I've alluded to my years in the Catholic Students Association in pieces like this. Now you can get a little more flavour of what that was like in the following video. Thanks so much to Jeanne Geidel-Neal for the music for this video. As noted elsewhere, the "straight outta Irondale" folks won't like this, but …
The "Arabs" of Thomas Aquinas Weren't Arabs At All
Returning to the site Ite ad Thomam, I saw an advertisement for the "Annual Fall Workshop on Aquinas and the 'Arabs'" at Marquette University (not, these days, an ideal venue for such a traditional Catholic conference.) For someone like myself who started the Summa as an undergraduate and finished it as a PhD candidate, it …
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When One Steals From A Church, One Sins Twice
Never gave this much thought, but from the "Ite ad Thomam" site: So stealing from a church is actually two sins, theft and sacrilege? Or is it still one – sacrilegious theft? Two sins. And both have to be confessed. In other words, it's not enough to say merely "I stole something from a building," …
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Sometimes It Pays to Think
Like in this, from A.B. Bruce's The humiliation of Christ, about Eutyches, the Monophysite fanatic: It is plain from those representations that Eutyches had no distinct definite conception of the constitution of our Lord's person. He felt rather than thought on the subject of Christology. He did not pretend to comprehend the mystery of the …
My "Journey" with Jürgen Moltmann
Diving for stuff in a discard bin isn’t the classiest way to spend one’s time, but for the academic diving in the free book bin at the used book store can be a true adventure. (Diving in the dumpster may be a necessity for the adjunct academic, and the new overtime rules don’t help a …
Pope Francis and Two-Way Ignorance
Pope Francis isn't much of a fan of things American these days, but his visit to this country was a revelation: Prior to his election Francis had never set foot in the United States, making him the only pope in the last eighty years other than St. John XXIII who had never been to America …
You Really Can Do Biblical Preaching From a Lectionary
Recently my wife and I ventured to Regent University for me to deliver a paper. While there we got the chance to view one of the University's new acquisitions, namely a Torah scroll from Yemen.The fact that a Christian university could acquire such a donation is a sign of the times: Evangelicals are about the …
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Revisiting the Catholicism of "Christ Among Us"
Educating new Christians in the basics of the faith has always been an important task of the Church. A few years back I featured a series on Cyril of Jerusalem's Catechetical Lectures, which date from the fourth century. Evangelical churches can be very casual about the whole business, their reputation for dogmatism notwithstanding. With Roman …
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When the Catholic Faithful Were Not Allowed to Vote
If you listen to Catholic commentators--especially conservative ones--you'll hear about the obligation of the faithful not only to vote but to vote for the proper person, i.e., one that is pro-life, etc., and that it's a sin to fail to do so. But there was a time when the Church had a less roseate view …
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Just One Bull Away…
His Holiness has done it again with Amoris Laetitia, his latest encyclical on the family. The traditionalists tell us he's betrayed basic Roman Catholic Doctrine. The loyalists (to the Church) say it really doesn't say anything new. And the revisionists fell a "thrill up their leg" while reading it. Given all of that, I'm reposting …
