Compass Vol. 14 #3, Points

Points, Volume 14 #3

ON THE "SYSTEM"
Property, the more common it is, the more holy it becomes.

--St. Gertrude

AND WILL CAPITALISTS UNDO CAPITALISM?
It is one of the ironies of history that Marx, who prophesied the inevitable revolution of the proletariat, probably did more, by his organization of the labour movement in Europe, than any other single individual to avert the revolution which he prophesied by rendering it unnecessary.

--John Macmurray, c. 1934

FROM THE HEART OF MANHATTAN
Mary McCarthy writing to Hannah Arendt: "A decent existence is possible today only on the fringes of society."

THREE TAKES ON THE "HOLY DARKNESS"
I. FEELING REAL
God's skepticism was more satisfying to Job than all of the solutions of Job's "friends."

--G.K. Chesterton

II. ALREADY THERE
Shortly before she died, his wife asked [James] Carse [a New York author and teacher] if he knew what she had learned from her months of suffering. "What?" he inquired. "Not a goddam thing!" was her reply.

--Quoted by Lawrence Cunningham

III. FAREWELL, NEW AGE EUPHORIA-SEEKERS
Knowing that authentic mystical wisdom is a kind of death (of false ideas; of shrivelled ego; of a rootedness in an overly loved routine life), St. Bonaventure wrote at the end of his Itinerarium: "Let us, then, die and enter into the darkness/let us impose silence upon our cares, our desires, and our imaginings."

ABOUT CARTS AND HORSES...AND CANADA?
Democracy is a method of running the affairs of a community; it is not a method of bringing a community into existence. Birth and growth, existence and functioning, community and society, are under different sets of laws.

--Karl Polanyi, 1937

THEOLOGY AS NEUROCIRCUITRY
Jean-Pierre Changeux and Alain Connes in Conversations on Mind, Matter and Mathematics: "A belief may be defined as a specific state of nerve cell activity characteristic of an individual's interaction with others of his kind, a sort of model constructed inside the brain on a biological--that is to say, a physical, material--basis."

A WORD TO TEACHERS
Never go into a class without thinking that there is somebody in the classroom who has a greater intelligence and a nobler heart than yourself.

--Leo Strauss

ALBERTAN THEOLOGY?
Peter Brown in Augustine of Hippo on why western Christianity went with Augustine rather than Pelagius: "Had Augustine and his friends put pressure on their fellow countrymen in court?....Such diplomacy was known to be costly. On one mission, Alypius had carried with him the promise of eighty Numidian stallions, fattened on the estates of the church, as douceurs for the cavalry officers, whose views on grace had proved to be decisive."

COULD BE A GOOD PLACE TO START
Even though a bishop, I feel I'm the lost sheep.

--Jacques Gaillot, dismissed bishop of Évreux

AND, TO END...
A bit of Scripture to enfold us: "God, our protector, keep us in mind; always give strength to your people. For if we can be with you even one day, it is better than a thousand without you." (Psalm 84:10-11)

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