I have been working my way through the Book of James using the commentary of James B. Adamson1. As I read, every section seems relevant to our political conversation so I decided that I may as well share it here. This first article in the series will introduce Dr. Adamson and explain his unique approach to James. This is important in my opinion, because it adds to the enjoyment of the work.
(more…)Our Season of Creation
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In the Epistle of James, Chapter 3, James continues his teachings on wisdom. The first half of the Epistle instructs the Christian on the duty to guard his tongue. Adamson refers to James 1:26 for example.
If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, his religion is vain. (Bible quotations are taken from the Catholic Bible NABRE unless otherwise stated).
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This is an essay for politicians who seem to have forgotten the important relationship between mercy and judgment in 2025. It’s also for their colleagues and loved ones.
If you’re wondering why I’m picking on politicians, it’s because there is a raging epidemic of politicians who don’t feel they have to answer to anyone, least of all their constituents. Nor do they bother to respond to the pleas of religious leaders begging them to change their ways. This is particularly reckless behavior because it is the duty of religious leaders to care for their immortal souls.
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I should have known this would happen, but I never considered it. And now it’s time to say good bye to Pope Francis. I have spent quite a bit of time watching other people’s tributes to him. I couldn’t imagine how they could say anything so soon, but of course they aren’t writing blogs on their own schedule. They have editors, managers, and advisors. But their tributes were helpful. I’ll link them at the end.
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Harold Kaplan entitled his essay on Madame Bovary ‘the seriousness of comedy’. In his view, and that of other literary critics cited by him, this work is a ‘special form of dry comedy’ in that it stresses the conflict between feeling agent and unfeeling object. Its effect is the spirit of comedy without humor.
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Can democrats criticize the Enlightenment? In Harold Kaplan’s analysis of modern literature, he doesn’t criticize the Enlightenment (late 17th to early 19th century), but he mentions it as a timeframe for a modern state of mind which has been detrimental to western thought.1 He doesn’t criticize the Enlightenment in Democratic Humanism and American Literature either.2 He mentions it rarely, for example when he mentions that Melville’s ‘insights deserted the confident ideas of the Enlightenment’. Kaplan is a democrat. His analysis of Democratic humanism analyzes how well the writers of American classics defended democracy.
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The skeptical mode is the source of modernism’s contempt for the human intellect. Or maybe it’s better to say modernism’s contempt for the human’s ability to know anything. Harold Kaplan1 says we have come to believe this mode is the strongest trait of an enlightened modern consciousness. Metaphysics might seem to be the focus of this skepticism, but its focus is primarily the ordinary human consciousness.
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In this series, I want to share my thoughts about Harold Kaplan’s book, The Passive Voice1. Kaplan deals with several related literary topics, but they all arise from the crisis of knowledge in modern intellectual history. I have some doubts about my part in this endeavor, which I’ll state briefly in this introduction to the series.
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Diego Fares SJ wrote an article in 2018 about ‘the spirit of fierceness‘. He said this spirit pervades all of human history. It has a certain dynamic–opposition against ‘the other’. I think Fares’s article is important because it provides tools to help us guard against spiritual contagion.
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The religions that are most liable for the current political crisis are Judaism and Christianity. Some may find fault with this statement. They will say religions are irrelevant; today politics are part of a secular world. This is in spite of the fact that the religions of Judaism and Christianity prop up the far Right’s nationalist aspirations. Alternatively, the religious will say that their particular religion is on the side of righteousness. In this view, everyone who disagrees with them, meaning the secular world, is evil.
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