Mark Vernon writes in The Guardian about William Blake’s picture of God. “The muscular old man with compasses often taken to be Blake’s God is actually meant to be everything God is not.”
Karen Burke writes in The Guardian about Tweeting God. “What happens when a Methodist minister tries to perform a service of peace and unity over his Twitter feed?”
Giles Fraser writes for the Church Times about Egotistical malaise at the heart of the City.
Catherine Pepinster writes in The Guardian about Justice, tempered by mercy. “Compassion should not be reserved only for those we judge to be deserving.”
Christopher Howse writes in the Telegraph about Bertrand Russell versus faith in God. “Which comes first, faith or philosophical proof?”
This week’s The Question in The Guardian is Would we be better off with nothing sacred? with responses by Peter Bolton, Nicholas Blincoe and Ben Rogers.
Colm Tóibín reviews The Pope Is Not Gay by Angelo Quattrocchi in The London Review of Books: Among the Flutterers. Andrew Sullivan responds at the Atlantic with The Pope Is Not Gay.
‘The pope is not gay’ and the review are staggering.
Both kind of shocking and interesting and humane and amusing- all at the same time.
A warning of religion at its worst and a reminder of better religion – or at least of what might be…
Mark Vernon’s column on Blake, and the drawings at the Tate that Vernon links to, are fascinating.
“But when you look at the Pope’s mental architecture (I’ve read a great deal of his writing over the last two decades) you do see that strong internal repression does make sense of his life and beliefs Andrew Sullivan.” – Andrew Sullivan – Andrew Sullivan’s review of Colum Tobin’s essay on Pope Benedict 16 is startling in its clarity on the question of this present Pope’s attitude towards homosexuality. If it were not commenting on the article of an accredited Roman Catholic observer, one might have thought it scurrilous and lacking in courtesy to the Roman Pontiff. However, in terms… Read more »
Finally someone sticks up for Blake as an artist, and a very misunderstood one, even now.
Tobin’s essays and Sullivan’s riposte are indeed illuminating and profound. Important in a real way for those of us who want to understand the present and self-inflicted quagmires of the Church of Rome.
“This is a well-known denial factor ancopuntered in psychological studies” – above –
Just in case anyone thought I was trying out an entirely new field of psychological studies, the word ‘ancopuntered’ should read ‘encountered’
mea maxima culpa!
Fr. Ron, I just thought it was a type of modern acupuncture/psychotherapy fusion.
Re: The Pope Is Not Gay!
I actually found both Tobin and Sullivan’s articles to be more interesting and illuminating than the actual book itself, which while I found it readable and interesting, I thought the central argument was put forward quite weak.