Sign in

Ben CitM

@contemplativeinthemud.com
373 followers 270 following 1.2K posts

“If eyes are always kept blindfolded, one must fear that they may become blind.” — Marcel Văn Benjamin Embley | English, français, ไทย | Living on Wabanaki land | contemplativeinthemud.com

PostsRepliesMedia
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 4h
I wrote this post when I was exposed to the ICS 𝘚𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘺 𝘰𝘧 𝘢 𝘚𝘰𝘶𝘭 study edition, which for your edification offers a short fiction that sounds suspiciously like A Metaphor For Something Else with all its emotional blackmail, "don't tell your mom", hush money, and "the problem here is the altar boy".
000
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 16h
Wait, you're telling me that some of the bigger news from Metz was supposed to be doubly focused on Marcel Văn, but the shenanigans of a condemned abuser took the spotlight. They're drawn to stealing his spotlight like nothing else, let me tell you. catholix.fr/2026/09/24/m...
000
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 28/09/2026
Did some really good historical work. Everyone writing on Văn is confident he was held in two NVN detention facilities outside Hanoi. But reading DIA reports, examining maps, reading his detention letters carefully, it becomes clear it was four (Hoả Lò is in Hanoi). ref tile.loc.gov/storage-serv...
100
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 28/09/2026
Yeehaw, thank God it's not my first rodeo
010
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 28/09/2026
"Don't use the standard phrases of victim-blaming (of which 'it takes two to tango' is one) to mean something other than victim-blaming in the context of abuse and definitely don't make people read several paragraphs to figure it out" is an incredibly low bar to clear. But this is where we all are.
120
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 22/09/2026
Yesterday, homily on the universal call to holiness requiring a vocation to holy orders, religious life, or marriage. Today—since I can hardly talk around priests—handed the priest this note (the thing at the bottom is another years-long thing). As you might guess, it did not go well with Fr. Darvo.
110
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 06/09/2026
Reads earliest known writings identifying a worldwide abuse crisis in need of worldwide reform, writes preface that obscures their significance... sues presumed victim of clerical abuse Congratulations on being the winner of this year's Marie-Michel Hostalier Prize!
020
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 05/09/2026
The original source has fascinating ideas about NB Power (Point Lepreau Nuclear is 40% today, but vocabulary here in the Canadian-Appalachians-with-Big-But-Not-Too-Big-River developed before the advent of nuclear power, as is also true for Ontario, where it's acknowledged they still say "hydro")
120
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 05/09/2026
The original source also shows virtually zero preference for NB on one of the three questions in this chart (esp. compared to NS, PEI). And if it pays to distinguish Avalon and Cape Breton, why even is NB not divided as anglo/franco? That's obviously messing with interpretation and categorization.
031
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 05/09/2026
Where do they think NB's electricity came from before nuclear power? The province is all the Appalachians with a big river or two.
110
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 05/09/2026
The US one at least tells me I'm from northern Maine; the "Canadian" one tells me I'm from City Southern Ontario, which is so typical an erasure it might not be offensive but is still terrifying
100
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 04/09/2026
Ah, I see the people are doing this one (same conclusion, more dramatic)
010
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 04/09/2026
I'm from right-beside-Maine and apparently Americans can tell
110
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 02/09/2026
010
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 01/09/2026
You'll never guess whose life story he tried to control by writing a preface:
210
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 31/08/2026
Reading Jacques Maritain in not only the current political climate but also the abuse crisis be like:
040
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 30/08/2026
Notice how someone like Balthasar factors in for this crowd: an author who had his own POV but was, as B. himself does not hide, a reader of/indebted to Maritain. I don't think it pays to remain a step *behind* the postliberal arguments and historical reconstructions here.
000
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 30/08/2026
If one seeks postliberal (etc.) Thomists' identified target for discourse about power and Divine Vulnerability, I don't think it's unclear that Target No. 1 is Jacques Maritain's 1949 Princeton lectures on moral philosophy:
151
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 22/07/2026
Ah, now it wants me to do some unit conversions.
000
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 22/07/2026
Come to learn Vietnamese, get asked to do the arithmetic yourself!
100
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 19/07/2026
As I keep saying, the reason we imagine God as powerful and also in every way invulnerable—even though it flies in the face of our freedom to accept or reject God—isn't really about theory. It's a social question. It's about how we frame and use power. Pope Leo today: www.vatican.va/content/leo-...
1102
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 18/07/2026
Stop scrolling and post two characters who bring you happiness
Sharon Raydor and Rusty Beck (Major Crimes), just my favourite TV relationship even if not my favourite show or genre
010
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 14/07/2026
Feast day in the U.S. (really no idea why it's not on the actual day she died at Kahnawà꞉ke there)—but I'll celebrate any day!
