When I first read this post I had what Owen would call "book egalitarian" reaction. Most of my adolescence had been spent in what I considered then to be an heroic battle against the forces of puritanism embodied by my parents. Certain books and records had been confiscated, various movies forbidden, MTV not allowed. In short, my parents were doing all they could to raise a son in what is surely one of the most depressing and soul destroying cultural milieus ever.
I could not see this, of course. Like many who read Bradbury's novel, I came away convinced that book burning, censorship, etc, were pretty much the worst things ever and they would be the first order of business if people like my parents ever got in charge. That it was the Reagan era and people like my folks already were in charge escaped me.
But now, with the perspective that only time can bring, I can understand what my parents were trying to do. If my child comes home with the 21st century equivalent of this or this
* you will find me in the back yard firing up the Weber.
* UPDATE: Originally, I included a link to this book by John Romanides to be among the items grilled on the Weber. A reader (I'd forgotten that I had any!) pointed out that this was perhaps not charitable. I stand by my assertion that the book in question is, for all practical purposes (except that of kindling) worthless, but it isn't fair to Romanides, who no doubt meant well, to include him in the company of Iron Maiden and Judas Priest.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
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4 comments:
Okay, wait a minute: How did Romanides get in there? Agree or disagree with him, he's not in the same galaxy as the other stuff.
Father Bless,
Including him that ignominious list was a joke, though perhaps not a fair one. However, I've had it in for Romanides ever since I read that preposterous book "The Ancestral Sin."
I call that book preposterous, not because I'm an Augustinian (I'm not) or anything even close to it. Rather, I found the book absurd because, if you are going to subtitle your book on the "Ancestral Sin" as a "... comparative study on [the ancestral sin] according to the [early church] and the Augustinian formulation of original sin", you might do well to actually quote St. Augustine, even if only once. However, if you consult the list of patristic sources cited in the book, you will note Augustine's conspicuous absence. As far as I can tell, we never get to hear about the "Augustinian formulation of original sin" from Augustine via sourced quote.
However, I do feel convicted by your comment and will change the link.
Pray for me, Father.
And for me, Sean. I thought perhaps you had included him to see if anyone were paying attention. I know that you, along with others in your ecclesiastical situation, often feel uncomfortably caught in the middle. However, Byzantine and other Eastern Rite folks in communion with Rome bring something extremely valuable to the table: you form a true via media between culturally and theologically divergent approaches to a common apostolic faith. At the same time, while the scholarship and/or rhetoric can be other than desirable, I think that writers like Romanides do so as well, although I do think he gives the Franks entirely too much credit and perhaps fails to recognize Augustine's genuine sanctity. Sanctity, however, does not confer infallibility.
Finishing up my tenure as a library worker, we have all kinds of screwy ideas on how to mistreat books. My favorite is to make a book fort and have an all out book throwing fight. Or maybe take a full book truck and push it down the stairs and watch them all fall off. Or maybe book frisbie.
When you are around two million books all day long, all kinds of crazy ideas enter your head.
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