Sunday, October 26, 2008

Are Doomed to Repeat It

As friend and mentor Gil Bailie has shared in his work explicating the mimetic theory of René Girard, Euripides' THE BACCHAE is perhaps the finest pre-Christian narrative depicting the inner workings of the primitive sacred. If you do not feel up to the Greek Tragedians, may I recommend The Dionysus Mandate ? (Reader Discretion Advised - at least that's what my sister said, who couldn't believe I let my father read it.)

Drawing no comparisons with our present political/cultural situation - I name no names (this time) - one sees in TDM how easily moderns are drawn into contemporary expressions of the neo-pagan; even those progressives who believe themselves outstripping the "worn-out" and hackneyed truths of the Catholic faith are apt to fall into the primitive sacred ditch.

Indeed, it is precisely those who feel themselves at the forefront of social justice issues, and for whom it goes without saying that the Catholic Church is a bastion of patriarchal power mongering and superstitious mumbo-jumbo, who most easily fall into the ways of Dionysus, that wrathful young god.

4 comments:

D'artagnan said...

Reader discretion indeed, as I just now remembered doing a spit take driving in my car, when my (at the time) 14 year old niece (a voracious reader) informed me of a certain f-bomb in the first pages.

I do hope to give her another chance to read it, after she is of the age where I no longer hafta fear the wrath of my baby sister (O:

Athos said...

Huh. I guess that explains why Zondervan and the sisters down at the Pauline book store wouldn't pick it up.

Athos said...

But seriously folks - it was C. S. Lewis who said that the light can understand the darkness, but the darkness cannot understand the light.

If TDM contains a taxonomy of evil, compliments of R. Girard and the Magisterium of the Church, I am satisfied. The hard part is portraying what the Good looks like. That comes in the friendship of Aly and Lenny. If it wasn't written as though my mother was looking over my shoulder, alas and so be it.

D'artagnan said...

no, me thinks it was written as if Christ was looking over your shoulder . . .and I am sure He will explain it to mom (O: