Paglia: Secularism kills culture

"...secular humanism has failed, that the avant-garde is dead, and that liberals must start acknowledging the impoverished culture that my 1960s generation has left to the young. Atheism alone is a rotting corpse. I substitute art and nature for God -- the grandeur of man and the vast mystery of the universe."

Couple of observations:

1. No matter what happens, it will always be about the Baby Boomers. They spent years talking about how they created the culture. Now that it is the beginning of the end for them, it seems quite logical that they would take credit for killing the culture. Give me a break. Retire already! I'm so tired of the "Sunset Blvd." routine.

2. This goes back to one of my previous posts. Too many people just change their minds about things without reflecting on why they were changing or how they were wrong to believe what they did in the first place. Eveything is in absolutes. Reagan sucks/Reagan is great. The culture is great/the culture sucks. It seems to me that a great deal of what Paglia writes about (in Salon, where I read her) is politics, Britney Spears and Anna Nicole Smith. Well, gee, Camille, if this is where I placed my focus, I would think the culture was going to the dogs, too.

France, you know where to find me.

Git a rope.

"A neutral attitude, especially of the State, local government and public services, in matters relating to religion; non-religious rather than anti-religious".

It's not clear how this could be achieved in practice. Take, for example, any issue over which people strongly disagree, such as abortion. What would be the neutral position on that one? Suppose the state allows it, as it does now. The state would be in the position of saying that the unborn are not full members of the human community and ought not to be protected by our laws. Suppose it takes the prolife position. In that case, the state would be saying that the unborn are members of the moral community and ought to be accorded with respect and dignity. Neither position is "neutral." Each affirms something about the nature of human beings and what constitutes the human community.

I've published an article on this problem in the American Journal of Jurisprudence in 2004: "Thomson's `Equal Reasonableness' Argument for Abortion Rights: A Critique." American Journal of Jurisprudence 49.1 (2004): 185-198. You can find through this page: http://homepage.mac.com/francis.beckwith/downloads.htm

Paglia is right that the European past is rich and has to be mined- but quite selectively. She's wrong that 'humanism' (non-/post-theism) has failed, or that it is inherently secular.

In her adopted (though inadequate) art-based variety of nature mysticism which she has substituted for theist deity, Paglia herself is- oh, how ironically- a deficient but suggestive direction post to what the non/post-theist solution is.

Paglia represents one of the many banes of academic life - the feted superstar whose every throwaway comment gets attention, no matter how tired it is and no matter how many times the star says the same thing. How many lazy generalizations pour from her lips! Declining into "trivialities and narcissistic exercises in self-esteem"? My goodness, she could look into the mirror for that alone, and collect 10K in the process if there was an audience lurking about. Bringing up religion is a foil for her to bash the penchant of literary theory, disdain for Christianity, and leftist politics among many academics.

OK, what shred of evidence does she provide for the following things:
- the state of primary and secondary ed
- the drug-taking habits of the dread "Northeastern elite" (and who is that? Is Milt Romney high on Vicodin?)
- contemporary European culture
- the state of rock music (and on the supposed glories of her generation's youthful heyday - there wasn't "flashy, transient niche entertainment" in 1968? Who knew the Strawberry Alarm Clock and the Archies were so profound!)

Jesus didn't die on the cross to save the arts in 21st century North America! Why on earth any Christian with half an ounce of sense, or frankly anyone at all, pays any attention to her nonsense simply makes no sense to me.

Secularists finally got their European paradise, which reminds me of an irritating flaw in Casablanca. It might be among the three best movies ever made, but what almost spoiled it for me was the politics of the screen writers. Julius and Philip Epstein and Howard Koch portrayed Rick, our hero, as an ex-fighter of the "fascists" in Spain. Nazis, Catholics--what's the difference, right?

But then, as far as some in Hollywood* were concerned, weren't all peace-loving men of that period supposed to travel to Spain and help Communists kill native Catholics and others on the Right, especially priests and nuns?:
"The Red Terror in Spain is the name given to various atrocities attributed to Spanish Republicans during the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s. It included sacking and burning monasteries and churches and killing of 6,832 members of the Catholic clergy, as well as attacks on landowners, industrialists, and right-wing politicians. The terror consisted of semi-organized actions perpetrated by almost all of the leftist groups..." Wikipedia

Here's looking at you, kid.


