James Matthew Wilson
@JMWSPT
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TFPPMA. Director of the MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Saint Thomas
Joined July 2015
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Learn more about the poetry of James Matthew Wilson in this short film.
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This little beauty just arrived. After fourteen (?) years of waiting, finally in print.
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Oldest daughter's Pre-Raphaelite in sidewalk chalk . . . with rain in the forecast late tonight.
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I've noticed journalists can't refer to Hillsdale without calling it a "conservative college." But nearly every other institution is overrun with cultural Marxism. Why don't authors feel obliged to say, "the Maoist U-M", "the Gramscian Harvard," the "Trotskyite OSU"?
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My friends, whatever your political disposition, I beg you to consider the possibility that learning to think about universal truths beyond the laws of matter is an occupation worthy of your time.
Schools in the UNC system will no longer award distinguished professorships to faculty in the humanities.
The UNC Board of Governors says the honors "will now only be given in STEM-related (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields."
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My students surprised me with a wonderful whiskey decanter with a quotation from Flannery O'Connor -- a rule of thumb for every aspect of writing, from metrical variations to the use of figurative language. I've probably repeated it in class once a month, lo, these three years.
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@sfmcguire79
I love the 300 word limit. Translation: don't go on too long! We just need to know the basics so that we can discriminate in your favor!
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I don't know when I'll actually get to read this whole review, but I've seen the first page and the title really throws down.
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After about twenty years of thinking about it, I've finally said my piece and can hold the book itself in my hand.
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Pro tip: rather than having your kids open a bunch of gifts on the Feast of the Nativity, open one or two each feast day during the season: (Eve, Day, Holy Family, Mary the Mother of God, Epiphany, Baptism of the Lord). That way they experience the season *as* a season.
Dear modern world,
Christmas isn’t over. It just started. Please stop celebrating it in November and then forgetting on December 26th. We still have 9 days to go. Keep those trees and lights up!
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@proftinkerbell
@davidgura
I disapprove of the move here, but do you realize that your tweet actually demonstrates why said move has been done? If you reduce the humanities to a partisan boomer concern, you do a disservice to the humanities.
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I was surprised that the good news had not spread already to the farthest reaches of the universe, and so I will do my part.
The MFA in creative writing at
@stthomashouston
has hired
@MrsKatyCarl
and Ryan Wilson to its faculty. There is no better place to learn the craft.
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I don't know what "Christian nationalism" is and neither do the reporters and pretend authorities currently hawking the term, but I do know that every person has a natural law obligation to the love of God and the love of country, and that is a good thing.
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I only just learned that my lectures from last spring on T.S. Eliot's "Four Quartets" are all available online.
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I am speechless. This is a powerful account of what I am trying to do.
"As an art form, poetry stands isolated like an unfamiliar relative at the family reunion. We do not know who invited him, or how he even knew about the party, yet here he stands..."
~Joshua S. Fullman, reviews a new book of poems by James Matthew Wilson
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This is a really terrific book. The commentary will make it invaluable and the selections show poetry *as* theology in a way most western readers will never have seen before.
Oh my goodness! The prepublication copies are going out!! I cannot wait to get my hands on it. It is so beautiful.
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Drove south a couple hundred miles, trespassed through some farm fields, fought of spiders, hopped over some streams off Wildcat Creek, and found my oldest Hoosier ancestors buried in the woods. G-G-G-G-Grandpa John Dehner, born 1778, and his wife Marie.
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One of the best observations I've ever heard was from a theologian who left the academy to edit and write: academia merely teaches you how not to be wrong; as a writer, you risk being wrong in order to say something substantive.
It's obvious when a writer's greatest fear is to come off as stupid. This is the hang up of the overly credentialed. If a writer is boring it's often because he's restrained and scared of not being the smartest person in the room.
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@FeserEdward
Scruton was a great man filled with lively insights, serious moral observations, and a wide-ranging intellect. But he was also a Kantian through-and-through and that tends to blind a chap to actual wisdom.
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A box showed up on the porch yesterday, but I ignored it until about five minutes ago. Oops. Per usual, I will be offering a few signed copies for sale.
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I have lectured at Yale and Princeton among other places. Lot's of great students there. I have, however, never encountered as engaged and challenging an audience as a pack of Hillsdale students. The concentration of well-formed minds is absolutely distinctive.
@JMWSPT
Worst part is these same journalists, even professors, obviously know none of the exceptional students, graduates, or professors at Hillsdale. I say as a Yale grad Hillsdale students are more impressive than most of Ivy students I’ve encountered.
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Depending on how loosely you use the word "book," this is the fourth JMW book this year. Here is my first foray into taking the measure of T.S. Eliot, one of the great poets and most formidable men of letters of the last century, one who recalled us all to the supernatural.