030
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 13/07/2026
Ok, yes, thx, I did that part. Giáo sư đó tên là Văn. What I want from you, dear book, is to help me improve my Vietnamese.
000
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 10/07/2026
Aw, and the next Văn newsletter arrived in the mail today, right on time for the day.
000
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 08/07/2026
This is my best shot at summarizing into a coherent narrative what I know of the Early Philippe Affair using my familiarity with the Complete Works of Jacques & Raïssa Maritain and the letters between J. Maritain and his friend Charles Journet. I hope it's helpful as a starting point of some sort.
4106
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 06/07/2026
If Humbert Clérissac OP is somehow connected, possibly. But then again, there's already the connection to Action Française—Clérissac's the one who got the Maritains involved. So it's not like their surrounding world was great at the time on other grounds.
020
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 06/07/2026
Invites, asks, all kinds of stuff. Maritain, living in NJ, finds it very weird. Does a few talks. But quickly—before The News breaks—even from another continent starts to say this guy Lacks Some Basic Things. I'm exasperated. I'm scandalized. Quite frankly, this guy Operates Under the Cover of Fog.
120
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 06/07/2026
How I read the Journet–Maritain correspondence: A decade later, Th. Philippe decides the best way to Get What He Wants is to mimic Maritain a bit more on the surface and set up a school that's kinda Maritainian in theory (Eau Vive)—kinda. on the surface. Keeps trying to associate M. with it.
120
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 06/07/2026
Yeah, I think so. That's the only mention in the Complete Works. M. continues to believe this privately about Th. Philippe + mysticism, but the context is the Angelicum's favour of Th.Ph. to oust Chenu + M. being the author of Integral Humanism and not exactly free from danger of the Index himself.
120
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 05/07/2026
Part of this dynamic, iydk: Maritain reacted very early against Th. Philippe's tendencies surrounding mysticism. For his own reasons, M.'s basically got it pinned as a totalizing demon that diminishes trust in the human, already in 1937. It's not his topic to defend against abuse. But in retrospect?
140
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 04/07/2026
35 years ago today, Fr. Antonio Boucher CSsR passed into eternal life. He was Marcel Văn's spiritual director, got him to write his autobiography, conserved Marcel's writings, translated them into French, wrote a short bio, encouraged a beatification cause. A debt of gratitude of immense proportion.
000
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 29/06/2026
Just enjoying how the rain sticks to the sealant but not to the stones
010
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 26/06/2026
I think I lack context on various questions here—but betcha didn't know you could be this Luddite and this hopeful! (I didn't) britmonkey.com/2020s-politi...
010
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 26/06/2026
Unfortunately for Kara, though, it's kinda a "fast is slow, slow is smooth" thing (at least from her perspective—I can't move the thing that fast)
020
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 25/06/2026
Fwiw, I was living in Bangkok when Laudato Si' came out. I think a clear example of what Pope Francis actually addresses in no. 55 is building larger and larger volumes of extravagant interior space (e.g., many of the shopping malls in Asia) but then expecting to keep them positively frigid.
210
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 25/06/2026
Okay, I have no idea what controversy this is, but you guys yourselves make "art" with generative AI and post it in the Diocese's name
230
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 24/06/2026
010
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 24/06/2026
000
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 17/06/2026
We don't usually see each other's headers. Here's mine; quote post yours (if you feel like it)
130
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 17/06/2026
The deck chair is evaporating in real time in the dawning sun
020
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 15/06/2026
Or:
010
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 14/06/2026
actual footage of your Friday
120
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 02/06/2026
When it was becoming obvious that there weren't going to be many, if any, Indigenous Turtle Island theologies in this quiz, I started to wonder what the result could even be—but "The New Testament in Color" (ed.) is certainly not wrong given the premise
010
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 31/05/2026
return to sender
060
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 26/05/2026
I really like your result. My own probably just means "you are in the Indigenous theology world and we don't know and/or didn't input data for (many) others in this sphere"
010
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 25/05/2026
On the surface, Indigenous peoples are not mentioned in MH, but they were key to the lives of two out of eight women in this section:
010
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 25/05/2026
Picking right up where Francis left off (Via Crucis 2025, just three days before his passing):
121
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 25/05/2026
N.B. Babel also used a single component technology incapable of doing what they wanted. Gen 11:3 mocks the use of baked bricks. Which cannot be a tall tower at all, only a pyramid. Which is ultimately why the structure scales badly, consumes resources exponentially, causes all the other social ills.
010
Ben CitM @contemplativeinthemud.com · 25/05/2026
Happy celebration of Mary, Mother of the Church!
040