Two items today:
The most eagerly awaited book in the Catholic blogosphere, Dawn Eden 's The Thrill of the Chaste: Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On is finally available from Amazon
. It will hit brick and mortar bookstores on December 5. As Paul Catalanotto of Alive and Young tells us,
The Thrill of the Chaste is a book that has been needed for many years to fill an absence in the chastity literature [genre]: the target audience is not teens but mature adults and young adults.
and a self-proclaimed rant from Barbara Nicolosi at her Church of the Masses blog. It's about her disappointment in a recent "Christian" film, but turns into a broader commentary on why a Christian label is not enough to make a work of art beautiful.
Christian cheese is still… cheese.
Her definition of what she calls "Able Christians" in the arts is very close to what we are trying to do at Catholic Exchange:
I have taken to calling "Able Christians", those who are committed to giving God beautiful, first fruits kind of work. We talk about excellence alot and "the demands of beauty*" (JPII, Letter to Artists) and professionalism and the rigors of the craft. We talk about being missionaries to Planet Hollywood, and how God is much more interested in the people making movies than in the movies being made. We are always wrestling with making projects true AND commercial, beautiful and mainstream. Not because we want the money of studio success, but because we believe that the Gospel needs to be preached to those who haven't heard it, to those who might never wander into a church.
