Commented again at TNC:

There is a Maria de Estrada who fought her way through Mexico with Hernan Cortes. She asked a comapanero who she might sleep under the same blanket with why he never made a sexual advance toward her. Lares told her, 'I may satisfy myself well enough among the women the naturales have given us.' Maybe something of the same thing happened in the South and this may be why the US is concerned about the treatment of black people but gives little concern to the Indian, the naturales here.

Random comment at TNC.

Middlebrow was a category used in the fifties. Amahl and the Night Visitors, for instance, was said to be middlebrow. I suppose it is art that has characteristics of what might be considered high art but lacks some complexity or has been created to conform to what now might be called politically correct.

Have read a chapter La Noche Triste in An Instinct For War about Cortes' conquest of Mexico that left me feeling that it would have been nice if the situation could have handled to the benefit of many with less greed. In any event, the most Catholic of all Gospels occurs today:

Then he said to all,
“If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself
and take up his cross daily and follow me.
For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,
but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it."

I see this as an encouragement to leave a pained narcissism, in what now would be called an idealizing transference, and follow the ethic that Jesus has laid out.

Afterward he journeyed from one town and village to another, preaching and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. Accompanying him were the Twelve and some women ..., Mary, called Magdalene ..., Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, Susanna, and many others who provided for them out of their resources.

Was hearing on NPR about the Nazi Noir "If the Dead Arise Not" and was reminded to blog about last Sunday's Catholic Mass Readings which make for an interesting detective story.

The first reading, from Samuel, starts off:

Nathan said to David:
“Thus says the LORD God of Israel:
‘I anointed you king of Israel.
I rescued you from the hand of Saul.
I gave you your lord’s house and your lord’s wives for your own.
I gave you the house of Israel and of Judah.
And if this were not enough, I could count up for you still more.
Why have you spurned the Lord and done evil in his sight?
You have cut down Uriah the Hittite with the sword;
you took his wife as your own,

Nathan and David arrive way ahead of Freud at not worrying about Oedipal feelings. The feelings of Uriah's wife are not recorded. Maybe the women who supported Jesus were happy that he was empathetic with their not being property. But what about the middle reading from Paul which includes:

I live by faith in the Son of God
who has loved me and given himself up for me.
I do not nullify the grace of God;
for if justification comes through the law,
then Christ died for nothing.

It seems likely that Herod, Antipas, would know what his steward's wife was publicly up to. He had enjoyed listening to John the Baptist; perhaps similarly Jesus. So Herod was a 'bad man,' but Paul says justification doesn't come through the law but through some allegiance to Jesus.