Today I got across a really good, witty, realistic scientific article on didactics of higher education. The best, in fact, I have read so far during my involvement with that topic. And where was one of the two authors lecturing: at Oxford, where else. E.S., after all.

There was that newspaper thing inviting people to write in on the subject of “What’s Wrong with the World”, to which  Chesterton the Great wrote saying “Dear Sir, I am.”

For the Lord says “my name is blasphemed among all the peoples” and again “woe to him by reason of whom my name is blasphemed”.  Why is it blasphemed? Because we do not do what we say. Hearing from us the word of God, so good and so great, people are full of admiration. Then, seeing that our actions are not worthy of the words we speak, they turn to blasphemy saying that this word is some fable and an error.

For when they hear from us that God says “You have no gratia, [credit, says RSV; DR has thanks]  if you love those who love you; butyou have gratia, if you love your enemies and those who hate you”, they admire [its/the] sublime goodness. When however they see that we don’t only not love those who hate us, but not even those who love us, they laugh at us and blaspheme the Name.

A sermon of a second-century author, trans. bat Ionah b/c St Josaphat trumped Friday of the 32nd week of Ordinary Time this year, and so the English is not on Universalis.

Today* is the feast of St Margaret, who wanted to be a nun but the rest of her refugee family, washed up with her in Edinburgh, explained to her that really it would significantly improve their security and future prospects and so on and so forth if she didn’t turn down the love-struck Malcolm III, seeing as he was the king. So Margaret married Malcolm, had eight children, and did many other things, as recounted by among others her fishy confessor.

Random Fact! Malcolm laid the foundation stone of Durham Cathedral (since he had some raiding and looting to do in the vicinity anyway).

The picture is from St Margaret’s Church in Dunfermline, a print by Polo-Scot Jurek Putter.** The same image is used in one of six small panels making up a small part of another, epic, print of St Margaret by the same artist, a copy of which Aelianus obtained through a quite amazing chain of providential events and gave to me some years ago. Unfortunately I don’t have a picture of it, but it is seated on the sofa across from me.

*Yes, o sad mad trads! Today! On account of my tie with a Scottish diocese, and the Scottish dioceses have always, afaik, had St Margaret today. She was in the summer only in the universal calendar. (I could be wrong, I am going by my crumbling 1950s missal.)

** More weird coincidences. Here is a documentary (in verrrrry Scots accent) about Putter’s work – apparently his dad was from Lwów/L’viv/Lvov. Now, that does not make him Ukrainian, and indeed he was not. Still, Lvov is Where the Ukrainians Are, and last year I came across someone claiming that St Margaret had Ukrainian ancestry. So there you go.

A sister who was for some time responsible for receiving guests in Tre Fontane [the house of the Little Sisters of Jesus in Rome], was on one occasion reprimanded for not receiving everyone equally warmly. “Little Sister Magdalena told me that I should examine my conscience, and when I did so, I realised that there were two people whom I could not receive warmly. They were conceited and important, accustomed to every door opening before them. I explained this to Litle Sister Magdalena. She understood my reaction, but said ‘ Of course, we receive the poor above all, but we may ot forget that there are people who are poor in other ways.’”

Katherine Spink, The Call of the Desert. A Biography of Little Sister Magdaleine of Jesus. (my translation from the Polish edition.)

I think I’m rediscovering my inner muso. Here’s a blog by An Concert Pianist, which I found through the blog of A Former Opera Singer. I creased up on reading this:

10:12. Spectacularly beautiful rendering of Schubert A major Rondo. I go backstage and wander about. It is a zoo, a cocktail of craziness and schmooziness. I tell Andras Schiff how much I enjoyed his Bach, and he says … get this … “I enjoyed your Sarah Palin blog.”

There was a magnificent Hungarian emphasis on the word blog, and his eyes widened a bit, as if he were surprised to find himself saying that word. I consider this to be the existential climax of the whole, strange evening, I’m speechless, I have no idea how to react to the idea that Andras Schiff read the Sarah Palin blog, and my life may never be the same. Is there a world where Andras Schiff says the word “blog”? There is, and we’re living in it.

There’s also a very funny spoof here.

[edited to add: Schiff belongs  (i.e. I went to some of his concerts) to a past life of mine, W. B. B. (Well Before Blogs)- which is why I identified so much with the sentiment of this post's title ]

Has anyone any suggestions for how “So likewise every one of you that doth not renounce all that he possesseth cannot be my disciple” is an explanation of the making-sure-one-has-enough-to-build-a-tower or practical-approaches-to-war parables in the preceding verses? I’ve been chewing on this vaguely since yesterday, and some of the patristic interpretations in the Catena Aurea arenae bad (sez she graciously), but I’m looking for the killer explanation that makes it all obvious and makes me holy just from knowing it

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One priest of my acquaintance had hilarious stories of the passes made at him by women – I am not sure if his witty brush-offs really happened, or were just what he wishes he’d thought of at the time and he’d in fact just looked mildly horrified and legged it. Less amusingly, I know one  priest who was convicted of sexual assualt on the grounds of the testimony of one woman with wobbly mental health, known to lie and to have a strong motive to lie in this matter, in a trial held in secret where no defence witnesses were called, though the defence lawyer had letter and phonecalls and visits from people with strong evidence to entirely discredit the accusation. I know another priest suspended by his bishop from ministry on the  strength of one accusation. The accuser refused to go to court, and the bishop refused the priest the canonical trial he asked for to clear his name: the chap could do nothing, except “sit in his hut and fish”, as a priest friend put it.

The sad thing is that the news reports say “Priest accused of x”, the reader carries away  “priest did x”, and “priest entirely exonerated, accuser lied” never entirely takes away the impression Madame Evangelista described.  Of course, news reports deal like this with everyone, and the lives of teachers and others are also ruined by false accusations of abuse. But for some reason, people don’t think “teacher=perv”. Or indeed, “LGBT Youth Worker = Paedophile“.

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… for a class teaching non-English-speakers (that is, not native speakers) to read English philosophy texts, would you choose a translation from German?

Ugh.

(Dear Notburga, I am not ugghing at the Teutsch, but at the fact of giving people a text that is obviously a translation, and not natural English. )

(Moreover, if you send the text to your assistant late on a Sunday night, how do you expect to have prepare what she was supposed to prepare, get it back to you to check, and the whole thing emailed out to the class for them to print in time for a Tuesday class?)

I think he joined the Dominicans as an act of rebellion – the comments from fond aunties and so on must have gotten very tedious. I recall the impact made by the single sentence “There is no excuse for being lazy” in one of his weekday sermonettes. It was sharper than a two-edged sword etc, because behind it was Pater Rupert. An engineer by profession, if I recall correctly, he had to be sent on holiday on doctor’s orders (the Dominicans have not drawn conclusions from the unfortunate effects of overwork on a neurotic German Augustinian in the early modern period) . You have never seen anyone so disciplined and working so hard, and in being so, so focussed on the things of God. This is a Real Dominican – speak to God or of God, and that only when you’re not studying.  I fell in love with metaphysics in Pater Rupert’s class on the virtue of faith.  As I wrote to someone, it was two sessions a week of peering into the abyss of non-being. (Poor Pater Rupert felt that he was peering into the abyss of student igronance and sloth.) And if I’d taken his gentle advice about a decision I was making, that would have been a very good thing to have done.

Picture taken without permission from here.