Thursday, October 9, 2014

The Dante Trail trail: E Beeros, Christos

Eh...I might have fudged the Latin a bit. Whatever.

This post wraps up Rod's Italian vacation and our studious following of it as well. A quick synopsis:

Rod likes the Benedictine monastery in Norcia, a lot, for a whole host of reasons, but beer seems to be the one shoving itself into the camera frame. Three of the five pics in his last overseas post were either of or about the beer they brew, and his general takeaway was that the beer helped them bring people to the Church, hence the subtitle of our post.

This could also be a revealing element of Rod's teologia dei suini which we've been unpacking here, namely that, for some souls like Rod, everything that goes in their goozlepipe comes to be regarded as a divine sacrament.

Rod would also like us to know, PAULI, PIK, and DIANE

I told the monks a bit of my story, about how I became Orthodox. There was no sense of judgment or hardness toward me for having left the Catholic Church.


So there.

I graded the beer pics as food pics, bringing our final tote to:

Total pics: 43 - 100%

Selfies: 7 - 16% of total

Things Rod Ate: 12 - 24% of total

Hope someone out there had the winning square. I didn't. I had bet on more selfies, but food took the lead in the final straightaway

Our final Dante Trail trail takeaway: given the preview we've seen on the Dante Trail trail, boy, howdy, will Rod be batting out of his league trying to fuse a figure like Dante into his personal spiritual maelstrom.

There's been no hint so far that his engagement with Dante in Italy has been anything beyond travel guide name- and place-dropping, while the overwhelming focus of the content has been Rod's comestible-obsessed feeling tour of the small part of Italy he could afford to visit.

An honest book about Rod for those for whom he's their spiritual guru? That would sell, to those people. A serious, scholastically researched book about Dante? Well, maybe there's still room for another one, even by an amateur.

But a book where Rod in effect only rubs Dante's head for luck while leading us on a pseudo-Dantean journey through his own personal Hell? This is bait for the publishing Erinyes, fer sure. May they be merciful and not take his eyes.

And with this I'll hand it over to our readers. What sort of Dante-based book about saving Rod's life would you or anyone you know be likely to buy?

19 comments:

  1. Keith: " What sort of Dante-based book about saving Rod's life would you or anyone you know be likely to buy?"

    None. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Not now, not ever, would I, nor anybody I know. Not even the cat or the dog would buy one.

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  2. No sense of judgment or hardness? What on earth did he expect? Fire and brimstone? That's not the Catholic Way. But I'll bet dollars to doughnuts those monks are praying for him now. May their prayers bear fruit.

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  3. I wasn't the most studious reader of Dreher's trip reports. But the sense I got, from what I skimmed, is of waning enthusiasm for Dante and waxing enthusiasm for some sort of Benedict Option book (the B.O. looking ever so attractive from the land of pretty churches, yummy food, and old-tyme craft beer).

    So it wouldn't surprise me if the Dante Project went on hold, having now served its purpose of sliding a stag trip to Tuscany past the Mrs.

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    1. The best part of the Dante book trip was the setup to push the Benedict Option in the Dante book or anywhere else. You know, the one that Rod Dreher, inventor of the term "goozlepipe", also invented, the one that's beginning to be discussed in elite forums. The Benedict Option, that is, not goozlepipe. The goozlepipe one is being discussed by young men seeking sailors in Marseilles.

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    2. His Sunday post, " ‘What We Need Are Men Like St. Benedict’ ", certainly seems to confirm your hunch.

      http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/what-we-need-are-men-like-st-benedict/

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  4. On that note: The very fact that he keeps protesting too much shows me that Rod is still haunted by the Catholic Church...far more than he would acknowledge. Too bad his penchant for kicking against the goad so often manifests as anti-Catholic rage and bigotry.

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    1. This -- as you well know, Diane -- has been my belief, and if you want to call it my hobby horse I really can't argue. It's the only way to explain the persistent bashing and commentating on the Catholic Church. In the Church he sees a journalistic object so much more significant and interesting than his denomination will ever be that he simply must cover it. Has anyone in E. Orthodoxy ever written anything like the Divine Comedy? I'm guessing no or we would have heard about it.

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    2. Well, there is a little thing called The Brother Karamazov.

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    3. Anon, I love me my Dostoevsky, but I don;t think Brothers Karamazov can compare with the Divine Comedy. Dostoevsky is comparable to Dickens, IMHO, not Dante. Dante's on a whole different level. As T.S. Eliot once put it, there's Dante, and there's Shakespeare. I would add Homer. Those three. Not sure anyone else comes close. But YMMV. ;)

      BTW, I first read Brothers Karamazov at age 17, when I was sick in bed with the flu. I had a very high fever. Perfect conditions under which to read Dostoevsky -- and that novel in particular. Really!

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    4. In my ignorance, I would think the Orthodox might well regard the Commedia (literary quality aside) as an excellent example of what's wrong with Roman Catholicism. What's with all the fussing over things that are mysteries?

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    5. Tom, your comment provides me with an occasion to ask if the EO believe in a place called purgatory per se. That makes up a third of the book, correct. I think Diane might be able to answer my query.

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  5. Does anyone have the email address for those Monks? I bet if we contacted them we would have a different point of then what Rod said, Jonathan Carpenter

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    1. Jonathan, I wouldn't be much of a Dante Trail trail follower guide if I didn't, now, would I?

      Here ya go:

      http://osbnorcia.org/contact-us

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    2. That's my J-Carp! Goin' for the jugular.

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  6. Thanks Keith! I will ask them about Dreher and see what they say, Jonathan Carpenter

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  7. No, the Eastern Orthodox do not believe in purgatory per se. Rather, they frequently hold that the soul, following death, enters into the presence of God's love, being the "River of Fire". For those ready for this love, this state feels like bliss. For those not ready, torture.

    Then, among Traditionalist circles, there's the whole "Aerial Tollhouses" theology. It's strange. But does involve the soul ascending to heaven by withstanding the temptations offered by various demons.

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    1. Even "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here" seems a bit unOrthodox.

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    2. As in all things, the Orthodox and Catholic teachings are very close. I've heard Catholic theologians describe purgatory as an "anteroom" adjoining Heaven in case you need to get ready. Both teachings acknowledge that some souls (many souls?) need to be purified before experiencing the vision of God blissfully.

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