Cause and effect?

Not long ago I was shelving a pile of haphazardly stacked books when, to my dismay, I uncovered the volume you see below, the Rev’d George W Rutler’s, Calm in Chaos.

My dismay had nothing to do with the book’s content, rather that it had been inscribed and presented by the author to this blogger, and he had yet read it.

What to do? Easy, read it. Doing so reveals once again the inimitable style of Fr Rutler: erudite without being pedantic, drole, without being flippant.

Even the book’s title is a wry example of Rutlerian cleverness. Calm in Chaos is a clever pun, for in addition to being a  compilation of Rutler essays, those essays were originally published in Chaos Magazine.

Inside, is a trove of  essays, illuminating and frequently  provoking a grin or more. A short example:

The documents of the Second Vatican Council are wordier than the extant records of all the other ecumenical councils combined. The recent apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia is nearly two-thirds the length of all the Vatican II promulgations. The literary quality of Amoris Laetitia does not challenge the claim that the Authorized Version, or King James Bible, is the only successful work of art composed by a committee.

Enough said, highly recommended.

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One unexpected and happy consequence of reading this book was that it inspired the Taos Tatler to resume blogging. How so? Who knows? It did. That will suffice.