think there is anything particularly wrong with participating in a religion even if I am unconvinced of its ultimate truth (Cicero comes to mind). - Scotty Ellis Sun, 27 May 2012 03:56:18 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-modern-mind-as-it-were.html#comment-11621 @Scotty Ellis You describe yourself as a Catholic humanist/humanist Catholic. What do you mean by this? Also, you say, "I do not think that the Catholic faith has everything down perfectly". What part does it have "down perfectly"? I am curious, because I wonder how somebody would call themselves a Catholic if they did not believe the claims the Church makes about itself. Thank you. - John Sat, 26 May 2012 21:35:03 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-modern-mind-as-it-were.html#comment-11616 Scotty: Fair enough. Here are my problems with the phrase, "critical thinking": It is itself uncritical; it is a petitio principii. It assumes that the person who subjects an idea to criticism is always superior -- always -- to one who accepts it on trust. I don't believe that is so. Eventually the skepticism engendered is self-destructive. So Pascal -- who was a critical thinker if ever there was one, on the hated Montaigne: "Skeptic, for obstinate." The term is undefined. It's puffy, inflated. What is the difference between "thinking" and "critical thinking"? It is always used, in academe, to apply to the traditions and the beliefs that students bring with them, and never applied to the traditions and beliefs that academics bring to the students. This is especially true in secular academe. If you wandered about the campus of my Catholic college and chose a professor at random, you would be much mistaken if you thought you could predict his politics or theology within a mile. But if you did the same thing across the city at Brown, you'd be on pretty sure ground. That's a fact of academic life, and the academic "critical thinkers" accept it uncritically. Your question on criteria for judgment is fair, and I'll venture a few suggestions here -- otherwise it would be better to yield to Pieper or MacIntyre or such. 1. Be wary of misused or puffy language. If someone says, "Esolen is opposed to gay marriage," that someone hasn't got my thinking right -- and it's a big deal, too. 2. If a position implies what is self-contradictory or repugnant, reexamine the premises. So: if the position "I may do with my body as I please" implies "I may hire a scientist to produce forty clones of myself," do not go gentle into that bad night. 3. If a position implies what would strike an ordinary person as prima facie absurd -- not "hard to see" or "counterintuitive" or "surprising", but nonsensical -- then that position carries a tremendously heavy burden of proof. If, for instance, the position that I call the Constitutive Fallacy (identifying a thing with its constituent matter or its parts, pure and simple) results in the denial that there really are such things as dogs and trees, and even that there is such a thing as the person denying that there are such things as dogs and trees, then to hell with that. "I refute it thus," said Johnson, kicking a stone. 4. Arguments that prescind from a flagrantly inadequate understanding of the subject matter (not just inadequate, mind you) need not be taken too seriously. 5. The great thinkers and poets of the past have much to teach us. They weren't always right, of course, but their errors tend not to be our errors, and for that very reason they are useful to us. When in doubt, too, it is safe to assume that Aristotle, Plato, Augustine, Shakespeare, Milton and the rest are actually far richer and subtler than even their admirers often suppose. 6. On literary greatness: take the first scene in Shakespeare's Tempest. Most critics don't make anything of it, and it's easy to see why not. There's no poetry. There's a lot of commotion. It seems necessary just to get the play moving. Shakespeare often uses an initial scene as a lead in to a longer and more important scene (and so it is also in The Tempest). Yet I could write forty pages of analysis, easily, on that short scene. Not forty pages of impressionistic appreciation, but forty pages of precise thematic, dramatic, intellectual, and linguistic analysis. That's how rich Shakespeare is. So -- who is a shadow of Shakespeare? Many great writers -- Faulkner, Melville, Dickens, maybe George Eliot, certainly Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. But it's hard to be in that league, because the cultural soil is rarely rich enough to sustain a work so rich.... - Tony Esolen Sat, 26 May 2012 11:44:30 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-modern-mind-as-it-were.html#comment-11614 One final word...the drift of the thread directed Tony away from my query and onto his more preferred ground of defending or asserting the superiority of Shakespeare to Hitchcock, or Plato to Malcolm Gladwell. But I would ask at least rhetorically again...how does one know when to reject modern insights in favor of ancients ones...where gay marriage, premarital cohabitation and abortion are not at issue and the "Wisdom Tradition" (even you as understand it) does not offer a univocal answer in any event? Methinks you should not be so hasty in the uncritically rejection of that which goes under the label "critical thinking." - jsmitty Sat, 26 May 2012 07:55:56 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-modern-mind-as-it-were.html#comment-11609 Temper, temper ... Gentlemen: I do not embrace the old because it is old. I do not scorn the new because it is new. I am critiquing the modern habit of sniffing at the old (especially if it can be alleged to be medieval) and blankly accepting or praising the New and Improved. Gentlemen, you are talking to me about Shakespeare as if I did not know quite well that Shakespeare has flaws (he is human, after all), and about Chaucer as if I did not know quite well that Chaucer uses scatology. I've spent