Dear Denys

Precedent for Epistolary Collections

Knowing Catholic Phoenix to be straining at the seams with sweetness and light, our readers turn to our posts for comfort, insight, and the calming reassurance that Western civilization soldiers on in at least one desert metropolis.

Yet as relevant as our wide-ranging posts are to la condition humaine in all its untidy breadth, it not infrequently happens that a reader will submit an email with a particular perplexity, seeking a guidance more personal than the posts can provide. Catholic Phoenix often refers these cases to Denys Powlett-Jones, who is widely regarded for his powers of analysis and his willingness to charge unto the breaches that an addled postmodernity has dared to open in the bastion of common sense, that a misguided spirit of reform has bored into the barbican of liturgical sensibility, and that an all-menacing cultural relativism has insidiously introduced into the bulwarks and buttresses of Western civilization.1

One result of Mr. Powlett-Jones’s handling of these matters has been that the emails have been increasingly addressed to Mr. Powlett-Jones exclusively, which leads to this further—and for you, dear reader, fortunate—consequence: Catholic Phoenix can now feature the series that has come to be called the “Dear Denys” emails.

Happy reading.

Reader-Submitted Artwork, Titled "What It Felt Like to Read Denys's Response to My Email"


1His regular readers know that Mr. Powlett-Jones composes sentences much more simple and direct than this last one. The full blame for the decidedly Baroque grotesqueness of this tricolic beast should be charged to J. Hanson, and not D. Powlett-Jones.

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