A Velvet Elvis made with golden thread...

...is still a Velvet Elvis.

Jim Manney posts about the St. John's Abbey illuminated Bible project.

Alas, the project enshrines the most cack-handed, neutered translation currently in print, the New Revised Standard Version. A translation expressly disapproved by Rome, but, then again, that's probably the point.

Oh, to be a cutting-edge religious. What with all the increasing elbow-room in the abbeys, and suchlike.

Why not the Douay, in one of its iterations? The Knox?

Nah--too faithful to tradition.

It's more than a little like someone painstakingly studying, re-creating and applying the techniques and materials of a Da Vinci, Michelangelo or Bernini to preserve "Dogs Playing Poker" for posterity.