*I took this from DANZfamily.com. The Communists took care of one another, Jack Warner testified before the HUAC hearings .... "In each studio there is what is called a steerer. Most of them are members of the story editors and writing departments, and they bring in all these boys." Both Warner and Sam Wood testified that anti-communists simply did not get jobs. Once he realized what was happening, Warner said, his studio stopped renewing contracts for the Red writers. Those dropped, Warner said, included ...Julius and Philip Epstein."

In otherwords, abandon what we have for the stuff on the garbage heap. The only thing we learn from the past is that the folks who came before us really were stupid.

Lordy, lordy. Politics does make strange bedfellows. How many commenters here have actually read Paglia's Sexual Personae? It is a remarkable and dense work, and I have to bow to her mastery of so much knowledge that I don't have. Nevertheless it gets hard to take as she constructs an aesthetic in which art is basically seen as sadomasochistic in essence. Religion is beneficial to the arts because it creates restraints against which the artist can struggle. Is that a view that conservatives currently find congenial? I wasn't aware of that.

I do agree wholeheartedly with one statement early in the linked essay:

Though I shared the exasperation of my generation with the moralism and prudery of organized religion, I view each world religion, including Judeo-Christianity and Islam, as a complex symbol system, a metaphysical lens through which we can see the vastness and sublimity of the universe.

My impression of conservative religious folk these days is that they are insisting on a literalistic interpretation of the great myths (hello, my friend god-is-a-heretic) in which the letter is strangling and beating the spirit to death in a quest for pragmatic political power. Acknowledgment of complex symbols hardly enters into it.

As for "James Joyce, Pablo Picasso, Marcel Proust, Thomas Mann or Ingmar Bergman"--great Hera, since where were these guys conservative icons? Have I missed something? Was I out of the room when Dubya screened "The Seventh Seal"? Okay, one could make a case for Mann as a potential conservative ally. But I don't think he's really on your side. Proust is even more dubious. As for Joyce, Picasso, and Bergman, are these not the very people you've been warning us against? There's a fascinating scene in Frank Schaeffer's Crazy for God in which he shows Pat Robertson describing with relish how he took down a Modigliani print he once owned and burned it in the fireplace. I can only imagine what he'd do to Picasso.

I guess I should thank you for a glimpse of a lovely alternate world in which conservatives actually sit around reading A La Recherche du Temps Perdu, Ulysses, and Der Tod in Venedig (in the original languages, naturally) . . . but . . . but no. I just can't believe it. Instead I'm seeing one of my son's former schoolmates, a nice Kansas Mormon boy, protesting the inclusion of a photo of the Venus de Milo in his World History textbook--"because there's too much pornography out there already and we shouldn't have to see this stuff in school."

A footnote: Mr. Sig's comment on this was "Are they saying the friends of the enemy of my enemy are also my friends? Even if they're the enemy?"

And for you, Dave (I guess I should apologize for thread-hogging, but hey, it seems to be in style lately)--re your list of things "we" don't know how to do any more:

Grow our own food: check! Well, okay, I've never slaughtered my own pigs or plowed an acre of corn. But I'm pretty good at the vegetable gardening. A friend and I once begged a crate of fish guts from a local restaurant and buried them with our sweet corn, to see if Native American methods worked. Boy, did they!

Build our own homes: have to hang my head in shame on that one. But I still have hope that maybe someday . . . .

Cook a decent meal: you're kidding, right? I estimated some years back and found that I'd cooked over 10,000 meals in my life. The count has grown since then. Mr. Sig is an excellent cook, too. I had four kids and a husband, all on different schedules, and we all sat down to a home-cooked dinner together nearly every night of our lives.

Entertain ourselves: hey now, thanks for the straight line. I find myself HIGHLY entertaining.

Sing our own songs: Just last night, Mr. Sig and I were sitting around our little Advent wreath, singing carols together, in the absence of children to sing them with. We tried "Psallite, unigenito" as a round for the first time. It worked pretty well. Mr. Sig was rehearsing with the bell choir for hours this morning, too.

I also bow and burn incense before my laptop and iPod every day. It is well to placate the ghost within the machine. ; )

Cleveland wrote:
"But then, as far as some in Hollywood* were concerned, weren't all peace-loving men of that period supposed to travel to Spain and help Communists kill native Catholics and others on the Right, especially priests and nuns?"

Can't let this comment pass uncontested. Not to re-fight the Spanish Civil War or anything, but the notion that Francisco Franco's regime was simply a well-intentioned effort to straighten up a few altars that the excesses of the Republic had wantonly destroyed misses the fairway like one of my tee shots whenever I use a driver.

