I wanted to ignore this but couldn't: The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, was today branded a ‘papal puppet’ after he became the first leader of the Church of England to accept visions of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes as historical fact. He asserted that 18 visions of Our Lady allegedly experienced by Bernadette …
Reflections on an Orthodox View of the Eucharist: Part IV
Continuing from before with John of Damascus' The Orthodox Faith, 4, 13: The bread and the wine are not merely figures of the body and blood of Christ (God forbid!) but the deified body of the Lord itself: for the Lord has said, "This is My body," not, this is a figure of My body: …
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Reflections on an Orthodox View of the Eucharist: Part III
Continuing in this series, we get to the heart of the matter: The body which is born of the holy Virgin is in truth body united with divinity, not that the body which was received up into the heavens descends, but that the bread itself and the wine are changed into God's body and blood. …
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Reflections on an Orthodox View of the Eucharist: Part II
I pick up from last time in John of Damascus' The Orthodox Faith, 4,13: For it was fitting that not only the first-fruits of our nature should partake in the higher good but every man who wished it, and that a second birth should take place and that the nourishment should be new and suitable …
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Reflections on an Orthodox View of the Eucharist: Part I
In a recent posting on MissionalCOG on the contextualisation of Communion, the thread turned from how to contextualise it to what it meant, and specifically whether it was sacramental or simply an ordinance. Related to this question is the nature of the Eucharist. It's always bothered me that Evangelicals, who are generally solicitous about their …
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Mass Confusion: Introit
This week I'm starting a podcast series featuring Roman Catholic liturgical music from the 1960's and 1970's. Since the Vatican has been busy outlawing certain forms of the divine name and other reversions to the "traditional" Mass, I'm entitling this series "Mass Confusion." The best place to start the Mass is with an Introit (generally …
Society and the State are Different
This interesting comment from "JaquesArden54" in Why Anglican England is better than Secular France: The French Etat - and the French people in general - have forgotten that there is a difference between the State and Society. This confusion of two distinct realities is an error found within New Labour, Dave's Tories and the European …
Pope Benedict XVI and Ferdinand Lot On the Christian and the State
From here, relative to his visit to France: It seems obvious to me today that laïcité (the French policy of exclusion of any religious content in the life of the state) in itself is not in contradiction with the faith. I would even say that it is a fruit of the faith because the Christian …
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Reply to Jonathan Martin on Pentecost and Catholic Theology
I noted here that Jonathan Martin has written a paper entitled, "Spirit, Apocalypse and Ethics: Reading Catholic Moral Theology as a Pentecostal" in The Journal of Pentecostal Theology. (The abstract is here.) First: congratulations are in order. It's great to be a published author. It's not always easy either, because everyone else wants "a piece …
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Liberation Ordination and Women Priests in Roman Catholicism
There are some in (well, maybe) the Roman Catholic Church who are taking matters into their own hands: A few weeks ago, a group called Roman Catholic Womenpriests staged what it called an ordination, vesting three Boston-area women in white chasubles and red stoles. It told the local papers that the ordinations were valid, despite …
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