The Christian Vanguard

Roger Scruton has this illustration about beauty which I think I may have a version of for a few years. Scruton says that a woman tells you she's wants that  peach from the peach bowl. So you hand her a random peach, and she refuses it. No, she tells you. If her desire was to eat it then sure, any peach would have sufficed. But she does not desire the peach to eat, but for its beauty. She does not wish to observe it and when she gets all the relevant data she tosses it to the side as any other peach. She just wants it.  That is the only peach that will satisfy. To not recognize that is not grasp the power and effects of beauty. I think I was taught the same lesson many years ago.  I was in a car with a mentor of mine. I was still in high school, and dating this girl. My mentor, he tells me, "Adrian, if you don't think you have the most beautiful girl in the world, it's not going to work out." I thought he was being impossible. Of course I could never thin...

I recently had a discussion with some Mormons, which got me really excited. So I looked for an old transcript of a video I had, and decided to put it up. It's dated December 25th, 2010.

What does it mean to objectify women? Ever since that ridiculous video of a gorgeous woman walking down the streets of New York, this has been a more pressing question, in my mind at least. The tone delivered with the phrase, "objectification of women" is usually negative, with a prescription to not do so usually following. So, what is this thing I'm not supposed to do?

Some people will often say, "Hate the sin, not the sinner." But why? Why can't I hate the sinner as well? 

C. S. Lewis describes a fascinating scene at the end of my favorite of his works, The Great Divorce. He describes seeing in heaven a beautiful and glorious woman. The protagonist asks his guide, an angel, who she was, thinking it may be Mary. The angel says she was a married woman who earned this glory by being a mother to children she met and a kind of lover to men she met. To qualify this last statement, the angel says that when she met men, the virtuosity that radiated in her character spurred these men to be better husbands for their wives. This always bugged me. I always thought there was a kind of impropriety to it. But, I've changed my mind. 

A few months ago, I went on a date with a woman. We met on Facebook, through common Catholic circles, and she was incredibly smart and pretty, so, we met up. Nothing really happened, but I learned from her that she was about 12 years older than I was. That surprised me, because she didn't look it. I thought she was my age, probably older, but not by much, a year or two maybe. So, I'm a bit disappointed that it didn't work out, and sometimes I wonder what would have happened if it did (it was mutually understood that it wasn't going to happen, so I wasn't like rejected or anything). Particularly, I wondered if age would be a factor. 

Sola Scriptura is a first world problem. Sure, it's nice if you have access to books, which many places cannot afford, and sure, it's nice if you know how to read, which 775 million people don't. If you need a bible to be saved, all the poor and illiterate people go to Hell I guess. Hooray Protestantism? The church, on the other hand, has oral tradition. Poor and illiterate people welcome.