The Latest ... and the Wounds of Beauty

Busy these days ... as usual.

Currently working on teaching Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. Recently finished reading Lagerkvist's Barabbas, a very good and thought-provoking read. At one point, Barabbas is listening to some Christians explain the significance of Christ's death when one of them says, "Christ died for us." Barabbas responds to the likes of, "For them? No, Christ died for me. I was freed when he took my place." Not exactly those words, but something to that effect. Well worth the brief time it takes to read this short book. Recalls something of the existential angst many others have written about.

With the Pope visiting the US, there is a lot of good info at American Papist and Benedict in America blogs.

Emily Rielly has published a good interview with David Schindler, a man who knows Pope Benedict XVI well: "Benedict XVI's theological viewpoint: interview."

An interesting read: "A Catholic Wind in the White House." Hmmm.

Lastly, I read somewhere that Pope Benedict's favorite pieces of music are Mozart's Clarinet Concerto and the Clarinet Quintet. I had the Concerto and just got the Quintet. Now I understand why. They are both beautiful, or in the words of then-Cardinal Ratzinger:

The encounter with the beautiful can become the wound of the arrow that strikes the heart and in this way opens our eyes, so that later, from this experience, we take the criteria for judgment and can correctly evaluate the arguments.

Wounded, indeed.