from the Archives: Famished Craving - Part 28

With this post a new session (the 5th tape) from the 1995 Famished Craving series begins. Over the next three posts Gil is offering a preamble to an exploration of a then current (January 1995) New York Times article that he believed was a particularly graphic example of what he was attempting to expose in his exploration of 'fame'. He also provides a summary review of the modern crisis as seen through the lens of Rene Girard as a foundation for the analysis of the N Y Times article.

from the Archives: Famished Craving - Part 27

Gil Bailie on Biblical personhood:

...I would say that the hypostatic subjectivity comes by its ontological density honestly….it is received as a gift (cf St. Paul re justification) a synonym for dignity...

The following book is referenced in this excerpt:

from the Archives: Famished Craving - Part 26

The existential experience of being on the "cutting edge"....

Lurking behind every chance to be made whole by fame is the ax man of further dismembering

Leo Braudy, The Frenzy of Renown

from the Archives: Famished Craving - Part 25

from the Archives: Famished Craving - Part 24

mentioned in the preceding excerpt:

from the Archives: Famished Craving - Part 23

from the Archives: Famished Craving - Part 22

From the 18th century until now there has been a close relationship between the desire for fame and the uncertainty about personal identity - Leo Braudy

from the Archives: Famished Craving - Part 21

The contract of audience and fame seeker continued....

from the Archives: Famished Craving - Part 20

“The ignorance of what fame means and what it can bring may itself be a hallmark of our modern age.....Only with the modern frenzy of renown have so many appeared with so little or no comprehension of the contract of eyes and attention by which the audience and the fame seeker balance their desires.”

Leo Braudy - The Frenzy of Renown

from the Archives: Famished Craving - Part 19

The modern world's experience of desacralization - getting rid of vestiges of the old sacred system without providing a renewed religious foundation for its culture, underlie the modern crisis.

from the Archives: Famished Craving - Part 18

Thank you for your patience - we have resolved the technical problems with our streaming video player and will now resume the excerpts from the Famished Craving series...

In this part Gil is discussing the task of Christianity in bringing about a form of desacralization that is thoroughly religious in nature...

Funding the Silent Holocaust

This from the Susan B. Anthony List:

Abortion giant Planned Parenthood just released its 2008-2009 annual report, and the stats are startling and saddening. Planned Parenthood received $363 million in government grants and contracts -- our tax dollars -- from 2008 to 2009 alone. During this same time period, Planned Parenthood destroyed the lives of 324,008 unborn babies and wounded that many mothers. While aborting 324,008 babies, Planned Parenthood made just 9,433 adoption referrals.

Merry Christmas

Pope Benedict XVI speaks of the meaning of Christmas. We receive his words with gratitude and share them with our friends in the same spirit in which Benedict spoke them.

After all, we still stand in wonder.

Thanks to my friend Fr. Michael Sweeney, OP, president of Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology:

"The Child laid in a lowly manger: this is God's sign. The centuries and the millennia pass, but the sign remains, and it remains valid for us too - the men and women of the third millennium. It is a sign of hope for the whole human family; a sign of peace for those suffering from conflicts of every kind; a sign of freedom for the poor and oppressed; a sign of mercy for those caught up in the vicious circle of sin; a sign of love and consolation for those who feel lonely and abandoned. A small and fragile sign, a humble and quiet sign, but one filled with the power of God who out of love became man." John Paul II

A Girard Christmas Card...

Last year in December Peter Robinson of the National Review Online interviewed Rene Girard and posted the video on their site. Gil linked to it here on his blog at that time. When I viewed the last part of their conversation it struck me that it was a kind of Christmas card from Rene Girard (whose birth day is also Christmas day).

I've excerpted the last 5 minutes and offer it here again.

Merry Christmas!

Inch by inch . . .

The Red Cross bans Christmas

by STEVE DOUGHTY, The London Daily Mail

Christmas has been banned by the Red Cross from its 430 fund-raising shops.

Staff have been ordered to take down decorations and to remove any other signs of the Christian festival because they could offend Moslems.

The charity's politically-correct move triggered an avalanche of criticism and mockery last night - from Christians and Moslems.

Christine Banks, a volunteer at a Red Cross shop in New Romney, Kent, said: "We put up a nativity scene in the window and were told to take it out. It seems we can't have anything that means Christmas. We're allowed to have some tinsel but that's it."

'When we send cards they have to say season's greetings or best wishes. They must not be linked directly to Christmas.

"When we asked we were told it is because we must not upset Moslems."

Mrs Banks added: "We have been instructed that we can't say anything about Christmas and we certainly can't have a Christmas tree."
. . .
The charity's umbrella body, the Swiss-based International Red Cross, has also had politically-correct doubts about its famous symbol. But efforts to find an alternative were abandoned in the face of protest and ridicule five years ago.

Read more: here.

Please be patient....technical difficulties

I have recently been dealing with a problem in our streaming video service and have not been able to successfully upload the Famished Craving excerpts. I hope this will be resolved soon and ask for your patience.

In the mean time I'm posting a version of the latest excerpt of the Famished Craving series, Part 17. I believe this version will play on most computers and devices except Apple iPhone/iPad/iPods.

from the Archives: Famished Craving - Part 16

Christianity & sacred violence; the oil and water that will not mix…

With this excerpt we have come to the end of the second CD in the Famished Craving series.

The finished CD and the downloadable MP3 file will be available on the Cornerstone Forum website store in the coming weeks.

Beyond Parody

This is what LifeSiteNews has to say about Planned Parenthood's Christmas fund-raising gimmick:

For the past several years, the largest abortion provider in the world has been offering gift certificates for Christmas. According to a PP press release, the gift certificates “allow you to give the gift of life to your loved ones.”

How is this remotely reflective of Christmas? How can a gift certificate for the world's largest killer of children in the womb be seen as a loving and life-giving Christmas gift?

from the Archives: Famished Craving - Part 15

- Dostoevsky - Soloviev - Nietzsche -

the problem of violence...and of making a victim of the victimizer