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Subject: Re: (urth) Yes he is! No he isn't! Yes he is... Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2003 19:31:22 -0500 From: Alex David GroceRyan Thistlethwaite wrote: > A bit vague I guess, but the point I'm trying to make as regards to > Nigel's post is that the membership in an organisation of any type > does not mean we agree or even think about the Dogma of that > organisation. How many of you passionately agree with everything > your company's employee handbook has to say...? Oh look, 2 CEO's.... True, but from his fiction it seems unlikely that Wolfe has the same relationship to the Catholic Church that most people have to their employers. Wolfe clearly does think about Dogma, and in temperament seems to me unlikely to find himself comfortable with being Catholic while disagreeing with much of Catholic dogma. On the other hand, orthodoxy on core points declared by the Church leaves a great deal of room for "oddity." Nutria's example of ghosts comes to mind--Russell Kirk and Gene Wolfe can believe in ghosts and be quite orthodox Catholics. As could G. K. Chesterton. And I suspect R. A. Lafferty was both about as orthodox as you get and believed what most people (and most Catholics) would call six impossible things before breakfast. I'm rereading SHORT SUN now, by the way, but so far I have absolutely nothing to say to the list about it other than "I still like these books, and I still don't understand most of the things I didn't understand the first time." -- "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." John 8:32 -- Alex David Groce (agroce+@cs.cmu.edu) Ph.D. Student, Carnegie Mellon University - Computer Science Department 8112 Wean Hall (412)-268-3066 http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~agroce --