Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
Thad Stevens wonders why it's hard to get people out of the Episcopal Church: Most Common Cause parishes don’t compare favourably with neighbouring Episcopal parishes in worship and the Sacraments. In most cases, the problem isn’t due to size or limited financial resources, but to attitude–‘snake-belly’ low services and sloppy celebrations of the Eucharist don’t …
Continue reading "The Real Presence Won’t Get People Out of the Episcopal Church"
This, under the Roman Emperor Gelarius: But that which gave rise to public and universal calamity, was the tax imposed at once on each province and city. Surveyors having been spread abroad, and occupied in a general and severe scrutiny, horrible scenes were exhibited, like the outrages of victorious enemies, and the wretched state of …
"Well, for openers...where will Christianity be centred? In the U.S.A.? Just think!--by the way, you can read this in Position Paper 6--under the title of 'The USA religiously considered and the American way of life,' as they call it." He gives a summary of the Paper. The United States as a socio-political entity was set …
Continue reading "So Where Should the Centre of Christianity Be? In the United States?"
The Connecticut legislature, for the moment at least, throws in the towel on trying to restructure Roman Catholicism: State legislators have tabled for the rest of the session a controversial bill that would have mandated changes in the corporate structure of parishes and institutions affiliated with the Catholic Church... The proposed bill raised by the …
Continue reading "Regulating How Churches Govern Themselves"
In the summer of 1972, I was making my transition from being an Episcopalian to a Roman Catholic. That transition is commonly referred to today as “swimming the Tiber,” but at the time I was also making another water crossing that, for me, was also very significant: we sold our home in Palm Beach and, …
The world has believed this insignificant group of lowly, unimportant, and uneducated men precisely because the divine character of what happened is more marvellously apparent in the insignificance of such witnesses. What gave power to the preachers who persuaded the world was not the eloquence of the words they uttered, but the miracles of the …
Look, now, at the great virtue called fortitude. Is not its very function—to bear patiently with misfortune—overwhelming evidence that human life is beset with unhappiness, however wise a man may be? It is beyond my comprehension how the Stoics can boldly argue that such ills are not really ills, meanwhile allowing that, if a philosopher …
Continue reading "The Ultimate Good in Life, the Stoics, and the New Atheists"
The city of man, for all of the width of its expansion throughout the world and for all of the depth of its differences in this place and that, is a single community. The simple truth is that the bond of a common nature makes all human beings one. Nevertheless, each individual in this community …
In the case of Cain and Abel, there was no rivalry in any cupidity for the things of earth, nor was there any envy or temptation to murder arising from a fear of losing the sovereignty in both were ruling together. In this case, Abel had no ambition for domination in the city that his …
Continue reading "Evil men hate those who are good for no other reason than that they are good"
Something Anglicans need to remember: Heretics are those who entertain in Christ's Church unsound and distorted ideas and stubbornly refuse, even when warned, to return to what is sound and right, to correct their contagious and death-dealing docrtrines, but go on defending them. When they leave the Church they are ranked as enemies who try …
Continue reading "What Heretics Are For: A Reminder for the Anglicans and the Rest of Us"
Positive Infinity 