/lit/ - Literature

>>10179190
Why is it every time you start that thread there's the Canadian guy posting schizo Catholic conspiracy theories and a flood of more of the same from other countries? Do they just sit around all day and shitpost that stuff in every thread with a vaguely Christian theme, dust their hands off feeling as if they've done the Lord's work?

If they're paid shills, who could they possibly be shilling for?

>>10174499
I completely disagree. You should read George Washington's farewell address: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=65539

>Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.

There are likely far more kings in hell than presidents and senators. On the other hand, I highly doubt there are any democratic leaders that the Church missed as far as recognizing them for sainthood.

However, what I'm more curious about, is whether or not a president or other official elected by the people could potentially become a saint based on their rule. Because their powers are more limited than that of a monarch, I wonder if they actually have the ability to lead in a saintly manner.

For example, an ideal democratic ruler obeys the will of the people. They are merely a representative of the people... obviously something like that doesn't happen in a country such as, say, Brazil in recent years. If a president disobeys his people, he's more likely to do something corrupt than saintly. Nonetheless, under monarchy and absolute rule, corruption is a far greater problem.

>>10172955
Go to confession and be honest with your confessor. Pray often. Consider getting religious icons to place around your room so that they're always in view. Read the Bible in the morning and evening.

>>10169425
Pascal not a philosopher? There are plenty of philosophers who do not make systematic philosophy.

>>10168255
I feel like Wolf-lad is the gym leader while the random anon heretics / protestants / atheists are trainers about to be BTFO'd.

>>10168267
>>10168272
Merci.

>>10168234
Can we get an image dump of Christ-chan ITT?

>>10168204
>>10168208
I don't know. But this is too much. Gonna put some sage in my own thread.

This is a bit much.

>>10167955
You've got it the other way around. Papists trigger Lutherans.

>>10167936
Isn't King Charles the Martyr the only saint unique to the Church of England? I always thought their claim for his sainthood a bit tenuous, even moreso than the Russian Orthodox Church's claim for Czar Nicholas II's sainthood.

>>10168032
>American colleges will indoctrinate you into acquiring a left-wing view of the world, and this is well-known. Similar things are happening throughout Europe and also here in Latin America.

Sad, isn't it, how bad things have gone? I had a class on British Modernism where an indignant Chicana indicated, "has anyone noticed that, like, every character in the Good Soldier has blond hair and blue eyes?" Oh, a spa in turn of the century Germany with British and Anglo-Americans couldn't possibly have any blond, blue-eyed patrons, now could it?

When will this chicanery cease?

There'a another great article from the archives of the New Criterion available on Nabokov: https://www.newcriterion.com/issues/2006/5/shades-shadow

>>10167709
Be that as it may, I don't see how it would not be sinful to pull the plug on anyone in a coma or vegetative state because you'd be denying them the chance to live.

>>10167723
>I always get distracted by the internet and never end up reading.
I always read the Bible when I wake up and before bed. If there's still free time left, I read profane literature. There's no reason why you couldn't do that unless perhaps you're raising a family. This is coming from a student who spends probably 12 hours a day on the computer!

Consider subscribing to a good monthly magazine as well. I've found the New Criterion very edifying for its articles and book reviews. I wish my professors had been at least half as brainy and clear as those fellows are.

>>10167815
I actually find his political commentary spot-on most of the time but I find his advocating for the old Church of England to be a lost cause, at least from the perspective of a Catholic Anglo-American who has lived in England for a year.

That second paragraph of green text is a brilliant summation of all post-French Revolution secular movements. He's completely right that they have virtually nothing in common with "conservatism, liberalism, or old-fashioned social democracy." Instead, they all have much more in common with each other.

I don't know how familiar you are with the French and Russian Revolutions, but it is remarkable how similar the biggest personalities are.

>Rousseau
>Marx

>Napoleon (Girondin)
>Trotsky (Permanent Revolution)

>Robespierre (Jacobin)
>Stalin (Socialism in One Country)

In both cases, there was also radical secularism, massive killings, destruction of tradition, etc. Stendhal was correct in his assessment that Russians always follow France in everything that they do except decades later.

Anyway, feel free to write my opinion off as coming from another Anglo-American with a "retarded reductionist state of mind." The English had already experienced this phenomenon long before the Frogs and Tovarishes with Henry VIII's destruction of the Church and in the following years with greater power being accorded to the head of state and parliament. The worst culmination of it was the English Civil War. The American Revolution was basically a reaction against this cancerous ideology, an attempt to create a government that "just werks" (as our /g/ friends would say) without meddling too much in the spheres of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

If you would prefer to read a fuller account on why these problems are uncommon in perfidious Albion and her former countries, check this article here: https://www.newcriterion.com/issues/2013/10/the-anglosphere-miracle

Although it appears to be behind a paywall. Oh well.

