At our Saturday meeting we considered how James Joyce “has a distinctive take on things … which flow finally from Jesus of Nazareth” as contended by Fr. Barron in the opening paragraph. The book contains the following references to Joyce.
p. 20 “ … we turn to the artists of our time to understand the human condition … the multivalent and disquietingly off-centered inner monologues of Joyce’s characters ….
p. 76 “I can't help but see a link between this more classical Christian ideal of freedom and the wonderfully rambling monologue of Molly Bloom at the close of Joyce's Ulysses. The word that returns like a mantra in Molly's stream of consciousness, that echoes almost comically through the entire speech, and that brings the monologue and the novel as a whole to a close is "yes": “... and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so that he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes." As she arranges imaginatively around the whole of her experience and affirms all of it, Molly, though physically confined to her bed, is supremely free, since she is able to say only "yes," drawing to her breast the whole of life. In this she is like the God of Thomas Aquinas who is "unable" to sin... consistently, almost compulsively, affirms, drawing to her breasts the energy of existence."
I’m not familiar with Joyce’s works and look to Mike Casey to explain to us how Fr. Barron's thesis might or might not be the case.
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