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Percy is to us what Virgil was to Dante, but cannot fulfill that role straightforwardly because of our hostility to anyone who claims moral authority. But maybe a sardonic, foul-mouthed, bourbon-drinking Catholic Virgil is the one we both need and deserve. Alan Jacobs writing in Christianity Today . Excellent longish essay well worth the read.

Dreher in Covington …

Over at Townhall.com, Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Greenberg cites The Moviegoer : Binx’s search as exodus. Amen.

Here’s what you need to know for this one. Flannery O’Connor shares a birthday with The Wife (March 25). Flannery O’Connor gained early fame for having a chicken that could walk forwards and backwards . A critter got into our coop two weeks ago and ate all our chickens. Yesterday, a kind soul donated five laying hens to The Wife, but they had been kept previously in quarters that were too close. As a result, they pecked each other, and all but one has a backside that is bereft of feathers.   Flannery O’Connor’s hen Was trained in ways that I am not She’d walk the line and back again Whilst I just slip or hold my spot.   Now Deirdre Katherine, once called Scholl Has chickens five, with backsides bare And my frequent slips of mind and soul Leave me as exposed back there   But Flannery and Deirdre, too Found grace and truth in frightening things O’Connor in the things freaks do And Deirdre in our wedding rings   So they drop egg...

Credere adversario dedecet nos nihil iam superesse suadenti quod iniustitia coram ac violentia nencon malitia ipsa efficere queamus. — Papa Franciscus (@Pontifex_ln) March 24, 2013 (Anglica)

Jules Amédée Barbey d’Aurevilly on Wikipedia There once was a Catholic dandy; Collar-pins and cufflinks were his candy. As he fixed his tie-dimple, He thought: ‘ Here’s a temple So furnished as God might command me!’

There once was a Pope Benedictus Who could make me grin like I had rictus: His keen, crystalline prothes And symbolical clothes Proclaimed, ‘Christ, for His friendship, has picktus!’ Our nice new Holy Father is Francis, And I’m happy to give him his chancis. (I’ll admit, though: I frette At his lack of mosette. … Quæsumus , no liturgical dancis!)

By Ji-Elle (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons Justus quidem tu es, Domine, si disputem tecum; verumtamen justa loquar ad te: Quare via impiorum prosperatur? &c. Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just. Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must Disappointment all I endeavour end?     Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend, How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend, Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes Now, leavèd how thick! lacèd they are again With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes Them; birds build – but not I build; no, but strain, Time’s eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes. Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.

Pity he never met Walker Percy, ex-suicide. “There are, broadly speaking, two types of drinkers. There is the man whom we all know, stupid, unimaginative, whose brain is bitten numbly by numb maggots; who walks generously with wide-spread, tentative legs, falls frequently in the gutter, and who sees, in the extremity of his ecstasy, blue mice and pink elephants. He is the type that gives rise to the jokes in the funny papers. The other type of drinker has imagination, vision. Even when most pleasantly jingled, he walks straight and naturally, never staggers nor falls, and knows just where he is and what he is doing. It is not his body but his brain that is drunken. He may bubble with wit, or expand with good fellowship. Or he may see intellectual spectres and phantoms that are cosmic and logical and that take the forms of syllogisms. It is when in this condition that he strips away the husks of life’s healthiest illusions and gravely considers the iron collar of necessity we...

2009 Gerasene Writer’s Conference, Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin Thanks again, Your Excellency.

Apparently so , although soon no doubt there will be the usual retractions and damage control. The bishop of the most heavily Catholic town in the U.S. reads Korrektiv?

From an interview with Bob Dylan that appeared in Der Spiegel on October 16, 1997: Q: How was it for you to be playing for the Pope in Bologna a few weeks ago? A: A great show. Q: Why? A: It just was. In another interview (recently cited by Ken Layne, writing irreverently in The Awl ), Bob said of the show, “He’s the Pope. You know what I mean? There’s only one Pope, right?” Admittedly, these are just a couple of odd, tiny pieces in the giant jigsaw puzzle that is Bob Dylan, but they perhaps point to certain sympathies , certain leanings with regards to Catholicism. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Now we have Bob’s son Jakob coming out with a new Wallflowers album that has a lead-off song entitled “Hospital for Sinners” that also bespeaks a leaning in the direction of a distinctly Catholic sensibility. Listen to it here and see what you think. Finally, let’s hear from Fr. Barron on Keith Richards, Bob Dylan, and Thoma...

The early comments I read about Pope Francis’ choice of name spoke to his compassion for the poor. But this command from Christ might be another reason. Or, it could just be that he’s a Jesuit, and he’s thinking of Francis Xavier.

“Hello. Since I can’t post, I’ll put this short thing I wrote about heliocentrism under a comment; I had added it under the one below, but would prefer to repeat it here. I’d be grateful for your comments on it, although I realise it’s not directly related to the topic above: If the earth rotates around its axis at one thousand miles an hour (and at a much faster speed around the sun), then: (i) if the air above it does not move, why wouldn’t this influence the distance/time travelled by aeroplanes – ie if the earth moves, why isn’t this taken into account; (ii) if the air above the earth also moves at the same speed, why don’t, for example, leaves blow in an air current of 1000 miles an hour, whereas they do at a speed of, say, 1020 miles an hour; (iii) if there is a distinction between a moving air above the earth and wind in terms of their effects on moving objects, how can this be explained, rather than asserted. And is not also then unlikely that the earth travels around the ...

“Arno’s interest in the Civil War had its effect. Although he seldom talks about it, he is a fair student of the war. He has a collection of biographies and histories and his hero is General Nathan Bedford Forrest, who captured 31,000 prisoners. (He is partisan, holding out for the South, although his father’s people were New Englanders and his mother was English.) The point is that he was ‘impressed by the grace and the decency and the customs of the civilization of the South,’ and he used what he read about civilization as a basis of comparison when he observed his contemporaries. It was, of course, an unjust comparison. However, he found his contemporaries lacking.” – Joseph Mitchell, My Ears are Bent

First order of business: Southern Expat, if this doesn’t convince you that chicken and waffles is a thing, I don’t know what will: Second: we need to do some reading ’round here. JOB’s short story collection, Bird’s Nest in Your Hair, Lost in the Cosmos , Ellen Finnigan’s The Me Years . Rally Korrektiv, rally!

… if listening to the audio books ( The Sporstwriter and Independence Day so far) counts as reading. (Does it? In the grand Reading Olympics of life, does listening to the book count the same as “reading” the book? Can I say, “I’ve been reading Richard Ford lately” if I’ve actually only been listening to Richard Ford being read?) Anyway, you Percy fans may recall Mr. Ford from his (and his Mississippi drawl’s) prominence in the Walker Percy documentary. Ford is like a Percy that never quite grabbed aholt of faith and The Sportswriter is like The Moviegoer without Kierkegaard or Catholicism — but with something fundamental and bemused and piercing and good all the same. The Colbert Report Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes , Political Humor & Satire Blog , Video Archive

As part of the presentation a few posts back, Paul Elie discussed the rise of what he called the default position of atheism. We may actually be getting to the point where we are no longer Christ-haunted, culturally speaking. I mean, the Onion isn’t funny any more, so I’m not suggesting that you’re going to chuckle over this bit , but it still has some cultural significance, I think. Maybe.