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Michael J. Sauter

Articles by Michael J. Sauter

Deeper than Religion, with Powys and Chesterton

Instead of opposing one religion to another, we need the conscience and that humorous raised eyebrow, which Powys described, with feminine overtones, as “that withdrawn, quizzical look which conscience, that…

A Case for the Psychiatric, Part 2: Dostoevsky’s Christianity

There is something new in Doestoevsky's insights into the psychology of “the Human Being,” beyond the Church Fathers, or at least that's the case made. If this is true, especially…

‘Spiritual but not Religious’ Revisited: An Urgent Case for the Psychiatric

Look at our priests or bishops now. Do they seem any more advanced in the cure than anybody else? Some do. But so does the guy who took the snow…

Life Under Sycamores

Frank Mulder is preaching the same Gospel. Pictures of Frank Mulder make him look like he could be a modern-day Johnny Appleseed, on a bicycle, planting sycamores instead of apple…

Grail and Anti-Grail Quests

"After all, if you are too small to do anything, what need is there to stir!”

A Testament to Friendship

Canadian author and broadcaster, David Cayley, who conducted two lengthy radio interviews-turned-books with Illich (in 1988 and 2000) and had a decades-long friendship with him, has written a gripping and…

Bridging the Gap Between Narrative and Reality: Guido Preparata

Modest and hopeful, but backed up by a lot of thought and research, Guido Preparata's work is at least a beginning. Surrounded by lies, it’s high-time we started telling another…

The Cauldron of Degrowth

In a nutshell, Degrowthers make a bold case that a future worth living is not about doing more with less, it’s about doing “less with less,” and it’s not at…

Feeling Claustrophobic in the Big Wide Open

I worry about our ever-expanding cult of safety and nod in agreement with so much of sociologist Frank Furedi’s description of the “Paradox of our Safety Addiction.” He argues that…

Two Cheers for Two Popes

In short, we need to rely less on building rigid ideological superstructures and more on our guts, guts kept healthy by a diverse diet of conversation and friendship. We need…

Heaven Hath Limits

The Prior of the Upstate New York Abbey where I work often describes his cloistered life by using the phrase “living within a sonnet.” A poet himself, he’s naturally attuned…

Avoiding “A World Without Women,” or Porches

A common and often valid critique of many families in the homeschooling movement is that, because of a lingering obsession on, and invisible competition with, the thing they are leaving…

Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris and the Problem of Bigness

In The Everlasting Man, a masterpiece of Christian apologetics, G. K. Chesterton opens Chapter 1 with something of a mocking hat tip to the “scientific custom of beginning [a book,…

Avoiding the Hive

New Directions for Catholic Social and Political Research: Humanity vs. Hyper-Modernity, Guido Preparata, (ed.) Palgrave MacMillan, 319 pages The future is notoriously uncertain but nonetheless, legion have been the prognostications…

The Politics of the Pro-Life Movement

A few years ago I wrote something of an irenic essay on the annual, January, March for Life in Washington DC.  I was in the mood, then, for focusing on…

Patmore: Prophetic Political Pessimist (and Localist?)

“Nations die of softening of the brain, which, for a long time, passes for softening of the heart.” “Democracy is only a continually shifting aristocracy of money, impudence, animal energy…

Witchcraft in Church? Against Glamorous Worship

Recently, our local Trappist Monastery, the Abbey of the Genesee, unveiled a renovation of the sanctuary of the Abbey church. To the shock of some — those who often claim to…

Apocalypticism for Porchers

If it's your thing -- and it's certainly not everybody's thing -- it's not a bad time to be an apocalypticist. A few weeks ago, Pope Francis once again implored…

Three Conceptions: Laschian, Romantic, and Immaculate

Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home -- "Intimations of Immortality," William Wordsworth As…

Archimedean Points, Above and Below

“To the famous Archimedean boast:  ‘Give me whereon to stand and I will move the world.’.  Rabelais answers: ‘I move with my ship; and the waves of the world give…

The Ailing Parson Malthus Project and the “New Sin of Pride”

Anyone who's had the good fortune to spend time reading Christopher Lasch might be able to identify with the specific experience of risable joy I feel when putting myself in…

Vulgar Adolescent Bigness Fetishizers

I reflected what a Mortification it must prove to me to appear as inconsiderable in this Nation as one single Lilliputian would be among us." --Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift Boy…

Mumford and Suns

“For a child”, I remember our priest saying a few years ago, ”the sun rises over the barn and sets on the further side of the field”. In the next,…

Gravity’s Rainbow

If a rainbow is a symbol of hope, there's a bright 'bow in the sky' to be found in Alfonso Cuarón's Gravity.  And, just maybe, the movie might be an…