"But do know one thing: the Romantic Ideal will send you to hell eventually. Luxuriating in fornication and sodomy will too. The modern world (partly fed by The Atlantic Monthly) pursues materials in this connection with the most sober assiduity. Do we (Christians) demure somewhere in here? How countercultural are we?
Before it is too late, should we, and if so, how are we to develop a "taste" for the annals of sanctity? And will there come, at last, an actual preference for these over the topics filling the columns, again, not only of the cheap magazines in the airport racks, but also of the highbrow journals? (It is not all, of course, scandal; but totally godless respectability---Virginia Woolf, say---holds the field, surely, over the narratives of souls struggling toward God.)"
And, by the way, Mr. Howard is a brother to Elizabeth Elliott. I'd made that connection 'way back when' but not sure in what context. It rang a bell to me. Must have been in one of my rabbit trails of book-hunting on Amazon. One book leads to another, you know. Am off now hopefully to reserve several books from the library, one being his Evangelical Isn't Enough (as you mentioned, Sara...thank you), and Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited and T.S.Eliot's The Four Quartets---the latter ones being volumes that Howard speaks highly of.
He's got an interesting history. Raised Evangelical, moved on to the Anglican/Episcopal church, and has been Catholic for the past 20 years. Would like to pick his brain. My goodness...he's covered some territory.
