The Formal Cause of Catholic Phoenix

Catholic Phoenix posts the arguments, opinions, thoughts, researches, musings, and jests—whatever might instruct, entertain, or edify—from various contributors.

That variety is an important element of Catholic Phoenix’s form. There’s unity, but there’s no uniformity. The unity consists in all the contributors’ sincerely held Catholic Faith. The variety arises from each contributor’s education and experience, personal predilections and individual aversions, formal line of work and preferred form of play, steady habits and new insights, and all else that enters into his or her idiosyncrasy.

The variety among the contributors provides readers of Catholic Phoenix with a variety of content. The variety of content gives—we hope—a certain kind of pleasure. You’ll find what Dryden found in Chaucer’s Tales: that here is God’s plenty. You’ll also find (to paraphrase an even earlier Catholic dramatist) that because of Catholic Phoenix’s many different contributors, age cannot wither it, nor custom stale its infinite variety, that other websites cloy the appetites they feed, but that CP makes hungry where most it satisfies.

But while you won’t find uniformity at Catholic Phoenix, you will find a principle of unity does run throughout: the Roman Catholic Faith, sincerely held by each contributor, seriously discussed at this site, and thoroughly permeating the thoughts—both high and low, in true Chaucerian fashion—expressed in posts and comments.