Fencing Bear at Prayer

I spy two pillars , an archangel , a dragon , a cross ,  a warrior , a lion throne , a city , a curse .  I spy a lady , seven seals , a man dressed in white .  I spy a Name picked out in light . Where am I ? 

It should have been a great victory . There he was, holding his own against a ferocious assault by a committed feminist. “So you’re saying,” she would attack . “No, I’m not,” he would calmly respond. “I’m not saying that at all!” Over and over and over again, to the delight of his fans and the horror of her followers. Would this male chauvinist pig never crack?! She tried every move she had against him, and nothing could get through. It was a woman’s worst nightmare, a man she could not ruffle. You can hear it in her voice as the interview proceeds. Her voice gets shriller and shriller, her questions more pointed, her mouth harder, her smile colder. And then a moment comes. She has challenged him about his refusal to use the newly-invented pronouns now mandated for use in Canada by the passage of Bill C16. She attacks: “Why should your right to freedom of speech trump a transperson’s right not to be offended?” He parries: “Because in order to be able to think you ...

It is a trying time to be a Christian these days, even in America. Stand up for your culture—and if you happen to be white—you are going to be called racist. Stand up for your tradition—and whether you are a woman or a man—you are going to be called sexist. Stand up for your faith—this holds for Jews, too—and you are going to be called phobic. Stand up for your civilization, and you are going to be called names. Here are a few of the names that certain of my colleagues in academia have called me   and my writing over the past two years : racist, white supremacist , Nazi sympathizer , ill-informed , disrespectful , racially-inflammatory ,   bully, snarky, asshole, vile . Thus far, the name-calling has happened only at a distance, not in person, typically in venues (e.g. Twitter or Facebook) where I cannot hear or see it, whether because I am not tagged in the posts or because I am blocked from seeing certain accounts. But my colleagues know that I know that t...

Some things are hard not to take personally these days. About a week ago, the Medieval Academy announced that its Officers were setting up a committee specifically to establish policies about how those of us attending the Annual Meetings of the organization are expected to behave. According to the notice posted on the Medieval Academy Blog , the institution of such policies is long overdue: It has long come to the attention of members of the Medieval Academy of America that policies need to be established and formally registered concerning behavioral expectations for MAA Annual Meetings. The MAA encourages open discourse among colleagues of all disciplines and career stages, and does so anticipating healthy differences of opinion over a wide variety of scholarly issues. The openness of our discourse means that everyone, each individual person, needs to feel safe while engaged in the collaborative work of our annual meeting. Protection must be afforded for all members from negative...

My comments for a conversation with Fr. Peter Funk, OSB, Prior of the Monastery of the Holy Cross, sponsored by the  Lumen Christi Institute Abstract : Many traditional Christian beliefs and teachings about spiritual realities have become unpalatable to modern sensibilities. Accounts of angelic visitations, demonic possessions, the stain of original sin, and the threat of eternal torment are today considered untrue or irrelevant by non-believers and even many Christians. Why were such “myths” so central to Christian belief and practice for so many centuries? Is there any value in understanding why ancient, medieval, and contemporary Christians believe in such things? Or does Christianity need to be demythologized in order to survive in a post-enlightenment age? In this conversation, Rachel Fulton Brown and Fr. Peter Funk, OSB, will consider the history of these “myths” and their relevance for contemporary spiritual practices. ***** How many of you believe in angels...

Quick, think of a joke, a really funny joke! I know, it’s hard, isn’t it? Like, really, really hard. Almost as if it is wrong  to make jokes, even mild ones, never mind the kinds of jokes that Milo likes to make. I’m sure you’ve heard about Milo’s jokes . Everyone has . Particularly how unfunny they are , according to some . Here are some of the jokes that Simon & Schuster’s copy-editor Mitchell Ivers found particularly unfunny in the first draft of Milo’s Dangerous  (Ivers’s comments in italics): I can practically hear science fiction authors currently suffering an incursion of social justice feverishly writing stories about traveling through time to bump off [cultural Marxist] Antonio [Gramsci] before he wrote anything influential. — Unclear, unfunny, delete. Did you notice, by the way, that these stroppy [ whiny ]   celebs uniformly threatened to move to [ overwhelmingly ] white countries? ... If it wasn’t Canada, it was New Zealand, Australia or ...