It is incontrovertibly true that atrocities were committed against Roman Catholic priests, nuns and monks, along with a number of lay people by gangsters operating under the negligent enforcement of the peace by the government of the Republic. In response, Franco's Nationalist Army had its own black shirts, plus a few brigades of mercenary Moroccans, who swept down on sympathizers of the Left like a destroying wind. It was enough to be a labor leader, an advocate for land reform, or a teacher who could merely read or write, or an artist or playwright to meet the business end of a Fascist bayonet.

The brutality of the Spanish Civil War on both sides (and within the Republic on an intramural basis) is thoroughly documented by Hugh Thomas, Anthony Beevor and George Orwell. The Lincoln Brigade and others -- such as Orwell -- who journeyed to Spain to fight the early stages of the war against Fascism, were idealists whose enthusiasm for the stated ideals of socialism blinded them to its excesses. Franco matched the Republic excess for excess.

The authors of the screenplay for Casablanca were writing for a world that was watching the conquests of the Third Reich reach their apogee. In that context, a character who supported Haile Selassie against Il Duce, the Spanish Republic against its conquerors, and who worked on the edges of the French Underground would have been seen as a hero -- and prescient in his battles against the dark force of Nazism. There is considerable dramatic power in Bogart's line "If it's December 1941 in Casablanca, what time is it in New York?"

The tragedy of the Spanish Civil War is a link in the chain of one of the tragic themes of history -- that too often those who recognize evil across the field of battle can be blind to the evil behind them and around them. The lessons of the 20th Century show that this happened again and again on the Left.

What is not excusable is for those on the Right to make their own myths up about monsters like Franco and, later, Pinochet, simply because it appears that ends somehow justified means. That rationale, after all, was the same one used by Lenin.

Richard

"What is not excusable is for those on the Right to make their own myths up about monsters like Franco..." Richard

Richard, first, you attribute the unspeakable horrors of the Church-hating Communist leaders to just "negligent enforcement of the peace by the government of the Republic." In which leftist review of the war did you find that gem?

By the same token, you use the horrible excesses of mercenary Moroccans to falsely paint Franco as a "monster." Remember, Richard, when you say "It was enough to be a labor leader, an advocate for land reform, or a teacher who could merely read or write, or an artist or playwright to meet the business end of a Fascist bayonet.", uninformed readers will take that to mean it was Franco who committed those killings, and that he did so because he liked to kill teachers and playwrights. And who do you think you are kidding by implying that Communist land reformers who wanted Church property were simply innocent men of good will? Fidel Castro was a simple land reformer, too, I guess.

We could argue this for years. Let's just agree it was one great movie.

Huh. I wasn't actually referring to the Catholic Church at all, Cleveland. Though I was sufficiently vague that I guess you could have read your own overriding concerns into my comments. I was thinking more of the Protestant fundamentalists who insist on a literal interpretation of Scripture, as filtered through generations of populist Calvinism and Baptist culture, and a short-sighted application of that literalism to national policy. I don't mean to insult Protestants in general, either, but I do think that one of the good things about Catholicism has been a culture that, in Europe at least, fostered in-depth scholarship in art and history.

Sig, I was convinced that traditional Catholic art (e.g., the Pieta) and music (Gregorian Chant) held a very, very special place in our worship life. I agree! You are right! Such things are treasures that should be held at the heart of the Church. One of the things that makes them so beautiful is the depth and richness of symbolism that inheres in them. (And when I say "symbol," I don't mean, as some do, that they aren't real.) Art and music should not be cheapened by being laser-printed onto the Party membership cards of any partisan group.

I own an old and well-thumbed copy of the documents of Vatican II. Beyond that, I'll leave your comments on internal Catholic dissension where they lie, because, as I said, that's really not what I was talking about.

Re "Vatican-hating homosexuals" however, I must note here that Michelangelo Buonarroti, creator of the Pieta and many other works of sublime genius, my favorite artist since I was a child, was probably gay, though we have trouble discerning at this distance exactly what that meant to him. And he didn't always get along well with the Popes of his time, either!

The Secularist Religion

I don't know what Romney had in mind. However it seems to me that Secularists are exclusivists. They want the exclusive right to exclude the beliefs of others and forbid any expression other than their own, which is no expression. They claim religious symbols in the public place offend their sensibilities and forces a God on them. Ergo, the tenets of their religion allow for no other god than theirs which is no god.

