A Good Grace is Hardly Found

[Paul Mackin]

If you want a short answer, in RC it is available to all mostly through 
the appropriate sacrament, but in Calvinism only to the
Elect.

P

On 12/2/2012 12:14 PM, David Morris wrote:
> I don't think Alice has yet provided a definition of RC vs Calvanist 
> Grace.  I'd like to hear it.
>
> On Sunday, December 2, 2012, Joseph Tracy wrote:
>
>     Literature is not a religion for me. I have no intention of
>     bending my knee at the altar of   any writer's holy halitosis in
>     order to improve myself.  I have to like it or I don't read it,
>     not enough time. I laugh all the time while reading, but not
>     reading this dame. Just bein real. Happy for those who enjoy it
>     and ready to acknowledge that thoughtful pleasure is good for the
>     soul, just not my cuppa tea.
>
>     As far as different visions of grace, Catholicism, Calvinism etc.
>     , the historic and religious variations on this theme are far
>     broader than Calvin or Roman Catholic interpretations and that
>     diversity is evident in P's work where we find every permutation
>      and anti-permutation of spirituality, social affinity,  thinly
>     disguised cruelty, cosmic wars and  anarchist golfing fun .
>      There was a time when I read almost exclusively the Bible for 7
>     years followed by  a long investigation of Jewish mysticism and
>     history, Christian history, textual analysis and similar writings.
>      During that  second period of time Pynchon provided a POV that
>     helped me begin to  disentangle myself from both anger and
>     reverence for western history.  Still I find the ancient Hebrew
>     priests who wrote the Bible and Orthodox high priests of
>     Catholicism or Calvinism to all present a particularly loathesome,
>     colonialist, xenophobic ,nasty and useless vision of God, cosmic
>     law , Jesus, the way etc. and feel no obligation to be enthralled
>     by those in thrall to this vision.
>     In my experience, if anything important and liberating and
>     insightful is offered in any writer or artist or experience, it
>     will be found in many other places, so not to worry.
>     "Your nature and the integral nature of the universe are one and
>     the same: indescribable but eternally present.
>     Simply open yourself to this."
>     Hua Hu Ching
>
>     On Dec 2, 2012, at 7:54 AM, alice wellintown wrote:
>
>     > O'Connor is funny. Indeed, she describes her work as comic,
>     though she
>     > insists that her comedy does not distract from the seriousness
>     of her
>     > themes. We are invited to laugh at the violent misfits, at the
>     > southern inanities, the gothic rags that fix the characters in a
>     faded
>     > fashion of the southern decadence. Our laughter makes us complicit,
>     > for we cannot sustain indifference and the rejection of her grace,
>     > especially on political or anti-religious grounds is only a
>     > Calvinistic vice inherent in the reader not the author or her story.
>     > There is nothing depressing about this; indeed, the grace that
>     > O'Connor uses so skillfully, is a comic element, a carnivalesque
>     > celebration of freedom, of the free will. So Harry swims away from
>     > Paradise, in O'Connor's brilliant tale, "The River", and toward
>     God's
>     > Grace. Like Slothrop, or Oedipa, or Dorothy, Harry is running from
>     > home and back to a Kansas that is, we fell, not Kansas anymore, a
>     > Zone, a paralax of parallel universes moving toward Grace.
>     >
>     > So, Pynchon and O'Connor, two Catholics, make use of Grace. The
>     trick
>     > is to understand what Catholic Grace is, and, as Mark intimated, how
>     > it is not Calvinized.
>     >
>     > Of course, the religion of the author, of the reader, matters not at
>     > all. But not knowing what an author is up to, or rejecting it in
>     > preference to some inhernet vice, some irrational disdain for all
>     > things cultic, is a limited way to read demanding fictions.
>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20121202/223247ba/attachment.html>