Week 8 (2025)
overhauls & iconic perception in healthcare, needless splendor & matriarchs, the Catholicism of O'Connor & Douthat, the feminism of Simone de Beauvoir
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to read: books
A Good Man Is Hard To Find (And Other Stories) — Flannery O’Connor — I got about halfway through the complete collection a few years ago, but stopped for lack of willpower to get through them while nauseously pregnant and exhausted… never picking them back up. So listening through this and hopefully the other published collection will be my concession to reading the complete works (which unfortunately do not have an audio version).
Would appreciate if the Twitter and literary podcast legend Prof. Jennifer Frey would create a substack or something, because I have missed seeing her thoughts and work. But I found this talk of hers after seeking out various helpful analyses of some bewildering short stories in this collection.
“For O’Connor, any encounter with the Divine will have an incarnational aspect… morality for an artist lies in his vision, not in a lesson.
Grace often works to clarify the vision of her characters. It works, again, to pierce the veil of self-deception. For people who are humorously ignorant of their own defects of soul, making these defects manifest to them in extraordinary ways.”
Prof.
also has a playlist of Flannery videos as well as multiple books (have only read The Scandal of Holiness) — but I found this 20 minute talk on the call to suffering just phenomenal.
to read: essays, articles, newsletters
Accidental Pilgrim — Ross Douthat, The Lamp — “In Catholicism the sheer weirdness of what I saw growing up in charismatic Christianity isn’t denied or anathematized. Rather, it’s matched, exceeded, and enfolded into orthodoxy in the stories of the Church’s wilder miracles, its stranger saints.”
(’s A+ comment on this piece came to mind when Douthat brought up mysticism: “I'd stop short of dismissing such a broad swathe of Church history. We've been handed down a plethora of wisdom both before and after the reformation, even in the long millennium between Augustine and Luther. To say, "Wanna read some more stuff on spirituality with me? Let’s go to the 17th century" veers too far into the waters of chronological snobbery that Lewis warns us of in Surprised by Joy.” — also, recommend Douthat’s memoir The Deep Places along with his book The Decadent Society)
New Initiatives At The Center For Needless Splendor —
, Mere Orthodoxy (not paywalled, just a free login required for older posts) — “All that is necessary to become a Fellow of the Center is to take its pledge: “I solemnly swear I am up to no good.” Reading Robert Farrar Capon’s masterwork The Supper of the Lamb is also gently encouraged.”(in cracking open a copy of his new book I saw my name among the acknowledgments, which was truly a first and some needless splendor, indeed)
Conservatives Need A Healthcare Agenda —
, Commonplace — “However, there’s no way to make our system better (or more affordable) without significant disruptions.”(other physicians of note on here include , )
Unsouling The Patient: Notre Dame's Lessons for Medicine — Brewer Eberly, Mere Orthodoxy (not paywalled, just a free login required for older posts) — “But how can such a perspective be taught among today’s medical trainees? The powers and principalities of medicine are poised to work against the iconic—reinforcing a vision of the patient that is dissective, reductive, and lucrative… We do this through formational programs, spiritual disciplines, and a growing network of Christian health care workers who practice with iconic perception. At our best, we bear witness to a way of healing that certainly does not make medicine easier, even as it does make health care deeper, more whole, which is to say more healthy and—Lord willing—holy.”
(more from Eberly at The Veritas Forum, Mere Orthodoxy here and here, Comment, Plough, and The New Atlantis, shared previously)
Instaturation — Rachel E. Hicks, Ekstasis —
“You’re screened from me, busy fruitless days between us.
This home feels cavernous, the long table empty.I want to ask: can we read aloud together
some ancient verse or prose—or maybe even sing?You bring your yarn and needles; I’ll pour a good wine.
What are you reading these days to save your own soul?”
- , Claremont Review Of Books — “…where are the mothers who don’t just try to squeeze in a kid or two before hurrying back to an effectively childfree existence—who instead welcome the change that children bring to their daily lives? It’s an uncomfortable question. In lieu of asking it outright, Carney lays out every fertility statistic known to man in a kind of paint-by-numbers exercise. Thus he reveals, obliquely, the obvious center of the fertility crisis: a big, empty space where a matriarch used to be.”
