Comments for Broadening the Conversation at http://www.thecatholicthing.org , comment 1 to 8 out of 8 comments http://www.thecatholicthing.org Sun, 19 May 2013 01:49:08 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/broadening-the-conversation.html#comment-12575 The disengagement with the Polis is, what was called Familism during English Reformation, the idea that the bonds of family love suffice to build a Christian City. The denial of the City is analogous to that of the Economists. They assert only the Individual and seek to reduce the political to the pre-political. The Catholics of the Right appear to be susceptible to the Misean Cult in particular, as it is expressed in a logically rigorous form. - Gian Sun, 22 Jul 2012 20:09:28 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/broadening-the-conversation.html#comment-12560 Perhaps it's where I live or have worked, but more often than not merely to stray from what someone has jokingly called the "timeless tosh of current wisdom's past" is to invite rebuff. Mention casually attending mass or something interesting monsignor has done or a bishop has written or, heaven forbid, the Holy Father himself and it's that sudden freeze of the face. Hard not to feel isolated. And many Catholics are now discovering that if the institution has "public" in the title it only means some of the public. I'm familiar with Robert Zubrin but not this book so I'm grateful for the heads up. I will check the library. As they used to say when I was a boy in the 60s, I believe in the space program in all its manifestations. Despite this administration's disasterous policies, both private and US Air Force efforts are helping us keep on top technologically. Sadly, after Curiousity lands safely on Mars in August (we all hope and pray) there is no new mission in the pipeline. As in all things, the president is busy "building yesterday's future" as Baroness Thatcher once put it. Except without Col. Dan Dare of the International Space Patrol... After entering the Church in 2009, I had an idea or perhaps "received" an idea for a story, a novel, very much in the spirit of Joseph Wood's column and different and more personal than anything else I had attempted. Now a manuscript I hope to self-publish it on Kindle and iPad. I think that the more technologically feasible it is to pioneer the solar system for human habitation, the more resistance there will be to it. This administration is only one example of how this might happen. England let her dissidents and dreamers leave and take great chances; I wonder if that will be the case with technologically advanced nations as this century progresses. The Chinese think they will control human exploration. But will they be able to abuse their people in this as they've done in all else in the past? Stephen Hawking is right; it is a matter of survival. But something more. I disagree with the late Ray Bradbury's wonderful MARTIAN CHRONICLES in this; once people leave Earth and settle elsewhere they won't go back. We may very well have a moral obligation not to. - Graham Combs Sat, 21 Jul 2012 13:54:27 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/broadening-the-conversation.html#comment-12559 But we are both the end and the beginning of history. Go back but two decades. Is it not evident that whatever date one chooses is the point at which history arrived; and whatever date one chooses is the point from which history departs? - Gabriel Austin Sat, 21 Jul 2012 12:08:14 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/broadening-the-conversation.html#comment-12558 Your article was a good reminder that Catholicism finds and embraces truth wherever it can be found, thanks for the refreshment. - Louise Sat, 21 Jul 2012 10:41:59 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/broadening-the-conversation.html#comment-12556 Frank, thanks for your comment. I don't think conservative Catholics are uniquely self-isolating. But like any group with shared thoughts and practices, we can tend sometimes to talk mainly among ourselves. Others outside the conservative Catholic camp are pursuing similar lines of reason to ours. Without compromising our own beliefs, we should see where the planes cross, to use your phrase. As one of Evelyn Waugh's characters supposedly said in Officers and Gentlemen, "It's going to be a long war. The great thing is to spend it with friends." (I owe Geoge Weigel for that reference) I just want us to look for friends wherever they may be. And some people do switch from one political or spiritual plane to another, as I keep in mind as a convert. Manfred, for more information, I can only suggest getting the book, which is both thorough and highly readable. If you buy it through the link in the book's title in the column (Amazon/Catholic Thing), you'll help Bob Royal and Brad Miner keep the project going. It's the kind of book that you may want to pass on to others, as well. If you like the idea of headng for another planet, you might read, if you haven't already, A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller, or Lost in the Cosmos by Walker Percy, or the science fiction trilogy of CS Lewis (Perelandra, etc). I'll admit I find the idea appealing myself sometimes, though I'd still be myself after the trip. And as Chesterton once wrote to a newspaper in answer to the editor's invitation to answer the question, "what's wrong with the world?," I am. Just not in the way the antihumanists think I am, as Zubrin brilliantly explains. JRW - Joseph Wood Sat, 21 Jul 2012 08:03:48 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/broadening-the-conversation.html#comment-12555 Mr. Wood, When you mentioned Psalm 8 two works came to mind: 1) An essay by Marilynne Robinson "Psalm Eight" from The Death of Adam 2) Richard Wilbur's poem, "Psalm" (see below) Give thanks for all things On the plucked lute, and likewise The harp of ten strings. Have the lifted horn Greatly blare, and pronounce it Good to have been born. Lend the breath of life To the stops of the sweet flute Or capering fife, And tell the deep drum To make, at the right juncture, Pandemonium. Then, in grave relief, Praise too our sorrows on the Cello of shared grief. Joe - Joe Sat, 21 Jul 2012 05:06:38 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/broadening-the-conversation.html#comment-12552 I think this is a great article and I would like more information. After reading that Catholic Relief Services gave over $5 million to CARE which promotes abortion in Third World ountries, in 2010, I think I have been supporting the wrong team. Is it possible that I could be on that spaceship heading for Mars? My ultimate goal, of course, is Heaven but it appears that can only be attained on this earth through martyrdom. If the spaceship could conveniently "miss" Mars, perhaps I might find Heaven after all. It's worth a shot. - Manfred Sat, 21 Jul 2012 03:35:57 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/broadening-the-conversation.html#comment-12550 I humbly wish the author could extend the explanation behind his thesis about how conservatives in general and conservative Catholics do or show a proclivity to isolate themselves. In his book "Radical Son," David Horowitz provides what I think is the finest definition of conservatives and liberals and how in this dialectic, both operate and argue from two skewed planes, one real and one imagined. And given this, it is now evident to me and perhaps to others, such skewing will produce no common ground since there are no intersecting values from which we can derive ANY common point of communion. Thus only the intervention of God through the Holy Spirit and the Church can effect any reconcilement. Conservatism writes Horowitz, "Is an attitude about the lessons of an actual past. By contrast, the attention of (liberal) progressives is directed toward an imagined future. One is an attitude of caution and the other is an attitude of an unencumbered "liberation" unguided by the benchmarks of the past but liberated to include the dangerous potential of human depravity masquerading as a fair set of values so that all my achieve equity in human terms. Thus it is necessary in achieving such equity to employ expedient actions even though such actions (as we have all too often seen) expose and utilize the dark side of humanity. Or to put it another way, "You have to break a few eggs to make mayonnaise." I have come to the unfortunate conclusion that there is NO reconciliation with the Left from the foundation of secular values only. I can't say for certain that God is on the side of conservatives. What I do know is that I make it a point to pray and keep the lessons of the past at the forefront of my mind and part of the aegis of my actions. I can therefore, get a good night's sleep. For now, that just might be as good as it gets. - Frank Sat, 21 Jul 2012 02:46:51 +0100