In a recent interview, Amy Welborn shares intimate details of writing her book Wish You Were Here: Travels Through Loss and Hope. The book chronicles her trip to Sicily shortly after the death of her husband Michael Dubruiel, a popular Catholic writer and speaker who died of a heart attack in 2009. The interview is an insightful prelude to her book as it highlights how her time in Sicily was helpful in understanding, and working through, the death of her husband. Highlighting how the spiritual context of grief is facilitated by earthly experiences she comments:

Sicily was far away and someplace I’d never been and never thought of going. So in a way, it was sort of like “going to” death in this sense. Although I did think about it, fearfully, it was not someplace I took seriously about traveling to—death, that is. It was also someplace that Mike would never, ever have traveled to. I could not imagine it being part of a family journey in the hypothetical land of “If Mike were still alive.” It seemed very far away from life with him, as well, and I suppose I hoped that if I went to Sicily, I wouldn’t be as burdened with the loss.
 Didn’t work, of course, since, as I write in the book, even seeing a crucifix made of lava rock festooned with glitter in a souvenir shop on Mount Etna can make you miss your husband just as much as driving by the YMCA where he died back home.

Read the full interview here.

In the most recent issue of Dappled Things, Damian J. Ference provides an engaging assessment of the similarities between the works of Pope Benedict XVI and Flannery O’Connor. In his article, “No Vague Believer: The Specificity of the Person of Christ According to Flannery O’Connor and Benedict XVI,” Ference proposes that, although Benedict XVI and O’Connor are writing at different times and in different genres, they share a common thesis, namely:

That the person of Christ is not simply a religious figure, or prophet, or political leader, or moral teacher among many—but that he truly is the Son of God, the Savior of the world, and that all of human history and the entire meaning of human existence rises and falls specifically on him—without exception.

The specificity of God’s nature as both human and divine as it is revealed in the person of Jesus Christ is the point of convergence between Benedict XVI’s work and that of O’Connor’s, but the poignant comparison of these two authors comes to light with Ference’s demonstration that each author, in their respective literary genres, were combatting what Ference terms “vague belief.” Vague belief, he
writes, has usurped “specific belief” in Christ, and is characterized by the de-divinization of Jesus, diminishment of God’s personal nature, and triumph of spiritualism without doctrine, dogma or savior.

Ference argues that each author deals with the crisis of vague belief by, “addressing the power of God’s name and proposing an adequate understanding of the person of Jesus Christ as Son of God and Savior of the world.” While such an argument might be somewhat more traceable in Benedict XVI’s overt discussions of Christ, Ference gives memorable examples in O’Connor’s work to illustrate this point, unpacking the Christian symbolism in each passage.

Read Ference’s case for pairing these two authors here.

Today The New York Times published Bishop R. J. Malone’s response to an article written on June 25th, namely “Second Time Around, Hope for Gay Marriage in Maine.” The article stated: “the Roman Catholic Church plans to be less active than it was in 2009, when church officials were criticized for being too involved.”

In his response, Bishop Malone clarified:

I have not backed down in the church’s defense of marriage. Although not a member of the current political action committee, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland is playing a crucial role in November’s vote, launching a communication and educational effort based on my pastoral letter. This document is intended to educate all people of good will about the truth and beauty of marriage as it has been preserved for millenniums by society and various religions. Objectively, the essence of marriage can only be the union of one man and one woman open to the new life of children, whom they nurture in their irreplaceable roles as father and mother. Faithful Catholics will continue to defend God’s plan for marriage through its preaching and teaching and in the public square.

Among other things, “Second Time Around” mentioned that a decision on the wording of the ballot is due at the end of July. Carroll Conley Jr., executive director of the Christian Civic League of Maine and a board member of Protect Marriage Maine stated:

When it’s framed as ‘Should people be able to marry regardless of sexual orientation?’ you see a significant change from five years ago,” he said. “But if you ask, ‘Should marriage be defined as one man, one women?’ we don’t see significant changes.

