Ever seen a cow hop on two legs? That’s how she avoided me when I closed in with the milk bucket.I was engrossed by this engaging story at The Slow Cook .
To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved.
George MacDonald
The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis"Oh, of course, I'm wrong. Everything I say or do is wrong, according to you."
"But of course!" said the Spirit, shining with love and mirth so that my eyes were dazzled. "That's what we all find when we reach this country. We've all been wrong! That's the great joke. There's no need to go on pretending one was right! After that we begin living."
It's a challenge! I'm calling out the entire Catholic World on the Internet. Tell us why you are stayingAnd I was tagged. Hey, I don't turn down those challenges.
I stay Catholic because it's true. It's all true.===========
Where else would I go?
I know from experience it is quite easy to fall into this suspicious mindset and to assume something untrue about now-Blessed Romero. ...Jeff Miller has an interesting overview with plenty of links.
What most people don’t realize is that it was Pope Benedict XVI who removed the final hurdle in the 35-year process. Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia told reporters that it was Benedict who “gave the green light.” Paglia says Benedict told him this Dec. 20, 2012 that the case has moved forward. It would seem ironic that the same man who wrote the CDF’s warning on aspects of Liberation Theology, would be involved in Archbishop Romero’s cause moving forward. Ironic only if the Archbishop actually was a proponent of this theology.
Critics have faulted “Romero” for the flatness of the supporting characters, a fair charge. Yet the portrayal of Romero himself is admirably textured, from its sensitive depiction of his gradual transformation to its nuanced handling of Romero’s relationship to liberation theology, disparaged by some critics as thinly baptized Marxism.Steven D. Greydanus says that the film Romero is a good place to begin learning about the now Blessed Oscar Romero. This is a movie I skipped because I just wasn't interested. South American politics. Ugh. I guess I'm more interested now. Plus, Raul Julia!
Many times this blog has mourned the lack of decent coverage on the persecution religious minorities, which should be the No. 1 religion story in the world every year. The numbers of people dying for their faith – or for stands mandated by their faith (and there is a difference) – is at ever increasing levels according to the latest Pew research.Crux has put together a lot of pieces about Columbian martyrs. I'm sending you first to GetReligion because that pulls the links together in one handy spot where the article is a nice overview and guide to what's available.
Which is why it was nice to see Crux’s package this past Sunday on Christianity’s new martyrs in Colombia. Assembled by veteran reporter John L. Allen (who was down that way for beatification ceremonies in El Salvador for Archbishop Oscar Romero), it concentrated on a part of the world that has gotten less attention than, say, the Middle East in terms of human suffering.
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| The Blues painted by Karin Jurick |
Processed food is evil. Natural food is good. These are religious mantras, the condensed version of simplistic fairy tales that divide up foods, and the world, according to moralistic binaries. Genuine nutritional science, like all science, rejects oversimplification. “Natural” and “processed” are not scientific categories, and neither is good nor evil. These terms should be employed by monks and gurus, not doctors and scientists. Yet it is precisely such categories, largely unquestioned, that determine most people’s supposedly scientific decisions about what and how to eat.The Gluten Lie is a book examining the myths around which many define "healthy eating." What gives this a different twist is that the author is a religion scholar. Here's an interview with him at The Atlantic. (Via Lottie + Doof)
From day one, Ash Wednesday, I was captivated. I happened to be in the Swansea area, so I went to St Illtyd's in Port Tennant, a neat little community with rows of terraced houses clinging to the side of a very steep hill overlooking the bay. In every church I went to on this odyssey, without fail there was something to entrance me. It could be anything from the priest's trainers - priestly footwear is something I could write a whole article about - to the majesty of a stained glass window. At St Illtyd's it was the statue outside of Christ on the cross. It was made from some metal that had corroded, kind of creating new stigmata on it. Transfixed, I looked up at it for what must have been ages, until I spotted a couple of teenagers just across the road, cigarettes in mouths, beholding me doubtfully.(Via GetReligion.)
Morello quotes from a twelfth century monastic letter by Guido II, The Ladder of Monks, on the contemplative life where lectio, meditatio, ratio, and contemplatio are presented as four rungs leading from earth to heaven. The four rungs and what they mean are:I love lectio divina and I love these three ways of looking at these steps. These are not only now in my quote journal but in the front of my Bible.
