Vir ecclesiasticus

Vir ecclesiasticus has two words, vir and ecclesiasticus. Both are important. Being a fan of things ecclesiastical should never be an excuse to neglect or ignore one's basic humanity. We need to cultivate basic human (and, for men, manly) virtues as well as developing an aesthetic or even theological taste for the distinctively Catholic realia (to use the sociological term). Grace builds upon and perfects nature. We need to attend to both.

I think about this in reference to a conversation I had with a home school mom about the importance of learning things like cooking, sewing, knitting, woodwork, gardening and in response the the emphasis on basic manly virtues at the Men of Christ conference the other day. In fact, I'm enough of a Chestertonian distributist to believe that if we cultivate in ourselves and our children such crafts, we will be somewhat more immune from the vicissitudes of the global economy. Heck, if you have bushels of home grown potatoes in your basement over the winter, you won't worry about the price of potatoes.

It is hard to make your own contact lenses, however.

All of this may seem disjointed, but it all hangs together. I'll try to post a more coherent version of these thoughts at length.