“It proved far easier in the event to remove sexual restraint than to overcome each individual’s desire for the exclusive sexual possession of another; and it takes little effort of the imagination, even if we would rather not make it, to understand the result.” (Theodore Dalrymple, In Praise of Prejudice, p. 108).
And That Means Publishing Books
“Because the business of the Church is to multiply sound teaching, this means that we should be about our business — utilizing all available means. The early Christians were accused of filling Jerusalem with their doctrine (Acts 5:28). Isn’t it about time we were accused of doing something similar? (Mother Kirk, p. 259).
The Font of Envy
“However, people who think like this do so because they have asked the wrong question, or looked down the wrong end of the telescope. They have asked where poverty comes from instead of where wealth comes from. You might as well ask how ignorance of cardiac surgery ever came into being, rather than knowledge of …
First Things First
“It is from social prejudice that one learns social virtue. Metaphysical thought and reflection come later” (Theodore Dalrymple, In Praise of Prejudice, p. 83).
Teachers Must Be Students
“In order to teach, the Church must first be taught. Writers must be readers. ‘A fool hath no delight in understanding, but that his heart may discover itself’ (Prov. 18:2). The Church will never have a shortage of people who want to ‘say a few words.’ But mere talk, or writing, or publishing, is worthless. …
Modified Burke
“In the field of aesthetics, all that is necessary for kitsch to triumph is for men to fail to discriminate” (Theodore Dalrymple, In Praise of Prejudice, p. 75).
A Special Form of Naivete
“One convention has been replaced by another. When I attended a bourgeois bohemian funeral in Paris recently, it was I who stood out in my dark suit and tie—so provincial, so conventional! Everyone else looked as if he or she had just popped into the cemetery after a bit of shopping in the local grocery …
Taking the Show on the Road
“The principle here is that you cannot export what you do not have, and, if you try, you will only wind up exporting what you do have. Whenever Pharisees go on a mission, the result is Pharisaism overseas. When scriptural ignorance goes on a crusade, the result is crusading ignorance. The applications to our situation …
The Funniest Convention
“But the kind of originality that everyone shares is not the kind of originality that modern romantics require in order to feel fully individuated in mass society. What they need is original originality, or meta-originality, as it were. This sets up the equivalent of an arms race, with more and more extravagant gestures required to …
Concupisco Ergo Sum
“The popularity of the Cartesian method is not the consequence of a desire to remove metaphysical doubt, and find certainty, but precisely the opposite: to cast doubt on everything, and thereby increase the scope of personal license, by destroying in advance any philosophical basis for the limitation of our own appetites. The radical skeptic, nowadays …