Improving the site for your edification

Yeah, I once coined the aphorism "It's a short step from the seminary to the Central Committee."

This was in the context of a dispute in Austin involving a former theology student turned Communist hack. My friends knew it also referred to Stalin....

Practice makes perfect. And they had plenty of practice.

I've always considered St. Jerome the patron saint of literary critics. Anyone who disagreed with him on matters of interpretation was generally condemned as a heretic. I read a brief bio of the Church Doctor recently; it ranked him as second only to St. Augustine as an influence on early Church thinking, most of it through the vigorous weeding out of nonconformists. From there, it's a small associative leap to the observation, made by Murray Kempton, that "the catechismic style of Stalin's speeches reminds us of what can happen when a former theological student is let loose upon those he considers the enemies of light and truth."

And who says critics have no power or influence?

Kenneth Burke wrote that he enjoyed studying Latin because the Fathers were so good at anathema...