Are Doomed to Repeat It

As friend and mentor Gil Bailie has shared in his work explicating the mimetic theory of René Girard, Euripides' THE BACCHAE is perhaps the finest pre-Christian narrative depicting the inner workings of the primitive sacred. If you do not feel up to the Greek Tragedians, may I recommend The Dionysus Mandate ? (Reader Discretion Advised - at least that's what my sister said, who couldn't believe I let my father read it.)

Drawing no comparisons with our present political/cultural situation - I name no names (this time) - one sees in TDM how easily moderns are drawn into contemporary expressions of the neo-pagan; even those progressives who believe themselves outstripping the "worn-out" and hackneyed truths of the Catholic faith are apt to fall into the primitive sacred ditch.

Indeed, it is precisely those who feel themselves at the forefront of social justice issues, and for whom it goes without saying that the Catholic Church is a bastion of patriarchal power mongering and superstitious mumbo-jumbo, who most easily fall into the ways of Dionysus, that wrathful young god.