“Adelgeim grew ever more pessimistic, afraid that faith itself, even God, was becoming superfluous in the church’s quest for advantage in the here and now. He saw that church leaders were demanding ever-less spiritual effort from parishioners, that they had lost the voice of clarity and truth, and instead spoke in terms of rituals and obedience. Orthodoxy became the realm of formal keywords and symbolic gestures. Check this box, the implicit bargain held, and receive a guarantee of salvation and spiritual wholeness. But Adelgeim feared that the church’s true authority, that of Christian love and practice, was running empty—an emptiness masked, at least temporarily, by the church’s ascendance in public life. In an essay on the dangers of Patriarch Kirill’s ‘romance’ with the state’s imperial power, he warned of how ‘when the confession of faith is crowded out by ideology, when sovereigns cross themselves and lavish their imperial church with gifts, the Church becomes rich in wealth but impoverished in spirit. Secular and spiritual power are united by violence.“ — Joshua Yaffa, “Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition, and Compromise in Putin’s Russia”
Entering the presence of Innocent II., before whom a large sum of money was spread out, the Pope observed, “You see, the Church is no longer in that age in which she said, ‘Silver and gold have I none.’”—“True, holy father,” replied Aquinas; “neither can she any longer say to the lame, ‘Rise up and walk.’” Vide Acts iii. 2–8.
(Your excerpt made me want to remember a quote I'd heard with a snappy retort. This is what Googling yielded. Did not know Aquinas was the one making the retort!)
I know that those who hate have good reason to do so. But why should we always have to choose the cheapest and easiest way? It has been brought home forcibly to me here how every atom of hatred added to the world makes it an even more inhospitable place. And I also believe, childishly perhaps but stubbornly, that the earth will become more habitable again only through the love that the Jew Paul described to the citizens of Corinth in the thirteenth chapter of his first letter.
Etty Hillesum, the conclusion to a letter written for the Dutch Resistance in 1943, in "An Interrupted Life"
Thank you for the article. I do wonder if writing this way does lead to losing some of the deeper subtleties of a piece. Have you used said method to write your own poetry?
I've only written two poems ever, and didn't use this method then! I think it depends on what tendencies in your own writing you're trying to correct in editing. I tend to have overstuffed sentences, so paring down and splitting them out tends to be what I need to do.
“Adelgeim grew ever more pessimistic, afraid that faith itself, even God, was becoming superfluous in the church’s quest for advantage in the here and now. He saw that church leaders were demanding ever-less spiritual effort from parishioners, that they had lost the voice of clarity and truth, and instead spoke in terms of rituals and obedience. Orthodoxy became the realm of formal keywords and symbolic gestures. Check this box, the implicit bargain held, and receive a guarantee of salvation and spiritual wholeness. But Adelgeim feared that the church’s true authority, that of Christian love and practice, was running empty—an emptiness masked, at least temporarily, by the church’s ascendance in public life. In an essay on the dangers of Patriarch Kirill’s ‘romance’ with the state’s imperial power, he warned of how ‘when the confession of faith is crowded out by ideology, when sovereigns cross themselves and lavish their imperial church with gifts, the Church becomes rich in wealth but impoverished in spirit. Secular and spiritual power are united by violence.“ — Joshua Yaffa, “Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition, and Compromise in Putin’s Russia”
Entering the presence of Innocent II., before whom a large sum of money was spread out, the Pope observed, “You see, the Church is no longer in that age in which she said, ‘Silver and gold have I none.’”—“True, holy father,” replied Aquinas; “neither can she any longer say to the lame, ‘Rise up and walk.’” Vide Acts iii. 2–8.
(Your excerpt made me want to remember a quote I'd heard with a snappy retort. This is what Googling yielded. Did not know Aquinas was the one making the retort!)
Two ways to make contemptible
the world: the first is not to look;
the second, and more sensible,
to read it like a book,
to learn the grammar and the word,
loving not the less but more,
contemning it as music heard
supersedes the score.
Poem by Dr. John Senior
I know that those who hate have good reason to do so. But why should we always have to choose the cheapest and easiest way? It has been brought home forcibly to me here how every atom of hatred added to the world makes it an even more inhospitable place. And I also believe, childishly perhaps but stubbornly, that the earth will become more habitable again only through the love that the Jew Paul described to the citizens of Corinth in the thirteenth chapter of his first letter.
Etty Hillesum, the conclusion to a letter written for the Dutch Resistance in 1943, in "An Interrupted Life"
Thank you for the article. I do wonder if writing this way does lead to losing some of the deeper subtleties of a piece. Have you used said method to write your own poetry?
I've only written two poems ever, and didn't use this method then! I think it depends on what tendencies in your own writing you're trying to correct in editing. I tend to have overstuffed sentences, so paring down and splitting them out tends to be what I need to do.