almost my whole adult life teaching literature, and across a wide range of eras, from ancient Mesopotamia to the present. Now let's take the issue of scatology -- and take it in its rawest form, in Chaucer's Miller's Tale. All right -- I'll say bluntly, there is no comparison whatsoever between what Chaucer is doing in The Miller's Tale and what, let's say, Andres Serrano is doing with it in Piss Christ, or Robert Mapplethorpe is doing with it in his photos of men performing sadistic acts with other men. In The Miller's Tale, Chaucer has placed the scatology in the context of these motifs or narrative allusions, in a network of consummate artistry and subtlety, not to mention intellectual suggestiveness: 1. The courtly love story just told by the Knight 2. The courtly love tradition as a whole: "deerne love" 3. The Gospel account of the Annunciation 4. Boethius' distinction between fate and Providence 5. Boethius' description of the relationship of the vicious man to time 6. The story of Noah in the Old Testament 7. The theological meditation upon that same story, in the New Testament 8. The meaning of Christmas 9. The figure of Absalom in the Old Testament 10. Christ's warnings of the Second Coming 11. His warnings against trying to know the day and the hour 12. The Song of Songs 13. Saint Bernard's meditations on the Song of Songs 14. Gothic art And more ... And the tale is not all that long, either. The point is that Modern Man must hang onto the notion of progress because it's all he's got. Yes, we no longer kill children as part of a "do ut des" arrangement with the god Moloch. We just kill 'em for convenience. We don't burn at the stake somebody who says that parents should be granted the permission to kill their children within a month after their births. We give him an endowed chair in ethics at Princeton. - Tony Esolen Sat, 26 May 2012 06:16:20 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-modern-mind-as-it-were.html#comment-11601 Your last post about sums it up Brad. To disagree with Tony Esolen ,to question way he chooses to interpret and apply ancient insights to modern problems and to be reluctant to share in his unreflective blanket rejection of modern modes of thought and to refuse to sip from the chalice of alienation is more or less tantamount to denying revealed TRUTH itself. This is basically what the other commenters think too. I can see why I'm not wanted as an RCIA teacher, if this is what the Catholic faith means today. - jsmitty Fri, 25 May 2012 17:37:10 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-modern-mind-as-it-were.html#comment-11600 Brad Miner: I am here as a seeker after truth; a man who wishes to honor the command "know thyself;" and above all, as someone sincere. In any case, I find The Catholic Thing has provoking articles. I do not have to agree with an article in whole to agree with it in part, and I find it very enlightening to read a wide variety of arguments in order to sift through them. I am a Catholic humanist (or perhaps humanist Catholic). No, I do not think that the Catholic faith has everything down perfectly, nor do I think it is something that can be simply dismissed. I think that whatever else it may be it is a marvelous expression of humanity, a human product that has shaped the course of history for good and for ill; the jury is still out as to whether it is all true, and it is precisely for the benefit of that jury that I frequent all manner of thinkers (from all ages) in order to hear all I can. - Scotty Ellis Fri, 25 May 2012 17:19:42 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-modern-mind-as-it-were.html#comment-11599 @Scotty: Let's be clear: We're here because we believe Jesus Christ is God. Why are you here? - Brad Miner Fri, 25 May 2012 16:33:43 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-modern-mind-as-it-were.html#comment-11598 Tony: I don't have a camp. I love Shakespeare and Eco. Picasso and medieval illuminators both express human potentials. It may be interesting to the pack of commentators at the Catholic Thing that I am received with equal disdain when I discuss these same topics with liberals, atheists, and secularists. I have long given up on the teamsmanship that I see defining most people's beliefs. I come not with a "charge," if by "charge" you mean that I intend to indict you for some grievous failing. I come simply with another look at the same matter. If it is foolishness to embrace the new simply because it is new (which it is), it is equally foolish to embrace to old simply because it is old. Appeal to tradition is the mirror vice to appeal to novelty. Each thing must be seen for what it is; Shakespeare is a master, but he has flaws. He is still what he is, an Englishman writing in Elizabethan England, and he still has moments (albeit rare) when his characters do not ring true, when his plots are a bit thin, or grammar a little too strained to fit his meter. In short, sure, rail against the modern mind. The modern mind welcomes you. It will not burn you at the stake for differing; it will not condemn you to hell for believing otherwise. Rail against modern physics; but metaphysics always has followed physics, and it is often forgotten that the metaphysics of the past were tied to physical cosmologies many of which have been shown to be incomplete and erroneous. Curmudgeon against immorality, and you only curmudgeon against the substance of human history: the grunting night sweats that bear the children of the world. Harangue scatology and the interest modern art takes in the most fundamental functions of the human body, and you also harangue the ages past for which you pine: Chaucer and Shakespeare had room for feces and butts, too. In short, I bear you no ill-will. Feel free to pass by my advice. Only I think you are doing yourself and your understanding a disservice. - Scotty Ellis Fri, 25 May 2012 15:14:47 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-modern-mind-as-it-were.html#comment-11594 