The way in which wording affects voters (specifically those who remain undecided on the issue) comes to the fore in canvassers’ attempts to explain that it is about “love and family”; it is ultimately a matter of “humanizing” the issue. Perhaps the implication being that those who vote against same-sex marriage are against such values?

It was early Saturday afternoon, and we were making our way uptown to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  My friend and I were each absorbed in our own paperwork as we sat on the subway. She, a high school teacher, was intent on grading tests and quizzes from weeks previous, and I was lost in some short story or another–a privilege I may indulge in only when I am not in the throes of busy student life. For the most part we were silent.

In months previous, I hoped to make it to the Met in time to view “The Steins Collect,” an exhibition of works by Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde. It was on display from February 28 to June 3rd, 2012, and the day before the exhibition closed, we were finally going to see some of the most renowned work of the twentieth century. What I had not anticipated, however, was that the select pieces of art would bring us far beyond artistic sensibilities of a particular century. To be sure, we left the Met with a greater understanding of the Parisian salons, cultural sensibilities, and distinct milieu wherein modern art flourished. But the art pieces themselves brought us to a place difficult to mark in time; it brought us to the threshold of the eternal.

Though the section of the Met we spent time in differed markedly from some of the museum’s more famous exhibitions (the Medieval and Renaissance galleries are perpetual draws, and there’s no avoiding the religious imagery in them), this modernist experience was still something akin to what Sr. Wendy Beckett has called an experience resulting from “sacred art.” (more…)

Dr. John F. Crosby’s lecture on the legacy of twentieth century phenomenologist Dietrich von Hildebrand was greeted by a full house and fine conversation at the First Things editorial headquarters last evening. After mingling over wine and cheese, guests took their seats while the founder and director of the Dietrich von Hildebrand Legacy Project, John Henry Crosby, gave a welcome to guests and expressed his gratitude to longtime friends and collaborators at the magazine.

After a formal introduction by First Things‘ editor R.R. Reno, Dr. Crosby launched in to the central themes of his talk, noting from the outset the fittingness of the collaboration of First Things with the Legacy Project. As with First Things‘ founder Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, von Hildebrand’s concern for the relationship between religion and public life was at the forefront of his work, particularly his early life in 1930s Austria, where he edited an intellectual review that became a powerful voice against Nazi ideology and even against fellow Catholics who imagined that a kind of “mainstream” fascism could be redeemed or directed towards religious ends. So powerful was his voice, in fact, that von Hildebrand, who had decamped to Vienna, was at times considered “enemy number one” by the Berlin regime.

Dr. Crosby’s account of von Hildebrand’s work on religion and the political sphere segued into three central characteristics of von Hildebrand’s life and philosophy, which Dr. Crosby highlighted as particularly relevant today. Indeed, more than relevant, Dr. Crosby suggested that valuable insight would be lost without the preservation of, and conversation with, von Hildebrand’s work. It is the threefold contribution of: (1) his life as witness, (2) personalism, and  (3) attention to “the heart” as a faculty for knowing, that Dr. Crosby highlighted as salient features of von Hildebrand’s work.

These contributions to the history of thought find unique expression and synthesis in von Hildebrand’s understanding of beauty, the correlative of goodness and truth experienced most profoundly by way of the heart. As von Hildebrand writes, “Beauty is not only a central source of joy. It also possesses a great significance for the development of the personality, especially in an ethical sense.” Herein might lie a wellspring of inspiration for fresh insight into the perennial questions persons face, both individually and as a society. Indeed, as Dr. Crosby noted, quoting Fr. Neuhaus, von Hildebrand’s time may yet be “coming around again.”

Many thanks to Dr. John Crosby and the Legacy Project for a splendid evening of provoking thought and fruitful conversation.

Sasha Tatasciore is interning this summer at First Things.