Reading seeks;
meditation finds;
prayer asks;
contemplation tastes. OR,
Reading, so to speak, puts food solid in the mouth,
meditation chews and breaks it,
prayer attains its savor,
contemplation is itself the sweetness that rejoices and refreshes. OR,
Reading concerns the surface,
meditation concerns the depth
prayer concerns request for what is desired,
contemplation concerns delight in discovered sweetness.
“You know that ‘no weapons at work’ policy?” I asked the twitching and growing hairy monstrosity standing less than ten feet from me. His yellow eyes bored into me with raw animal hatred. There was nothing recognizably human in that look.What else are you gonna do when your boss turns werewolf?
“I never did like that rule,” I said as I bent down and drew my gun from my ankle holster, put the front sight on the target and rapidly fired all five shots from my snub-nosed .357 Smith & Wesson into Mr. Huffman’s body. God bless Texas.
Monster Hunters International, Larry Correia
When things are crappy, and they often are, sometimes the best you can do is just turn up and do the will of God. That’s what our Lord did, and it was sometimes a pretty nasty experience. It’s okay though, because the miserable part isn’t the end of the story, is it?I need these reminders because, of course, Jen is absolutely right. I tend to forget I'm in the middle of a battlefield.
Meanwhile, hold onto this thought: The Church is not a safe place. The Church is literally the front lines in the battle between eternal good and absolute evil. It’s going to look, feel, sound, and reek like a battlefield. If everything is always quiet on the front, you probably aren’t on the front.
Jennifer Fitz, Letter to a Discouraged Evangelist
In Science we have been reading only the notes to a poem; in Christianity we find the poem itself.Perfectly put. The notes are interesting and valuable but can't convey the whole essence of the thing.
C.S. Lewis, Miracles
Heaven and Hell: Visions of the Afterlife in the Western Poetic Tradition by Louis Markos"God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to Hell [Tartarus]", and delivered them into chains of darkenss, to be reserved unto judgment." What makes the use here of Tartarus quite stunning is that the rebellious Titans of Greek mythology share much in common with the "sons of God" who mate with the "daughters of men" to produce the nephilim (see Gen. 6:1-4) and who are then (according to the pseudepigraphal book of 1 Enoch) put in prison to await judgment. ... just as Hell in the New Testament is linked both to the angelic rebellion of the "sons of God" and to the punishment of sinners, so Tartarus functions as both the prison of the Titans and the place of suffering for such archetypal sinners as Tantalus, Ixion, and Sisyphus: the sinners, that is, whose cries Orpheus hears rising up from the pit below.Of particular interest to me were the in-depth looks at the Divine Comedy, the hijacking of Milton's Satan by the Romantics (I will never look at William Blake the same way), and how it continues to influence us today via the Byronic hero.
Purgatory is not about "earning our salvation," but, in having already been saved by Christ's sacrifice on the cross, working with the Spirit to present ourselves as clean vessels. Out of pure grace and love, the Prince lifts Cinderella out of the cinders and takes her to his castle. But Cinderella would never think of entering her future home until she had the chance to wash, fix her hair, and put on her finest gown. The American Christian, in his somewhat adolescent way, asks if all of this is "fair." But Purgatory is not about fairness; it is about freedom.This signals that I can trust Markos to be just as careful in communicating information I am not familiar with. It's nice to be able to trust an author that much.
It doesn’t matter what any survey says. Whether our culture is 99.9% Catholic or .00009%, our mission is utterly unchanged.That Pew survey about more people not calling themselves Christian didn't surprise me one bit. It is just getting closer reporting the actual truth than when people reflexively said, "Of course I'm Christian."
Jennifer Fitz, Sticking the Corners blog
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It broke as do so many stories that burst upon the 24/7 media scene these days – with a Tweet, followed by nearly 3,000 retweets.I've said it before, I'll say it again. If you want to know the real scoop about how religion is being reported and what really happened, read GetReligion. Get the rest of this story there.
The Associated Press (@AP) tweeted at 9:26am -- 13 May 15: "BREAKING: Vatican officially recognizes `state of Palestine' in new treaty."