"Either everything in man can be traced as a development from below, or something must come from above."
—T. S. Eliot
Pick up
@JMWSPT
's latest Wiseblood Book,
T.S. Eliot: Culture & Anarchy,
for only $5.00:
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Lost me at "cis man." A civilization that invents new categories and concepts, all in a ham-handed jargon, out of thin air and a deformed will is no civilization at all.
There is no reason for a cis man to bloviate about perineal lacerations and how easy they are to treat. Shut it, Jim. I’ve seen shit that would bring you to your knees and we are just supposed to go about our lives.
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In 1998, visiting my widowed grandmother, I wrote a sonnet. It was one of the first poems I ever composed. For two and a half decades, I've revised it here and there, but never really thought of publishing it. I just received word that it will be published in a good magazine.
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Things to try not to do:
a) quote Bertrand Russell as an authority
b) Mock Aristotle when Aristotle is in fact correct.
c) Forget that Aristotle begot nearly every intellectual field and that likely includes comparative anatomy and the use of dissection for research purposes.
It's not only that the knowledge base of old thinkers was lacking. Methods of acquiring information have improved, which we take for granted. Bertrand Russell quipped that Aristotle thought men had more teeth than women,but it never occurred to him to count Mrs Aristotle's teeth
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Check List Complete:
Went to school at St. Thomas ✅
Send kids to parish school at St. Thomas✅
Parishioner at St. Thomas✅
Name a son after St. Thomas ✅
Teach at
@stthomashouston
✅
Study the work of St. Thomas✅
Publish book of poems about St. Thomas ✅
With great joy and hope for your interest, I am pleased to announce that Saint Thomas and the Forbidden Birds is now available for pre-order from
@WordOnFire
Books.
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With great joy and hope for your interest, I am pleased to announce that Saint Thomas and the Forbidden Birds is now available for pre-order from
@WordOnFire
Books.
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I am used to bad philosophers toying around with the despicable paradigm of pregnancy as a "disease," but when medical doctors get in on the action, you know our culture is not just rotting but long dead and hollowed out.
I have a piece under edit where the editors rn are fussing over whether my word choice should be “all together” or “altogether” yet the editors of this piece let these writers call a member of Homo sapiens a “pathogen” like nbd
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The average length of my most recent two books is 246.5 pages. 485 for one, 8 for the other.
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I expect this to be one of the more controversial articles published in
@firstthingsmag
history.
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The first draft of my next book of poems is complete. "Saint Thomas and the Forbidden Birds" will begin looking for a publisher sometime later this spring.
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I'm just going to state the obvious here:
1) the actual document says no such thing may be done.
2) clearly it nonetheless will be used as an excuse to do so.
3) Pope Francis is no victim in this misinterpretation of magisterial words, but clearly supports the abuse.
New: My take on the historic Vatican declaration on same-sex blessings. "As a priest I look forward to blessing same-sex couples, sharing with them the graces that God desires for everyone, something I’ve waited years to do."
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Someone told me that people really were unaware of the corruption of the contemporary academy until recently. That's crazy. Utilitarianism for the masses and cultural Marxism for the "gifted" dopes and future Maoists has been the menu for 40 years or more.
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The MFA program in creative writing at
@stthomashouston
is pleased to announce the search for two new faculty to join our fast-growing, life-changing work.
#jobs
#TX
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As a rule, people who use the phrase "my truth" are to be dismissed out of hand, and yet somehow this one managed to get herself settled in the corridors of power of a once august institution.
NEW:
@Harvard
President Claudine Gay apologizes for her remarks in Congress:
“I am sorry…words matter.”
“I got caught up in what had become at that point, an extended, combative exchange about policies and procedures…I failed to convey what is my truth.”
“It makes me sad.”
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It is publication day! The advance praise has been encouraging, the response on radio and podcasts has already been great, and reviews are forthcoming in major magazines. But today you can get your own copy 20% off.
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I've been saying he was the greatest living philosopher for years. Glad to hear somebody's finally catching on!
Friends, D.C. Schindler is a Professor of Metaphysics and Anthropology at the John Paul II Institute in Washington and, I’d argue, one of the sharpest Catholic philosophers on the scene today. In this clip from our upcoming conversation, Professor Schindler and I discuss the
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Here we are, my friends, the most complex poem I've ever written.
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All the porn ladies love my commentary on Catholic doctrine. Thank you, Porn Ladies! Perhaps a few of you would like a spontaneous blessing by a parish priest!
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This two-page spread for my poem and prayer in the new issue of Joie de Vivre is so wonderful (despite the dropped word, which I've added in by hand here).
Thanks to
@BenedictXVIInst
and the editors of this beautifully designed new magazine.
