Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Blog neglect

I have woefully neglected this blog for several weeks now, as my stats given evidence for. I hope to rectify that now.

I have a fundamental committment to the renewal of Classic Catholicism in the contemporary Church because I think we have cut ourselves off too much from the accumulated wisdom of the centuries, thereby making our sense of the faith, our immersion in the tradition, more tenuous. I think any time we read a new book, we should follow it with at least one old book. My preference is three old to one new. And the old books need to be by solid voices, not marginal figures, as far as the tradition is concerned. For instance, Blake is good and worth reading, but his gnostic "problems" make it important to follow up or prepare by reading someone like Hopkins. Same with Jung. Follow him up by reading C.S. Lewis. Till We Have Faces, for instance. And don't read Lewis through Jungean lenses. Rather, read Jung through the lens of the Gospel and the tradition, including the valid insights of Lewis.

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