The Secularists religion demands the right to its observances everyday in public and anywhere they may happen to go. But they are not willing to allow any deviation. If it is not their way it is wrong. Their religion is intolerant. They do not allow for other traditions unless they keep them behind closed doors. And if they happen to go to a private place where another tradition is expressed they feel offended and are vocal about it. In fact they ridicule them and hold them up to derision often writing books about them and producing public events aimed at ridiculing them. They often take these other practitioners to their ecclesiastical court to force them to stop observing these expressions publicly. That is the Secularist religion, at least as this observer believes it to be.

What I got out of Romney’s speech was that he thinks there is plenty of room to compromise with the Secularist religion. He thinks we can strengthen our communities by sharing the observances of each other’s traditions. And he said that he believes we will be better people and a better nation if we do.

Ooops ...

"That last note" refers to the note of 533pm

"Sigaliris, I'd pay to see conservatives reading "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" or "The Magic Mountain". Or any Rainer Maria Rilke. Or Martin Buber's "I and Thou"."

That's funny. I went to a very conservative Catholic college and read three of those four for coursework. Two titles were in courses required for all students. One for a class in my major. But, you know, whatever delusion it takes to continue feeling smug and superior. Proceed.

The London Telegraph article that I linked to from my own site (directly available here) also had this to say about the Clintons:

Hillary Clinton preferred uplifting films such as "Mr. Holland's Opus," with Richard Dreyfuss.
...
Clinton's taste in films was more eclectic ... but after sitting through Jane Campion's Oscar-winner "The Piano," he appeared puzzled, saying: "What was that all about?"

(I did like the detail in the article that Jackie Kennedy watched LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD. She'd have at least appreciated it in the only way it succeeds -- as a Chanel fashion show, starring Delphine Seyrig.)

Three comments:

1. "The Secularists religion demands the right to its observances everyday in public and anywhere they may happen to go. But they are not willing to allow any deviation. If it is not their way it is wrong. Their religion is intolerant. They do not allow for other traditions unless they keep them behind closed doors. And if they happen to go to a private place where another tradition is expressed they feel offended and are vocal about it. In fact they ridicule them and hold them up to derision often writing books about them and producing public events aimed at ridiculing them."

-You're fighting a losing battle, JLFuller. There is no such thing as a "secularist religion." If secularists believe anything, it's that public institutions should be neutral toward religion and non-religion equally. Since it is an impossible task to represent each religion equally, the more logical option is to remain silent and refrain from religious observances in government. This is not a religion. Not all secularists hold the same beliefs about the supernatural. Some "secularists" are actually religious. Some are not. What I believe is this: keep religion out of public life. That's it. Tell me how that is a religious belief?

2. "Without spirituality in some form, people will anesthetize themselves with drink or drugs -- including the tranquilizers that seem near universal among the status-addled professional class of the Northeastern elite."

I wholeheartedly disagree. I am a non-spiritual person. I am not addicted to any drug. I don't need drugs to feel good. Just like I don't need the belief that an eternal worship-fest happens after I die. Most of the non-religious people I know are happy, well-adjusted individuals. We don't need spirituality. We need mental and physical health, but not 'spirituality,' whatever that means.

And is it just me, or does Camille Paglia just seem to be saying "these damn kids these. In MY day, things were different" in fancier words?

I do feel a certain amount of . . . impatience or frustration with those who insistently condemn books they've never read and movies they've never seen.

I only object to the fact that you think this is something especially descriptive of the American Right.

I mean ... do you really think that the NAACP members who object to HUCK FINN (or TEN LITTLE INDIANS) are any more familiar with them than the Christian picketers of LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST? Or all the liberal film critics who wrote their PASSION OF THE CHRIST reviews before the film was even released.

That said, I actually don't agree with the premise that one must have experienced a work of art to object to it morally and/or boycott and/or censor it. For two reasons:

(1) This argument is never offered in good faith, but as part of a bait-and-switch. When it turns out that some person may have seen/read some work of art he objects to, the second-part of the amoralist two-step is instantly invoked -- "it didn't harm you, did it?" and/or "you want to deny others the freedom to do what you did. Hypocrite!!!"

(2) If a work of art actually is morally bad, then why need any particular person subject himself to it to have a right to note this? Moral claims need not necessarily be based on existential experience. You may as well argue that only people who commit murder (or maybe "have been murdered") can argue that murder is wrong.

