tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35129512009-12-17T22:54:57.673-07:00<P><P>An Amateur Classicist's Review of Political Philosophy, Theology, and Literature, with Occasional Reflections on the Age That Is PassingKevin Joneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06907423156155669252noreply@blogger.comBlogger1222125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3512951.post-87210227505608910232009-12-15T16:08:00.008-07:002009-12-15T23:24:32.907-07:00

In the latest oddity of our fear-driven age, a second grader in Taunton, Mass. has been suspended over a drawing of Jesus and told to undergo psychological evaluation (at his parents' expense).His artwork:"...because he put Xs in the eyes of Jesus, the teacher was alarmed and they told the parents they thought it was violent," an educational consultant with the Associated Advocacy Center told the

Kevin Joneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06907423156155669252noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3512951.post-73230149853248517522009-12-15T10:00:00.004-07:002009-12-15T10:08:48.164-07:00

Joe Carter discusses the economics of being an author.Prospects are not good:950,000 titles out of the 1.2 million tracked by Nielsen Bookscan sold fewer than 99 copies. Another 200,000 sold fewer than 1,000 copies. Only 25,000 sold more than 5,000 copies. The average book in America sells about 500 copiesOne author says her net profit on a NY Times bestselling book currently stands at $24,517.36

Kevin Joneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06907423156155669252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3512951.post-85762107673073566452009-11-07T10:51:00.003-07:002009-11-07T10:55:04.260-07:00

I see that Inside Catholic has republished my complaint about indecency in the local library, Neighborhood Pornucopia.Welcome to new visitors! Action at this blog is quite slow this year. Those interested in recent activity should see my Twitter page.

Kevin Joneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06907423156155669252noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3512951.post-76818703541822274932009-11-07T10:37:00.004-07:002009-11-07T10:50:43.494-07:00

Fr. Athanasius Kircher, SJ, was a genuine Renaissance Man of the 17th century. A logician, a mathematician, a vulcanologist, a phonologist, an Egyptologist... His position as "alpha scholar" is secure enough. Just read what New Advent and Wikipedia have to say of his accomplishments.Now Western Confucian points us to a Tarantella dance he composed:"With all his learning and vast amount of

Kevin Joneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06907423156155669252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3512951.post-36440493180870044622009-10-16T17:13:00.003-06:002009-10-16T17:50:19.431-06:00

A relative's trip to Oregon and back brought me a souvenir: The Black Irish Band album "Into the Arms of the Sea." (MP3 and CD)Though on the opposite coast, these musicians have compiled an enjoyable set of Maritime music from the New England seaboard. Some of their songs are a capella. At their best, the band truly sounds like it is on the deck of a seaward ship.A few songs are reliable classics

Kevin Joneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06907423156155669252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3512951.post-1859028736841449332009-09-30T13:00:00.008-06:002009-12-08T10:12:48.801-07:00

A law professor nominated by President Obama to become a commissioner for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was a signatory to a radical 2006 manifesto which endorsed polygamous households and argued traditional marriage should not be privileged “above all others.”So reports CNA in its story "Obama EEOC nominee signed radical marriage manifesto that praised polygamy" about Georgetown

Kevin Joneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06907423156155669252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3512951.post-6886372677758398052009-09-16T14:52:00.003-06:002009-09-16T14:55:14.353-06:00

For the previous few months my activity has been focused at Twitter. More substantial posting will resume at Philokalia Republic sometime in the future.

