Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
That's what David Phipps of the Church Society tells us re John Henry Newman's conversion to Catholicism: No one can be a Catholic without a simple faith, that what the Church declares in God's name, is God's word, and therefore true. A man must simply believe that the Church is the oracle of God. When …
Continue reading "Is Roman Catholicism Really the Ultimate Form of Fundamentalism?"
In digging through some archives, I've put together three issues of the newsletter of the National Service Committee of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal for June-August 1981. There was nothing special in the selection, just what I had available. There is one noteworthy event covered in the June issue: the meeting of Ralph Martin and other …
He couldn't resist the dig for the artwork being used for the Pope's upcoming visit to the UK: I swear, the Catholic Church in this country is incapable of designing anything that doesn’t feature Pentecostal flames that look as if they’ve been copied from a 30-year-old album cover. I’m sure the Holy Father will be …
Continue reading "Note to Damian Thompson: Lay Off the Old Album Covers"
From his Commentary on the Apostles' Creed (36-38): Whence also the Apostle says, "All Scripture given by inspiration of God is profitable for instruction." And therefore it seems proper in this place to enumerate, as we have learned from the tradition of the Fathers, the books of the New and of the Old Testament, which, …
This, from his Homilies on the Gospel 28, is just too much like our own time: There was long life and health, material prosperity, growth of population and the tranquillity of daily peace, yet while the world was flourishing in itself, in their hearts it had withered away. Our epitaph also? Translation from Donald Dudley's …
Continue reading "Gregory the Great on Rome (and Perhaps Us) Prepared to Decline"
This is the last part of this magnificent sermon. The introduction is here, and the first point is here. Basically, Christians, in this oblivion of both God and herself into which she is plunged, the great God knows where to find her. He has heard her voice, at his pleasure, amid the noise of the …
The beginning of the sermon, with an introduction and links to the second point, is here. Man, which you see bonded to himself by his self-esteem, was not created with this defect. In the beginning, God made him in his image, and the name of the image that was proclaimed was not for himself. An …
There is simply no preacher of the Word who has the stature in English literature that Jaques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627-1704) has in French. Although he is best known for his funeral orations and some of his polemical works, IMHO his best works are his devotional books such as Elevations on the Mysteries and the magnificent Meditations …
I've always been a strong advocate of patristic studies. That's not an easy advocacy in Evangelical Christianity, but it's one that needs to be made. It's not always easy in Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy either, because the Fathers of the Church--or more precisely those who wrote and, as we learn here, preached, during the Roman …
At the end of an otherwise interesting post, James Gibson at Sanctus makes the following parting shot: The visceral reaction against the Manhattan Declaration is a case study in the evangelical ghetto mentality. Born in ignorance, it grows into bigotry and a most un-Christlike lack of charity. If he was fishing for understanding, he needs …
Continue reading "Are People Who Don't Like the Manhattan Declaration Necessarily Bigots?"
Positive Infinity 