>>10165568
You're going to need some arguments to back those claims. Otherwise no one is going to take you seriously. Besides, the screenshot you took is just an opening paragraph. You can't write off an article just based on that.

The New Criterion is actually one of the few literary magazines that is not 100% flavor-of-the-week SJW horseshit. If you would actually read it, you'd also quickly learn that there are indeed some occasional contributors who write for the New Criterion who lean left of the political fence. However, it is indeed true that they have no sympathy for radical politics.

>>10164609
Having read Ulysses 2 or 3 times, the Ellmann biography, and everything else Joyce wrote except Finnegans Wake, I think this is what you should do...

Go to university and study literature and philosophy. Be sure to spend plenty of time reading Shakespeare, the Classics, and the Church Fathers. Dabble in French, Italian, and Latin as Joyce did. Also, Joyce would have known his Bible very well; people these days don't realize just how much Christianity was a part of people's lives back then even if on paper they professed to be atheists.

Whilst you do this, read Ulysses about once a year. You'll gradually begin to understand Joyce, but once you begin to understand him, you will no longer care about him and will ideally have developed your own interests. Yet it won't have been a waste of time because you'll at least have gained a proper education.

>>10163879
>Are you not counting the texture of the plays as poetry?

This. The texture is poetic, but they are not formal poems. It's important to remember an artist's intent when we judge his work. Shakespeare's intent wasn't to produce poetry, but plays with great language.

On the other hand, the poets I mentioned were chiefly poets who had at least one great enterprise that was meant to be their best work such as The Iliad, the Odyssey, Divine Comedy, Les Fleurs du Mal, Leaves of Grass, etc. Shakespeare's equivalent are the sonnet sequence, which is brilliant, but it is not really grand the way that the aforementioned are because he's frying smaller fish.

>>10164313
https://www.newcriterion.com/issues/2017/10/solzhenitsyns-cathedrals-8955

I had heard of Solzhenitsyn for a long time but never read him because I presumed it would be a boring toll count of all the deaths and suffering in the Gulags. (The author of that article also did not read Solzhenitsyn for a long time for the same reason.) Anyway, perhaps I'll get him after I finish Gulliver's Travels. This stuff reminds me of Céline had he not been so mentally deranged. It has that same conversational quality.

>>10164303
I personally use the KJV as a Catholic for my reading, however, mine is a facsimile of the first edition therefore it has the apocrypha. I also own a Catholic study Bible for historical context and the Book of Common Prayer as a lectionary.

Nonetheless, I don't hold any Anglican credos. I do however have a lot of respect for what they managed to do with the Empire and I believe that the Church of England played an immense yet underrated role in that. I would love to see more Anglicans return to the Roman Catholic Church because I think we would gain a lot from them.

>>10164294
Trust me, that was a recurring joke in Barcelona.

>>10164271
Were you prompted to read it by that article in the New Criterion? I'm considering it too. Those pages look amazing as well, disturbing as they are funny.

>>10164148
>l'addition
Merci pour me dire.

Quant à Charlemagne, je ne crois pas qu'il était un proto-machiavélique, plutôt qu'il était le type de son époch qui a le plus fait pour maintenir la civilisation chrétienne contre les barbes... mais c'est possible que mon savoir là est mal informé. Mais quand je regard une carte de cet époch, je peux imaginer un monde pour le pire sans lui.

>>10164153
The Church makes exceptions for some suicides, as I have previously stated and you seem to understand that. However, you can't seem to accept people are quite capable of doing it as rational agents. I'm also hard-pressed not to see how we won't be held accountable for doing something even in a crime of passion. To what extent we will be held accountable, I don't know.

>>10164077
If you think Sagrada Familia is brilliant, you're the one with the problem. Gaudi's architecture is nasty. I don't have any problem with modernist art, but his art is just pooey. Also, as a Christian, a Catholic no less, I am offended by how crude his proto-Stalinist art is. How on earth is a crucified boxman supposed to make anyone feel pathos? It's a degenerate mockery of Christ and His believers.

It's sad that Anglicans could make better churches in England than Catholics in Spain. What on earth were the civil and ecclesiastical authorities thinking?

>>10164086
Not always, but even then, a soldier would be excused in a just war if he volunteered.

>>10163998
I could imagine that coming from Poland. Could you recommend any Polish writers? I was very impressed by a quote from Czeslaw Milosz either here or in the previous Catholic general.

>>10164045
What's not useful? French in general? or my literary knowledge of French for getting around Paris? For me, it was the fact that I wouldn't know useful words like how to ask for "the bill" to pay after eating at a restaurant. I still don't remember the word for that important little piece of paper. But I do know the rules for an alexandrine. Nonetheless, I managed to get around and had a good time in Paris. I would go back if it wasn't so expensive.

>>10164060
How so? I would love, for example, to see the US have a Catholic president, but not some degenerate like Kennedy.