Kevin Joneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06907423156155669252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3512951.post-55975072628175565402009-08-20T16:54:00.005-06:002009-08-20T17:20:03.898-06:00

San Diego playwright Cathal Gallagher recently spoke about his plays and his efforts to advance Catholic drama. While movies cost millions to make, plays are the “grassroots of entertainment,” Gallagher told Catholic News Agency. He rightly noted that such works can have a “profound impact” on college and high school students.His play "Viva Cristo Rey!" about the Jesuit priest and martyr Blessed

Kevin Joneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06907423156155669252noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3512951.post-67235601655961738912009-08-18T18:20:00.005-06:002009-08-18T18:38:02.099-06:00

Earlier this year, Connecticut witnessed the proposal of ominous legislation that would have forcibly reorganized the Catholic Church and crowded out bishops and clergy in favor of lay-run boards. The backers of the bill were apparently channeling the plans of the would-be Catholic reform group Voice of the Faithful.In an additional hint of the “culture war” being waged, both sponsors of the

Kevin Joneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06907423156155669252noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3512951.post-64067798446430044372009-08-10T16:25:00.005-06:002009-08-10T16:39:39.707-06:00

Chris Roach, commenting at What's Wrong with the World, reports his horrible experience with the scandal of hospice care: Medicare typically pays only for a few weeks of hospice care on the theory that it's for the dying, not the merely very sick. So folks sent into hospice are essentially drugged up on halidol, rendered unconscious, and then dehydrated and starved to death. Disoriented and

Kevin Joneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06907423156155669252noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3512951.post-41919584402774532032009-07-18T15:26:00.003-06:002009-07-18T15:49:59.599-06:00

The Frenchman Louis Dutens writes from 1806 on France before the Revolution:“Formerly I went frequently to Paris: I saw often many of those who were called ‘the philosophers’. It was particularly at Madame Geoffrin’s, Baron d’Holbaek’s, and d’Alembert’s, where they principally assembled. It was there that they silently planned the destruction of religion, of the clergy, the nobility, and the

Kevin Joneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06907423156155669252noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3512951.post-86334013553439636302009-07-18T15:00:00.000-06:002009-07-18T15:48:29.482-06:00

When I read Robert P. George's _Making Men Moral_ in college I thought it was one of the best intellectual challenges to the superficial libertarian spirit of our time. Now his work is 15 years old and has won for itself a retrospective conference.Micah Watson summarizes the gathering, while audio files of the lectures are available at the conference web site.

Kevin Joneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06907423156155669252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3512951.post-27686890705620370902009-07-11T13:29:00.002-06:002009-07-11T13:35:01.442-06:00

An amusing display of national pride and mockery of neighbors. I know of nothing similar in the U.S. music industry, which is mired in embarrassed irony.

Kevin Joneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06907423156155669252noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3512951.post-75234825199886823722009-07-07T00:22:00.005-06:002009-07-07T00:50:06.443-06:00

The first person who said "there is no such thing as bad publicity" likely was an incompetent PR man trying to spin his way out of some mess he made.One such ridiculous mess comes from Electronic Arts, which funded fake Christian protests of its Dante's Inferno game. The protesters "passed out amateurish material and held signs bearing slogans such as 'Trade in Your PlayStation for a PrayStation,

Kevin Joneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06907423156155669252noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3512951.post-39219475731753991222009-06-29T09:54:00.002-06:002009-06-29T10:00:26.832-06:00

Christopher Tollefsen in his spring lecture at CU-Boulder noted this bit of scholastic humor from St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae I.i.1 Art. 8:If [sacred doctrine] is argued from authority, it seems unbefitting its dignity, for the proof from authority is the weakest form of proof... according to Boethius.Curiously, New Advent's edition of the Summa omits this geeky self-parodying joke. The

Kevin Joneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06907423156155669252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3512951.post-89499571214362514872009-06-22T15:44:00.001-06:002009-06-22T15:45:58.424-06:00

Last month Patrick Deneen discussed the contradictions of the rootless academic who is caught in the trap of inauthenticity: he propounds a life of “localism and community” on the internet and in the academy, two institutions which tend to dissolve what he professes to love.Criticisms of would-be localists are easy to write: some haven’t been home in years. They murmur about loving “the idea of

Kevin Joneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06907423156155669252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3512951.post-15224115874650698742009-06-08T20:15:00.002-06:002009-06-08T20:20:01.630-06:00