A major diplomatic step forward for Palestinians in their quest to establish an independent state, right?
Sure sounds like it. But no, although clearly another international boost for the Palestinians, it was not the groundbreaking achievement the initial Tweet implied.
That's because the Vatican actually recognized Palestine as a state in 2012. ...
This could be cruddy or good. I hope it will be good, as there’s certainly lots of room for drama in a papal West Wing. It will only be 8 episodes long, but the press release says it’s about “the beginning” of the pontificate of Pius XIII. So I think they want to leave it open for other seasons.
Either way, I guess we’ll find out what Mr. Sorrentino’s pet peeves are.
(And since it’s a Euro production airing on HBO, there will probably be gratuitous naked people but no fight scenes at all. Although I would laugh very hard if they only show Baroque paintings of naked people, with no live-action nakedness at all.)
Until the synod of October 2014, Jorge Mario Bergoglio had repeatedly and in various ways shown encouragement for “openness” in matters of homosexuality and second marriages, each time with great fanfare in the media. Cardinal Kasper explicitly said that he had “agreed” with the pope on his explosive talk at the consistory.Sandro Magister connects the dots and follows them up with an extensive anthology of excerpts from every time that pope has spoken on the subject. I actually hadn't been worrying about this topic, but reading through the excerpts was interesting.
But during that synod the resistance to the new paradigms showed itself to be much more strong and widespread than expected, and determined the defeat of the innovators. The reckless “relatio post disceptationem” halfway through the assembly was demolished by the criticism and gave way to a much more traditional final report. ...
From the end of 2014 until today, there has not been even one more occasion on which he has given the slightest support to the paradigms of the innovators.
On the contrary. He has intensified his remarks on all the most controversial questions connected to the synodal theme of the family: contraception, abortion, divorce, second marriages, homosexual marriage, “gender” ideology. And every time he has spoken of them as a “son of the Church” - as he loves to call himself - with ironclad fidelity to tradition and without swerving by a millimeter from what was said before him by Paul VI, John Paul II, or Benedict XVI.
Don’t expect a “worship style” to do your dirty work. Contemporary worship hasn’t worked. The longer we extend the life of this failed experiment, the more we see the results.
In my experience, contemporary worship brings in three groups. Baby boomers who are still stuck in their rebellion against the establishment, parents who mistakenly think that contemporary worship is the only way for their kids to connect to the church, and a small percentage of young adults who’ve never left and who never knew anything other than contemporary worship.
In modeling worship after commercial entertainment, you’ve compromised your identity, and we’re still not coming back.
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Don’t give us entertainment, give us liturgy. We don’t want to be entertained in church, and frankly, the church’s attempt at entertainment is pathetic. Enough with the theatrics. Enough with the lights, the visuals, the booming audio, the fog machine, the giveaway gimmicks, the whole production. Follow that simple yet profound formula that’s worked for the entire history of the church. Entrance, proclamation, thanksgiving, sending out. Gathering, preaching, breaking bread, going forth in service. Give us a script to follow, give us songs to sing, give us the tradition of the church, give us Holy Scripture to read. Give us sacraments, not life groups, to grow and strengthen us.
Phoebe, on entering the shop, beheld there the already familiar face of the little devourer — if we can reckon his mighty deeds aright — of Jim Crow, the elephant, the camel, the dromedaries, and the locomotive. Having expended his private fortune, on the two preceding days, in the purchase of the above unheard-of luxuries, the young gentleman's present errand was on the part of his mother, in quest of three eggs and half a pound of raisins. These articles Phoebe accordingly supplied, and — as a mark of gratitude for his previous patronage, and a slight super-added morsel after breakfast, put likewise into his hand a whale! The great fish — reversing his experience with the prophet of Nineveh — immediately began his progress down the same red pathway of fate whither so varied a caravan had preceded him. This remarkable urchin, in truth, was the very emblem of old Father Time, both in respect of his all-devouring appetite for men and things, and because he, as well as Time, after engulfing thus much of creation, looked almost as youthful as if he had been just that moment made.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables
I am the man who with utmost daring discovered what has been discovered before.That's the story of my life. But I guess it doesn't make the discovery any less valid or exciting.
G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