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John Finlay is one of those half-forgotten American poets, a Catholic convert and disciple of Yvor Winters, who is due for a revival. In the next months, I'll publish three essays on his work and will publish a book on in in late 2024. Here's the first.
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This is amazing news, for
@stthomashouston
, for the Johns Hopkins Writings Seminars, and for all of us.
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I'm wondering about the sanity of someone who soils his diaper over someone speaking perennial truths. Perennial truths (for the Harry Sissons in the room) are those that remain true across time and don't change just because perverts are in power.
Holy crap. A Trump advocate just went on a homophobic rant at CPAC claiming that marriage is the “union of a man and a woman.” This is who the MAGA Republican Party is. They are openly advocating for discriminating against the LGBTQ+ community. Insane.
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Von Balthasar writes that those who dismiss beauty as a "bourgeois" ornament lose the capacity to pray and to love, to delight in truth and to recognize the self-evidence of the good. The modern academy's version of truth and goodness are the detritus after beauty's abandonment.
The gravest threat to academia is the transformation of universities into luxury resorts staffed by part-time professors and an expanding fleet of overpaid, rapacious senior bureaucrats. The second gravest threat is people like this, who think our job is political cheerleading.
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"Saint Thomas and the Forbidden Birds" officially launches April 29th. You can order simply by clicking on this link.
Blessed are the merciful who retweet and help my fourth full-length collection bring rhyme, meter, and the sacred back into poetry.
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The intellectual life is among the greatest of blessings; it is an anticipation of heaven and indeed a way of drawing the universal and eternal down into the soul and into the world. And yet most academics squander their inheritance "queering" Jane Austen or, ahem, plagiarizing.
After two decades of witnessing from the inside the vacuity, craven bankruptcy, and superficiality (under the guise of political insight) of the academy, I have some hope that the rest of our degraded culture is at last waking up and saying "stop."
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The silence, the emptied air, of Holy Saturday has always been one of those sensations I've tried to capture in verse. Here is the moment of burial on Good Friday that gradually into the empty idleness of this day.
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A triumphant return from the MFA Residency at
@stthomashouston
celebrated with this special gift from my students. Thanks all (and especially the high standards of
@timothy_kleiser
)!
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For the Feast of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, this short excerpt from "Some Will Remember You," my poem in her honor, which appears in "The Hanging God."
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In Michigan, when we speak of the transition from fall to winter, this is what we mean. It's spatial not temporal.
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Demographic winter, the decline in religious practice, and the clear loathing of the left has for the Christian culture of the West . . . these are not enemies at the gates but symptoms of the despair at the heart of an entire civilization.
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I always love publishing poems in
@WordOnFire
's magazine Evangelization and Culture, because the designers create wonderful artwork to accompany the verse. This time, they've really outdone themselves with my retelling of the first creation story.
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I'm delighted to share that Sarah Spivey, an MFA candidate at
@stthomashouston
has won the distinguished Frost Farm poetry prize, for her poem, "The Dispossession." You can read it here:
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For those that want to hear my lectures on Four Quartets and get *all* their questions answered.
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Says the guy with a pride flag in his bio.
The problem is not that J.D. Vance is a Catholic convert, and it’s lazy and hurtful to other converts to attack him for that. The problem is that his catechesis seems to have omitted Catholic Social Teaching.
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I just noticed this book portrait which is especially well done. Tweet, tweet.
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I don't know what led the KISS guitarist to say something reasonable in public, but more of this please.
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Christians: you don't have to like Pope Francis or find his 60 Minutes interview interesting, but heed the following.
While the word "fundamentally" may have a certain ambiguity, Christian scripture and thought affirms the priority of goodness to evil and to deny this is heresy.
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Our first concern should not be that mockery is unequally distributed (as if that even mattered), but that evil and degradation are being treated as virtue, and the vile celebrated.
If drag queens dressed like imams or rabbis this would be totally unacceptable, but mock Catholics no problem.
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Today is the feast of St. Junipero Serra, for whom I wrote this poem.
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This evening began two nights of MFA thesis readings and celebration of our graduates: our first ever graduating class from the MFA at
@stthomashouston
. Incredible work and incredible people.
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This is pretty fascinating. Welcome home, Rob Schneider. Deo Gratias.
I want thank ALL of the lovely people for their kind birthday wishes for me today on my 60th birthday.
I am the luckiest man in the world.
I have a wonderful partner in life, my beautiful wife Patricia and three lovely daughters; Elle, Miranda and Madeline.
