SecretAgentMan's Dossier

Explanatory Note / Hopeful Preview of Coming Attractions

Going to a conference on John Courtney Murray this weekend, then Memorial Day, then catching up on work missed to go to the John Courtney Murray conference this weekend. Ergo, blogging will be light to nonexistent for a time.

I'll return with (a) some random thoughts about JCM and (b) some commentary on a pellucid-to-modernity editorial in the Portland Register / Guard. (Thanks to Sheryl for the heads up!).

Presently in the half-finished bin: (1) Essay on the death penalty, with particular reference to Antonin Scalia, the John Kerry of the Right, (2) Essay on denying communion to politicians who publicly dissent from Church teaching, (3) "Orestes Brownson and Homosexual Bishops" (yes, been writing and rewriting that one, it got positively obese, so it's been on an editorial diet for awhile), (4) some thoughts on Bishop Gumbleton's desire to ordain a woman to the priesthood, and (5) a sort of rambling monologue on the Immaculate Conception (don't worry, Fr. Stanley, it won't end up that way).

Presently in the 1/4 finished bin -- discussion of Tim Enloe's essay, "The Rise and Fall of Conciliarism with Excurses into More Issues than You Can Shake a Stick At." Also 1/4 finished is the massive (and massively-irrelevant) reply to Shawn McElhinney on the Great Kneeling Debate (which is, actually, my doing an impression of a one-man band on the subject no one else is much interested in).

Summertime ambitions are: (1) Finish the above, while doing a bit 'o fisking on whatever comes up, (2) taking Dave Armstrong up on his Impertinent Attempt to Impugn the Righteous Cause of the Confederacy, and (3) finishing the movie reviews I was writing awhile back (one or two I had to see again, and again, and again).

And now, because it's May, it's May, the lusty month of May (sorry, that was a "favorite musical" flashback) here's a list of books I really liked, for you to read in the park or (my favorite venue) a quiet and dignified bar where they will let you sit in the corner during the slow hours of the day and sip bad coffee or sherry so long as you leave when the paying customers show up and leave a generous tip. (My list is in no particular order):

1. James Clavell, King Rat.
2. Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove.
3. S.M. Stirling, The Peshawar Lancers
4. Walter Miller, A Canticle for Liebowitz
5. O'Brien, Strangers and Sojourners
6. Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential
7. Pete Early, The Hot House
8. Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
9. Sartori, Theory of Democracy Revisited, Vol. II
10. Garret Mattingly, The Armada
11. Robert Graves, I, Claudius
12. Ralph Peters, Red Army
13. Any encyclical by Leo XIII.
14. Pius XII, Mystici Corporis
15. Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz
16. Delderfield, To Serve Them All My Days