Thursday, April 19, 2007

April Fools!

Apparently, Blogger has pulled an April Fools joke on me. My newest post can be seen below, under the April 1 heading.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

hmmm... I'm disturbed. A Catholic who writes pornographic novels. I'm not seeing why this is positive.

JimmyV said...

I should have clarified the title. I've been reading Koontz, off and on, for a decade and I figured from his writing that he must have been raised Catholic. I had that confirmed recently and this book reinforced it so I wanted to share my joy in correctly determining it.

It is positive because I want everyone to be Catholic. Being in the Church has been the greatest gift of my life so I want everyone to have it.

Anonymous said...

I have no problem with anyone being Catholic. My being disturbed is a result of hearing that a Catholic is writing pornography in his novels, and that another Catholic is reading them. :-(

Anonymous said...

I think that what JimmyV is trying to get at is that despite any misguidedness in his writing explicit content, Koontz maintained some degree of truth in scene he created.
In his writing explicit content, at least he didn't go so far as to includ contracepted sex, and he seemed to show some type of spiritual union, a point left out in pornography.

While it's not good that a Catholic would chose to write explicit material, it is still nice to find a popular novelist who writes with an obviously Catholic spiritual perspective. I've not read this particular novel, but I've read other Koontz novels and greatly enjoyed finding Catholic themes woven throughout. It is surprising that he chose in to include explicit content as I've not come across any of his other books that did so. His books are not what I'd call great spiritual reading, but simply entertaining tails which often touch on greater issues.

JimmyV said...

Of course, I did not intend to encourage the reading of pornography in any way. It is a serious sin and leads to further serious sins. In retrospect, I should have stopped reading and skipped ahead to get past the evil material. However, I have read many Koontz books in my life, probably around a dozen, and never before has he written anything like this. That fact, combined with the interjected spiritual parts, led me to believe the pornographic material would end quickly. Obviously, I was incorrect in that assessment.

Although, it is good to know that I have friends watching out for my soul. I always need fraternal correction.

Anonymous said...

katy, I understand your perspective. Let me try to explain a bit mine...
When someone professes to be Catholic, in my book they are held to a higher standard and it is an even greater offense for them to engage in any part of porn, than it is for someone who does not have the fullness of the truth (a non-catholic). So I wouldn't say that ok, he did something wrong but it's great that he didn't commit a further offense by doing another thing wrong. It's kind of like a saying, "well, I killed a person, but at least I didn't cut them into pieces!" I know that's extreme, but the logic you are using is the same.
My concern here is that we should not participate in allowing porn to be disguised as a harmless entertaining novel that is masked by other spiritual themes. It also becomes an issue of scandal, to have something awful interwoven with Catholic spirituality themes can be confusing for a person who may be seeking truth and understanding.
In my view, pornography is very prevalent in our everyday society and in some cases unavoidable unless we never leave our homes. Sexually explicit images and words are EVERYWHERE, often hidden beneath something positive or good. It's really just the devil in disguise and should be exposed for the offense that it is, not praised for the little positive value that might exist on the surface.

We The People said...

Yeah, Catholics (mostly the "bad" ones) usually write some of the best books and make some of the best movies. They know enough about the universe to not portray dumb characters whose actions have no consequences, characters in need of (some kind of) redemption. But they have long since abandoned the fullness of the Catholic view of morality. So you get a bit of a mixed bag. But the books and movies are usually good.

(To pick an example from the air, Scorcese's The Departed is a phenomenal movie about fallen human nature, made all the more real by his Catholicism. But it is also a most brutal movie to watch, from a violence, and, sometimes, sexual perspective.)