And a corresponding irritation with those who claim to value books and movies when they'd condemn the ideas in them, if they really were familiar with them.

Is that because any idea that any idea that can be expressed in a book or movie therefore cannot be condemned? Surely not.

I think you're simply wrong. The biggest-selling conservative intellectual of the last 30 years was Allan Bloom. There's not a conservative critic of the academy who would argue that at least Marx, Nietzsche, Freud and Heidegger (the wellsprings for the major streams of tenured radicals) are central to the Western canon and that a liberal education has to involve exposure to them.

You can say you wouldn't feel the same, yet somehow I doubt that.

Want to bet on that one? Peruse through this vjm-written canon and say that again. Some highlights:

-- In 2004, the films at #5 is the "conservative Catholic movie" of the era. It trails a movie about a saintly abortionist (#4) and a Chinese nationalist apologia for tyranny (#3);
-- The prominence of such contemporary leftist filmmakers as the Dardenne brothers (2006, 2003, 1997) and Mike Leigh (2004, 2002, 1999, 1996, 1991);
-- The Italian communist Gillo Pontecorvo tops my 1965 list with *the* how-to rabble-rousing film about urban terrorism, and he has another keeper in 1969 which is as good as any book in detailing the Marxist interpretation of colonialism;
-- The French Maoist Jean-Luc Godard has his black comedy WEEKEND at #2 for 1967;
-- Leni Riefenstahl's two famous 1930s Nazi propaganda films are #2 and #1 for their respective years (though I actually prefer OLYMPIA);
-- Almost a dozen Lenin/Stalin-era Soviet films are mentioned, with the greatest of them (#1 for its year) being EARTH, a 1930 film set in Ukraine about the glorious struggle to collectivize agriculture against the kulaks (really);
-- In 1964, one of the films is a Soviet-Cuban joint production about Castro's revolution;
-- The lists from the 70s include several works by Eurocommunists, like Angelopoulos's TRAVELLING PLAYERS, Bertolucci's 1900, Wertmuller's LOVE AND ANARCHY and Olmi's TREE OF THE WOODEN CLOGS;
-- One of the most often-cited directors (13 times) is Luis Bunuel, a Spanish atheist, surrealist collaborator with Dali and (on the surface at least) an obsessive anti-cleric.

Do you need more?

Well now, while we're on the being petty kick--"conservatisn"???

Victor: I feel quite honored that you’ve bestowed so much of your valuable time on my education. It seems I’ve still failed to make myself clear on several points.

I only object to the fact that you think this is something especially descriptive of the American Right. Aaagh, how many times and ways can I say this? I DON’T think this is uniquely descriptive of the “American Right.” Nor even descriptive at all of the American Right in all its manifestations. Only of particular parts of the right-wing coalition, which I fear are now in the ascendent. You can say that the cultural views of those who spearhead Presidential politics are irrelevant, because whatever their cultural deficiencies, if they are elected they will strengthen values you believe will foster the kind of culture you want. I don’t agree with you, but I can understand that argument. However, I don’t think you can go from that to arguing that those people are really friendly to art and culture in itself.

If you assume that I feel more tolerant of such behavior from the left, you assume wrong. I can’t recall ever commenting favorably on people who would ban Huckleberry Finn. In fact, I found the uproar against "The Passion of the Christ," and the attempt to prove it anti-Semitic by association with Gibson’s father, offensive.

Your next two points are also based on an assumption that I’m bent on luring you into the “amoralist two-step.” Again, I can’t see what I’ve said to warrant this. You’re spinning a lot of yarn from very little thread--or straw--here. I don’t argue that one MUST experience a work of art to object to it. I do think that under normal circumstances, to keep everybody honest, it is best if you do see for yourself rather than taking someone else’s word for it. Of course, that applies most to works that have some serious intent or effect, since no one should try to experience every trivial movie or book that comes out, just to be able to say for certain that the 80% covered by Sturgeon’s Law are no good. It does seem to me that if you’re going to engage in detailed discussion of a work, it’s pointless unless you have personal knowledge of it. You can give reasons why no one should see it, without seeing it, I suppose, but you can’t discuss the thing itself based on hearsay.

