Days from from Christmas and the time for judgement draws near: what do these people, friends and relations, deserve? Under these conditions, how can it be anything but a less than joyous event? As for you sad souls who would imagine a religious dimension to this, recall Schelling’s phrasing: God becomes Man not to complete Man, but to complete Himself. Zizek’s The Puppet & the dwarf dwells on “the perverse core of Christianity”; easily digestible, this is fairly scrumptious fare and the more livelier of the Slovene’s recent books. Best since Tarrying with the negative.
My post-dinner theory, ever so gently articulated to gathered friends, that Mother Teresa is the effing devil - and, moreover, that she is frickin’ burning in Hell - does not go down too well with the invited guests. Perhaps I need to work on my timing. Here are some relevant links: an interview with, and an article by, Christopher Hitchens. In the interests of fair play, here is The Saint’s very own Nobel lecture. Perhaps I need to work on my rabid counter-Catholicism, too. This non-position is not borne of a moralism but out of the flawed fundamentalism that lies at the heart of Catholicism, meaningfully understood.