(related: off-the-cuff thoughts on Hannah’s Children & my own review of Family Unfriendly, along with an accompanying list of reviews from writers I admire, to which this has been added)
What Does It Mean To Be A Woman? —
and Abigail Favale, The Public Discourse — “The values of her existentialist framework just map onto male physiology much better than female physiology. So that means she makes the female body a problem. The female body itself—not just how it’s been received in society, but the female body itself—is an agent of women’s oppression. And so, in order to overcome that oppression, women have to have access to things like contraception and abortion… that association—that understanding of freedom as being freedom from femaleness—is very much part of her legacy.”(more on this here)
Every Conservative Catholic Thinkpiece —
, Going Awol — HOLLERING. This newsletter has consisted of roughly 50% Catholic writers and/or Catholic publications for some years now, so it’s my duty to pass along.“Liberalism — with its absurd insistence on Ockhamistic nominalism, Cartesian body-self dualism, and lurid half-naked scenes in movies that are rivalled in concupiscence only by the theological perversions of Vatican II — is doomed from the very outset, having succumbed to the Pelagian error of Gnosticism and the Kantian error of Humeanism.”
to watch, listen to
Continuing On:
Black & Red All Over: A Classic Confessing Anglican Podcast with Steven Wedgeworth & Richard Tarsitano — Articles 18-21: Of Christ Alone & The Authority Of His Church
The Natural Womanhood Podcast with
— Season 3, Episode 1 — Miscarriages, a Vasectomy, and a Reversal: Emily & Kirk’s Story — “We had all the family support in the world to get it done, but not a lot of family support around saying, you know, we’re here if [a miscarriage, pregnancy] happens again.” “It did not solve anything…”(related: ’s essay Every Day Do Something That Won't Compute pairs well as a story in the same vein, but from a different angle)
Woven Well Podcast with
— Episodes 40-41 — We're Engaged! What Should We Know About Family Planning? and Client Story: Julia and Donald Paul (Engaged) — These made for a lovely and lighthearted introduction to why every engaged couple should learn together prior to marriage!I’m hopeful for a world where pastoral marriage prep ensures couples are seeking the tools for understanding the daily/monthly physiological workings of the wife’s body, their combined fertility, and discerning their navigation of the relational and spiritual aspects through all their fertile years. This ongoing, collaborative discernment is very much a relational and spiritual issue. I’m afraid fertility has not often been framed that way, more like a technical switch or checkbox next to “have a baby? yes/no” (or with the unofficial “don't ask, don't tell” approach) with no further awareness of the riches to be plunged here. Immensely thankful for those seeking to right the hefty reproductive ship medically, relationally, theologically, ethically, and socially.
As they allude to, a marriage loses out when one person takes on the entire onus of “handling it” without need for the spouse’s ongoing collaboration. As Caitlin mentions, there is also a benefit in our relationship with the Lord, when remaining flexibly open to His leading one way or the other throughout marriage. Put another way by
, “It gives us the freedom to not make permanent decisions about our family size in the face of temporary problems and invites us to remain in conversation with God about His will for our family.”(This actually ties in quite well to the Natural Womanhood conversation above, which gives a glimpse at the hardship and difficulty people can face in marriage. But also that cutting fertility out of the equation entirely is hardly the solution we might expect it will be relationally, emotionally (see Emily & Kirk’s story), or spiritually. Being created in such a loving, ordered way is an invitation to exercise proper agency, influence, and virtue in our bodies, as opposed to full control. And, well, well, well… is this not descriptive of all of life in a modern world, alluring us with Cheap Control Galore?)
Laying the groundwork for a richer, more humble collaboration with our spouse—and with God—can and should begin prior to marriage. Thanks for giving us a glimpse of this, Caitlin.
(more related resources in this Big Ol' Compilation)
to glean from: tip, product, resource
Golden Chai Mix For Turmeric Chai Latte — Very good.
German Chocolate Cake — For a tiny birthday boy.
Romance: Please Keep It Alive — As
reminded us, it’s kinda bleak out there. So this post I haven’t actually read in a few years for fear of cringing is less a tip for dating or the single life (for that you’ll want ’s Pep Talk) than it is a “don’t try this at home, folks” story to show 1) not all is lost in the world but also 2) our marriage exisiting clearly isn’t something we can take full credit for, or a result of us “doing everything right.”Indoor Herbs: Also Want To Keep Them Alive — Acquired seeds for pots in the basement (with warming pads and grow lights), as we don’t have much well-lit space away from curious hands in the upper part of the house. Herbs have historically not gone well for me. What’s the deal, any tips?
Lane’s double-book review was fantastic. Thanks for sharing.
Also “seeking to right the hefty reproductive ship” could be part of your bio. I laughed at the phrase and its imagery. As always, I appreciate the compilation and your comments!
Loved reading the story of how you and Jakob ended up together! What a crazy couple of years there haha.