I agree with you that moral claims need not be based on actual experience. Clearly, one would have to be an idiot to disagree, since one would then have to break every commandment before being able to advise against breaking them. But I think one should have some sense of proportion about the “moral evil” of art works. I don’t deny the possibility that a particular work could pose an actual moral hazard for a particular person. Anyone who feels that an art work will harm him has every right to decline to see it. Shoot, he’s free to decline seeing it if he thinks it will be boring, or he won’t like it. Art is not compulsory. This only becomes an issue if you’re setting yourself up as some kind of authority. Then, I think, you do have a responsibility to know what you’re talking about.

I also accept the possibility that some art works are bad for everyone, or almost everyone. I can think of some that I feel that way about--and I haven’t seen most of them! But if I were a reviewer, a judge, a critic, or a preacher, I’d feel obligated to see them before preaching against them. Again, that’s not an absolute statement. One can imagine a movie so unutterably evil and devoid of value that no one should see it, ever. I’m sure there’s a lot of porn that is like that, and I’ve never seen it and probably never will, yet I could still be convinced it is evil, from hearsay alone. But one must be cautious in declaring artwork to be evil, especially when it’s being done to score points in some skirmish or other of a cultural war.

Is that because any idea that any idea that can be expressed in a book or movie therefore cannot be condemned? Surely not. Huh? Surely not, indeed. That’s so far from anything that I actually said that I’m not sure how to contradict you effectively!

There's not a conservative critic of the academy who would argue that at least Marx, Nietzsche, Freud and Heidegger (the wellsprings for the major streams of tenured radicals) are central to the Western canon and that a liberal education has to involve exposure to them. I’m not sure what your point is here. Could it be that you meant to write “There’s not a conservative critic of the academy who would NOT argue that . . .”? If so, you are right, of course. I did not mean that conservatives would not study Joyce, Picasso, etc. I meant that they would not recommend and endorse them, and associate themselves with such art as a positive benefit. I think your conservative critics, while certainly studying Marx and Freud, are unlikely to declare them precious cultural treasures.

I assume your list of films is meant to prove that you are capable of recognizing merit in works with which you have ideological issues. I never doubted it. I think, once again, you may have assumed some meaning that I did not intend. Thanks for the fascinating list and comments, however.

This post is excessively long, and I’m sorry for that. As someone I can’t remember at the moment once said, “I didn’t have time to make it shorter.”

Cleveland:

Serious question, and I'll try to keep an open mind:

A Bnet friend recently recommended I read some of Sister Chittester's books. She is a huge fan of hers.

So why do you find her so objectionable?

With -isms proliferating all around, I find one unavoidable fact that I rarely see discussed: people follow without thinking for themselves.

They encounter a "leader" who speaks well, or who spouts generalities that make them feel good, and in exchange people give them their blind loyalty and support no matter what sort of rebuttal appears: certainly they are immune to emotional rhetoric, but they usually are immune to rational rebuttals as well.

Cleveland, in light of our recent head-butting, I am moved to acknowledge that you do think things through. For all that I am a nuisance to you about the details, I do honor you for that.

I knew I shouldn't have asked ... (sigh)

"I knew I shouldn't have asked [about Chittester] ... (sigh)." Larry

But I've got a job to do, too. Where I'm going, you can't follow. What I've got to do, you can't be any part of....I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people [you, me and "Sister"] don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that.

Cleveland:

I had no problem with you attacking Sister Chittester. Frankly, although you gave some, I would have appreciated even more specific examples of your differences with her.

It was the implied mocking of me for even bothering to ask the question. If I'd known about the good (in your case, bad) sister to begin with, I never would have asked you. Right?

Spelling correction: Joan Chittister.

"It was the implied mocking of me for even bothering to ask the question. If I'd known about the good (in your case, bad) sister to begin with, I never would have asked you. Right?" Larry

Wrong. I believe you knew a lot about Chittister before you asked me. I replied (against my better judgement, but with no intent of mocking you, which I did not do) because I hated to miss the opportunity to warn others about the cowardly parasites in the Church; false Catholics like Chittister who make money by eating away at the Church's foundations, and who are too cowardly to show their true colors and leave the Church. I believe you also knew a lot about Robert Drinan at Georgetown.

At least you had the courage to leave the Church, as you informed us in an earlier thread, which won a degree of my admiration, if that's the correct word.

Sig, I don't think so, but it's possible I read one or two of her short stories in my late teens/early twenties. I was in to that for a couple of years; quick, easy stuff like Ring Lardner, because I'm easily bored.

She and a million other things are on my to do list.