If you’re not familiar with Eve Tushnet’s blog or her other writings and have clicked on the link in my blogroll, you may have wondered why I’ve included her. She has a lot of interests I don’t share: horror movies, comics, recipes, gay literature. But she’s brilliant, and she frequently says things that just knock me out. Like her definition of the word religion: “an understanding of the nature of love.”
She is, by the way, a Catholic convert of Jewish background and homosexual orientation (if I may use that clumsy phrase) who tries to live by the Church’s teachings. I think you have to be fairly brave to be in that first group, and very brave to be in the second. It includes some of the bravest people around, and I’ve read some truly inspiring stuff on her blog and some of others to which she links.
An understanding of the nature of love. That’s what the whole Catholic thing—theology, sacraments, morality, hierarchy, everything—comes from and returns to, and, to paraphrase Flannery O’Connor: if it doesn’t, then to hell with it.
Oh, and here’s the post containing that quote.
Pre-TypePad
Light On Dark Water 
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