A long time between 'blogs

It has been too long, I know, since my last blog entry, as members of my (very) small but (very) avid readership have let me know. I am trying to rectify that fault.

October, however, proved to be a busy month, and I am sure that November will be no different. October centered primarily around preparing a paper on Stuart Davis at the South Eastern College Art Conference (SECAC)'s annual meeting, this year in Little Rock, AR. That giant ball of stress has finally unknotted itself from my stomach allowing now for more urgent balls of stress to tie themselves up in its place.

SECAC, though, held a couple of surprises. No less than two people (out of four) in my session presented papers on issues relating to Catholic art in the 20th century--an issue of particular intrest to me, but one which I have had up until now little opportunity to indulge. I also heard a fascinating paper on the use of relics in extreme circumstances during the building of the Cathedral of St. Denis. All-in-all it was good time, but I am gladder now that it is over.

In other news, my conversion proceeds apace, which is to say that I continue at it still. It has been nearly two months since the process began and sometimes I feel it is moving far too slowly for my tastes. Easter still seems a long way off, but not so far off that I feel like that there is much about Catholicism which is not expressed--e.g. many points of doctrine and of faith (like the creed) are not really elaborated upon. It occurs to me that this may be remedied after Christmas when we move from the pre-Catecumenate period to the Catecumenate period.

My experiene with Catholicism so far has led me to the conclusion that many of the "cradle Catholics" I have met are extremely uninformed about what they believe. I find this to be, well, distressing. Protestantism--aside from what I feel are its manifold flaws--has at least gone about thoroughly indoctrinating its members to such an extent that they generally are equipped to answer questions about what they believe. Perhaps my understanding of this will change as time goes on and as I move closer to actually entering the RC Church.