Category: Catholicism & Culture

That life exists and identity: Thoughts on Robin Williams and depression.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • August 18, 2014 • Catholicism & Culture; In the News; Literature

 

The pow­er­ful wit­ness in all of this, in depres­sion, in sui­cide, in loss, in unbear­able con­fu­sion and grief and pain, is the wit­ness of life. That life exists. That you are here, and that it mat­ters. The great hor­ror and pain of depres­sion is that it robs you of any sense of self and iden­ti­ty. And that may be why, in a cru­el irony, some seek relief from it in self-anni­hi­la­tion. But they val­ue their life, and they do not want it to end. They only want the pain to end. But one of the great joys of recov­ery from depres­sion is the joy of dis­cov­er­ing iden­ti­ty again, and who you are.

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Seven reasons to reject Catholic fundamentalism about the arts: 7QT XI, seriatim.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • January 25, 2014 • Catholicism & Culture; Seven Quick Takes

 

The Church’s tra­di­tion­al atti­tude toward pagan cul­ture was not to destroy it but to pre­serve it. It was the bar­bar­ians who destroyed Greek and Roman cul­ture; it was monks who helped pre­serve it. And it was good that they did: The Renais­sance would not have hap­pened unless Catholic artists and schol­ars had those Greek and Roman mod­els. In a sim­i­lar way, if a Catholic revival in the arts is to hap­pen again, it may very well rely on what the mod­ern world has giv­en us. Tertullian’s famous “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” was, at heart, a false dichoto­my.

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Taylor Marshall shows us how not to talk about The Beatles.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • January 14, 2014 • Blind Guides & False Prophets; Catholicism & Culture

 

I have searched, and I can find no one (oth­er than Dr. Mar­shall) who sug­gests that the cov­er has any­thing at all to do with abor­tion. Not one. Unless there are some fair­ly obscure ref­er­ences out there, Dr. Mar­shall is the first and only in fifty years. If the cov­er were intend­ed to “pro­mote abor­tion,” how is it that that escaped dis­cus­sion back in 1966? The Bea­t­les, and their lack­eys in the press, cer­tain­ly did an excel­lent job keep­ing qui­et about it. The Bea­t­les must have been very bad at pub­lic­i­ty. Shh. I am going to pro­mote abor­tion, but don’t tell any­one about it. You are not to dis­cuss this.

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