All right, gentlemen ... you do keep casting at me the charge, if it be a charge, of nostalgia. The word suggests a heartache for the return, and in fact most literary and artistic and social and spiritual revivals have looked to the past for inspiration; have looked well over their shoulders, to recover something of what had been forgotten. For human beings are prone to forget. That doesn't mean a return to the past, which is impossible, but a recovery of past wisdom; and, given the human habit of losing and neglecting and forgetting and heedlessly casting away, the past will always be a storehouse of such wisdom. Not all events in the past, no doubt; but then, I'm assuming I'm speaking to sensible people here, who will give me credit for speaking in a sensible way. On the specifics: Smitty (or Scotty): No, it is not true that Gothic Art marked as radical a break as did Cubism. It is not even close to being true. A good look at cathedrals such as the one at Moissac would show that the architects were already experimenting with means of building higher and lighter structures. Gothic was the fulfillment of these experiments, while Cubism was a part of a deliberate trashing of what had come before. The same may be said of experiments in perspective. Medieval artists and illuminators knew about it; see D. W. Robertson's work in A Preface to Chaucer. They knew about it, but they used it, or refrained from using it, for their special purposes. They had not, it is true, reduced it to mathematics -- which was the breakthrough that allowed Mantegna to paint his famous Crucifixion. But if you look at that painting, you'll see that Mantegna was doing many of the same things that the illuminators had been doing for hundreds of years; note his use of foreground and background and separated spaces to suggest a series of events, not all of them necessarily happening at once. On Eco and Shakespeare: gosh, you'd think I'd have some credence here. I read modern literature all the time. I too watch Hitchcock and Capra and, best of them all, John Ford. Ain't none of 'em the equal of Shakespeare, not by a hundred miles. We underestimate just how rare the circumstances had to be to allow a Shakespeare to flourish. And in any case, what makes Capra and Ford great dramatists is their retaining of narratives and loyalties that the modern world disdains; see The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Ford is great because he resists the solvent of modernity... So I enlist them in my camp. - Tony Esolen Fri, 25 May 2012 11:05:52 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-modern-mind-as-it-were.html#comment-11593 JSmitty, it is not a “nostalgia fetish” it is merely a clear and sane qualitative judgment of modern ideology. Using the very term obsolescence in reference to the Truth, in general , is a gross misunderstanding. It is merely the fact that the Saints strive for the perfection that Jesus Christ exhorted from us. What could be more accurate than recognizing our imperfection and lamenting that publically in the hopes that it will help others strive to be more like the Way the Truth and the Life? Please don’t tell us that you too are an RCIA teacher, that would be more than I could bear today. - Achilles Fri, 25 May 2012 10:59:54 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-modern-mind-as-it-were.html#comment-11582 I am reminded of the following passage in Cardinal Newman's Apologia: "I am rather asking what must be the face-to-face antagonist, by which to withstand and baffle the fierce energy of passion and the all-corroding, all-dissolving skepticism of the intellect in religious inquiries? I have no intention at all to deny, that truth is the real object of our reason, and that, if it does not attain to truth, either the premise or the process is in fault; but I am not speaking of right reason, but of reason as it acts in fact and concretely in fallen man. I know that even the unaided reason, when correctly exercised, leads to a belief in God, in the immortality of the soul, and in a future retribution; but I am considering it actually and historically; and in this point of view, I do not think I am wrong in saying that its tendency is towards a simple unbelief in matters of religion. No truth, however sacred, can stand against it, in the long run; and hence it is that in the pagan world, when our Lord came, the last traces of the religious knowledge of former times were all but disappearing from those portions of the world in which the intellect had been active and had had a career." Skepticism haunted the ancient world, lessened with the rise of Christianity, and has returned with a vengeance today. - John Thu, 24 May 2012 15:26:48 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-modern-mind-as-it-were.html#comment-11579 Thanks Other Joe, for saying things better than I did! As for me I'm done with this merry-go-round, they call us hopeless nostalgics, we tell them they are missing the point. The cycle just repeats itself. - Aeneas Thu, 24 May 2012 11:00:09 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-modern-mind-as-it-were.html#comment-11574 Thank you Scotty. You've delivered a much needed rejoinder to the nostalgia fetish that dominates this page. These guys don't get that they so overdraw their critiques of modernity that they weary the ears of many who would otherwise be sympathetic to certain things they have to say. Are we the only ones that think its odd that some are nostalgic for the thoughts a a writer a century old, who was himself an incurable nostalgic for the world that was obsolete in his day? And of course Belloc's heroes themselves bemoaned the loss in their own day of ancestral wisdom. Plus ca change. Listen to Pope Benedict who reminds us that the time we have today is the time that has been given to us. The Holy Spirit did not stop moving the world 100 years ago or 300 or 500 or 1000. - jsmitty Thu, 24 May 2012 07:24:28 +0100