Today, I am reminded
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In exchanges with Steven P. Millies on this site, I was consistently impatient with his "arguments," because there were not arguments but vapid excuses for Catholic politicians to act as hypocrites. Even then, I did not suspect him of this level of stupid
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For those who have just seen the remarkable cover photo, you can now read the thing itself. 1/2
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Evidently
@MassimoFaggioli
has Facebook censoring criticism of his work. I linked to
@LarryChappGS22
's essay on Faggioli and Facebook removed it. Congratulations to Massimo on having friends in high places. Next time he calls someone a fascist, I'll bear that in mind.
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Because I greatly respect the work the Pillar has done these last few years, I want to revel in this endorsement of our work in the MFA in creative writing at
@stthomashouston
@JMWSPT
@stthomashouston
@MrsKatyCarl
If I did not have a job, and if I had the money, I would apply to this program.
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Apropos nothing, I found myself marveling again this morning at what a lovely job the designers at
@WordOnFire
did in illustrating this poem. They so perfectly captured its subject.
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My biggest fan finally found me on Twitter, or whatever this thing is called.
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Yesterday, I posted a poem from
@WordOnFire
's new issue of Evangelization and Culture just to show what a fantastic job they do with drawing art and poetry together. Here's another example from the same issue, this time, one of a few poems I wrote on the summer of wildfire smoke
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@BurlHorniachek
Not interested in the broader controversy here, but I wish those who do not like The Last Battle would declare themselves now so that I may shun them.
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After two decades of witnessing from the inside the vacuity, craven bankruptcy, and superficiality (under the guise of political insight) of the academy, I have some hope that the rest of our degraded culture is at last waking up and saying "stop."
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Little known literary fact:
Every time you call your little, fragmentary bit of prose a sonnet, someone who writes actual sonnets gets his wings hacked off with a machete.
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Just in case anyone missed this poem in which I take such delight.
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STA specifically says the opposite. The saved rejoice in God's justice but not in the punishment as such.
It's misleading even to say STA had thoughts on the subject since he didn't write the final questions of the third part of the Summa Theologia.
St. Thomas Aquinas thought the screams and torments of the damned would be a source of joy for those saved in Heaven.
Let that sink in.
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One by one, the literary world is learning that the *only* good account of the historical practice of English verse is that found in Timothy Steele's "All the Fun's in How You Say a Thing." It is the definitive book.
@BethanyJarmul
@8Dawntreader8
And if you don't want to read a lengthy essay, here's (in my opinion) the core insight.
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Last week both large foundations and private individuals have contacted me to support graduate fellowships for MFA students at
@stthomashouston
. It is beautiful to see such generosity in support of a new generation of writers.
If you'd like to aid our cause, please write me!
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Every Catholic should read this, which among other things will help you properly to adjust the infused virtue of hope to its true object.
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I'm pretty thrilled to see this first full-length collection from a poet many of us have watched developing over the last decade.
Unveiling the book cover for
@DanRattelle
's
debut collection of poems:
PAINTING OVER THE GROWTH CHART (5/28/24)
(*photo by Joakim Nådell & designed by Amanda Brown
@SpencerKMBrown
)
Read more & pre-order along w/ Memory's Abacus by
@annalewis7_
HERE:
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First review of my new book and it is decidedly not negative.
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I held a seminar at the
@KirkCenter
today, a guided tour through Joyce, Eliot, and Pound.
Wonderful! There was a special satisfaction, however, in saying, "I have to head home early, as the roads are snowy and I don't want to be late for the parish euchre tournament."
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I don't know where to begin here, and so will post without comment.
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I'm going to be laughing about this one all day, and then I'll go back to being merely dumbfounded that so much of our civilization has been captured and depredated by morons.
properly used, “indigenous” doesn’t mean “had an ethnogenesis somewhere” it means “was colonised, or is under threat of colonisation”. indigeneity isn’t something that exists in a vacuum independent of colonialism, the french aren’t indigenous to france
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It's fine if writing poetry is "a means of survival" for you, but that's no reason for publishing it.
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Probably the most misleading headline of the year.
I admire that Rolling Stone is more concerned about a father monitoring his son's online activities than it is about the constant surveillance of all Americans by big business and the State. That'll show them Republicans!
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson admitted that he and his son monitored each other’s porn intake in a resurfaced clip from 2022
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Today is the Feast of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton. Here is the ballad I wrote for her as part of The River of the Immaculate Conception. It contains metered versions of her own journals and retells her story in Jane Austen fashion.
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I wish someone had been there the morning Faggioli looked in the mirror and said, "Yes, Sir, I will squander my life repackaging culture war talking points with the tissue paper of scholarly seriousness," to ask if he might pick some more honest sort of work such as prostitution.
Professor Faggioli says Bishop Barron, Word on Fire and the Sacra Doctrina Project represent Trumpism. From the perspective of the Villanova Theology Department, that’s not as crazy as it sounds. If the only purpose of the Church is to serve secular liberalism, every faithful
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