Jack who?

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Aug 25, 2005

I winced at this detail from Sandro Magister's follow-up on WYD.

Cardinal Angelo Scola, one of the many bishops who came to catechize the young people during the first three days of the vigil with the pope, thought he would win them over with a ten-minute recitation from "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac.

Correction and retraction: Magister's (and thus my own) estimate of Scola's catechesis was faulty. His mention of Kerouac was brief and pointed: he drew a fruitful contrast between the self-indulgent sentimentalism of the vagabond and the purposeful discipline of the pilgrim. An Italian version is available on-line here. As a film version of Kerouac's On the Road is in the making, Scola's remarks were more timely than I'd imagined as well. Scola is a weighty presence and a good citizen, and I'm happy to have been off-target here.