The D.C. Interns blog sums up its target:Over the next three months you have paper runs, coffee runs, and envelope licking to fill your days. As a consolation prize, you will be provided an intern badge, conveniently red, fashioned as your scarlet letter. This will identify your status to all of DC. A status that you interpret as “important” and we interpret as “tired” and “obnoxious.”Aiming to

Kevin Joneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06907423156155669252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3512951.post-86294400182592834342009-06-08T07:24:00.004-06:002009-06-08T07:35:36.096-06:00

Bishop Roger L. Kaffer, auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Joliet, died at the end of May.Now is as good a time as any to note that I helped edit Bishop Kaffer's forthcoming book from Basilica Press, "Common Sense Catholicism." Though I only spoke with the bishop two or three times, I sensed that he and his book reflected a deep and simple piety.In our time when churches and the popular culture

Kevin Joneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06907423156155669252noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3512951.post-40879116706149921632009-05-28T09:38:00.004-06:002009-05-28T09:44:39.876-06:00

According to the 5280 blog, Andrew Bacevich will speak at the Tattered Cover in LoDo tonight at 7:30.See also the Downtown Denver Examiner.

Kevin Joneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06907423156155669252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3512951.post-52552025151168187612009-04-22T19:30:00.002-06:002009-04-22T19:35:32.744-06:00

On the Internet, transhumanism may be belittled as much as it is praised. Its science fiction dreams predict artificial intelligence, immortality through computing, and the wholesale re-engineering of mankind. Rev. David B. Hart described it as “a sensibility formed more by comic books than by serious thought.”But its proponents are generally technology lovers who believe that foul devil Progress

Kevin Joneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06907423156155669252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3512951.post-66008426657583999902009-04-22T01:37:00.004-06:002009-04-22T01:44:59.372-06:00

Recently New Advent has been linking to the blog of Dr. Patrick McNamara, Church historian and assistant archivist at the Diocese of Brooklyn.His posts feature brief profiles of important figures, historical summaries and also original sources.To start with, here is Dr. McNamara's description of colonial America's Maryland Tradition in American Catholicism, "a tradition that stressed interfaith

Kevin Joneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06907423156155669252noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3512951.post-28374686126921590632009-04-15T22:27:00.004-06:002009-04-15T22:48:28.380-06:00

Recently I mentioned the need for Catholic communities to produce more committed student and academic leaders to reform both Catholic and secular institutions of higher education.Happily, some student leaders are already emerging in reaction to the University of Notre Dame's controversial commencement invitation to President Barack Obama.The Notre Dame Response Student Coalition (ND Response),

Kevin Joneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06907423156155669252noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3512951.post-40567204734522045002009-04-15T19:50:00.003-06:002009-04-15T20:01:30.345-06:00

Damon Linker recently argued that orthodox Christianity is “unsuitable” for American pluralism. He argued that the “anodyne, inoffensive, tolerant” approach ofmoralistic-therapeutic deism should replace what remains of public Christianity. Its vague exhortations to Niceness and Self-esteem are supposedly more fitting for a society in which some people “feel like second-class citizens for failing

Kevin Joneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06907423156155669252noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3512951.post-57295039694374020542009-04-14T16:12:00.004-06:002009-04-14T16:25:45.344-06:00

Now making the rounds is a Department of Homeland Security document called Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment. Michelle Malkin, who claims to have verified the origin of the report, makes a point about the document's treatment of amorphous and unnamed “extremist groups”:I have covered DHS for many years and am quite

Kevin Joneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06907423156155669252noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3512951.post-28626078336934883002009-04-13T15:04:00.005-06:002009-04-13T15:12:57.519-06:00

The announcement of President Barack Obama’s invitation to give the commencement speech at Notre Dame is the occasion of the latest furore among internet Catholics.The site Notre Dame Scandal has gathered more than 260,000 signatures protesting the invitation, including my own.Considering the president’s immovable and extreme position on abortion, the protesters have just cause for their ire.Yet

Kevin Joneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06907423156155669252noreply@blogger.com14