Dr Justice on Dr Massey on Gary Wills on the priesthood

And thus, for our humility, during this Lenten season of prayer and reflection, we are offered, for our edification, a couple of smart slaps across the face with a dead fish:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/books/review/why-priests-by-garry-wills.html?nl=books&emc=edit_bk_20130215&_r=0

As the lad said to the headmaster:  "Thank you, sir;  may I have another?"

Why-y, Yes, m'boy, you certainly may!  Ta-ake .... that :

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-best-choice-for-pope-a-nun/2013/02/15/83c8be2e-76c6-11e2-95e4-6148e45d7adb_story.html?hpid=z2

Our friend and colleague Dr. Keith Massey addresses the first:

http://magnaliadei.blogspot.com/2013/02/review-of-garry-wills-why-priests.html

[Update]

The fun does not stop coming.   A column in the Washington Post, offering the Modest Proposal that the next Pope be a nun, enjoyed  for a time  the top spot in the “most-emailed” list.  No doubt some bright bulb will pipe up with the suggestion that, in the interests of ecumenism, the next Pope should be a Buddhist.  Or a Wiccan.

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The logician and linguistic philosopher  Bertrand Russell once famously stated that simply postulating your ontology has all the advantages of “theft over honest toil”.  As Dr Massey points out, dismissing counterexamples out of hand  is equally convenient.  We apply this technique to obtain startling new results, here:

            Some Problems of Philosophy

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For those of you who, like Gary Wills, harbor doubts about the canonicity of “Epistle to the Hebrews”,  you may refresh yourselves with a document of unquestioned authenticity, here:

A Lost Sonnet of St Augustine

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Following the method pioneered by Wills, we here grapple with a controversy that has plagued historians.

Did Caesar Exist?

Modern scholarship is divided.  The sole evidence of his existence comes from De Bello Gallico, an enigmatic opuscule of unknown provenance…

Vicarious

The current issue of the New York Review of Books  has a couple of especially fine reviews.

(1)   He reads it so you don’t have to

One of the very best books I have read, and re-read, concerning the life of faith, is Bare Ruined Choirs, by Gary Wills.   He is best known for historical and political writing,  but always this foundation lies at the back of it.

Here he lays bare  the shallows into which atheism wades:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/apr/07/superficial-sublime/

(2)  She watches it so we don’t have to

There is perhaps nothing on this planet -- nothing inside the Oort cloud -- that could interest me less than some TV special starring Sarah Palin.  On the other hand, there is no keener analytic mind than that of Janet Malcolm:   if she puts her byline to something, it is worth a read, however unlikely the subject.   This proves true once again:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/apr/07/special-needs/

This, merely by way of illustrating, that, given the right craftsman, you can indeed make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.