Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
It's another week along the Southwest Freeway in Houston as Victoria Osteen has embroiled herself in a controversy over remarks about why we worship God. The usual people say the usual things, and the usual fracas ensues, just as it has over much of what her husband Joel says. I think we'd be better off, …
Continue reading "Victoria Osteen's Moment, or "What Are We Doing Here Anyway?""
From Augustine, City of God, XII, 22: That the whole human race has been condemned in its first origin, this life itself, if life it is to be called, bears witness by the host of cruel ills with which it is filled. Is not this proved by the profound and dreadful ignorance which produces all …
@DaleMCoulter muses on his students: The task was not to defend the tributary of Christianity in which my students had first touched the waters of baptism, but to show them that it was fed by a vast river stretching back two millennia. In short, I defended Christianity by helping them swim upstream so that they could …
Continue reading "The Complicated Business of the "Tradition""
Amidst the sorrow and tragedy that dominates the news these days, the Vatican weighs in on a matter that may seem trivial to some: The Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship (CDW) has urged the church’s bishops to crack down on boisterous exchanges of peace during the Eucharist service. In a letter dated 8 June 2014 …
Continue reading "The Sign of Peace and Those "Happy-Clappy" Masses"
Translated, Church of England Anglo-Catholics: From the moment the General Synod voted for women priests in 1992, it was inevitable that it would also vote for women bishops...Conservative Anglo-Catholics now face a simple choice: stay in an established Church that has reaffirmed its liberal Protestantism by this vote, or seek full communion with Rome, either …
Continue reading "@holysmoke: The "un-English and un-Manly" Hit the Wall"
The oldest Pentecostal educational institution that I am aware of is the Holmes Bible College in Greenville, SC. For many years Dr. Paul F. Beacham was its President, impacting the lives of many of his students. In his 1950 book Questions and Answers on the Scriptures and Related Subjects (published by the Pentecostal Holiness Church publishing house), …
Continue reading "So Who Are My Mother and My Brothers? Part II"
By throwing the towel in as a priest: During “The Watch” on Maundy Thursday, I did what I said I would do – in giving to our Lady (as Father Jay Hughes did) my priesthood. Whether I can resume it is up to God in Christ who called me to it many years ago. But …
In the moderate panic (are people who are really moderates supposed to panic? isn't that for emotionalist extremists? ) this is easy to overlook about Dave Brat, the Roman Catholic economic professor who upset Eric Cantor in the Republican primary for his U.S. House seat: Brat, who is Catholic, got his masters from Princeton Theological …
Those of you who follow my Twitter feed noted an link to a CNBC article about why my contemporaries are cohabiting in their dotage. I sensed a little pushback on Facebook on this, so I think that, in my advocacy for the abolition of civil marriage, some clarification is in order. I do not think …
Continue reading "A Clarification on My Position on Civil Marriage"
As documented by Thomas Aquinas about the frequent reception of the Eucharist, in Summa Theologiae, 3, q. 80, a. 10 (I have added the papal dates): In the primitive Church, when the devotion of the Christian faith was more flourishing, it was enacted that the faithful should communicate daily: hence Pope Anaclete (76-88) says (Ep. …
Positive Infinity 