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Elizabeth Bobrick's avatar

Zina, my heart leapt (really!) to see a reader of De Anima here! Come over and visit my Substack when you have a chance: This Won’t End Well: On Loving Greek Tragedy. And I do mean “when you have a chance.” You’re busy!

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Roseanne T. Sullivan's avatar

This is very good. I'm surprised Capon's book is still around. About 50 yrs. ago, I read it with beautiful friend of mine married to a psychiatrist in Vermont. I was living in the country and first met them when he was an intern at a Fargo hospital, then they moved away. Later I moved away to MPLS and returned to Catholicism. I was happy when they converted to Christianity, but they stopped at Episcopalianism. You should read the end of Capon's book closely. He is fascinating, but an unholy sensualist. His NYTimes obituary mentioned his unorthodox theology and how he lost his job as an Episcopal priest because he divorced. At the end, he writes about using baking soda for heartburn, then about a "higher distress for which the earth has no cure." He writes that splendid dinners, food, company arouse other appetites. He calls those appetites a man's thirst for being. He invites his readers to not avoid offered love. He compares a man seducing a "girl with high cheekbones" to a priestly agent, and then has the blasphemous gall to compare that kind of love to Christ's passion. "Love is the widest, choicest door into the Passion." My friend was studying art, and Capon's immoral musings weakened her while one of her professors was feeding her a similar line of BS. She decided to stay faithful only after she naively told her husband about the bogus premise of adulterous love being a way to the Kingdom, he was deeply hurt.

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