Christ is coming, the Prince of peace! To prepare for his Nativity means to reawaken in ourselves and in the world the hope for peace. First of all, peace in hearts, which is built by putting down the weapons of rancor, of revenge and of every form of egoism. - Pope John Paul II (via Disputations)
Von Balthasar appealed to me more right from the day I first read him. Sort of the Emmaus experience, mutatis mutandis. Often reading him my heart would burn within. Von Balthasar opened up the Scriptures as no other theologian has ever done for me. He opened up vistas into the vast Catholic heritage, and introduced me to some of the great saints. It is due to his book on Saint Therese of Lisieux that I fell in love with her. - Gerard of Blog for Lovers
Christians in particular are apt to mischaracterize a mystery as a problem. God's Revelation is not a code to be deciphered; whatever fits inside my head is finite, and if Revelation is anything, it's not finite. ...A failure to accept mystery is, to my mind, one of the primary errors of Open Theism, which seems quite proud of the fact of resolving the "problem" of free will by stripping God of His perfection. - Tom of Disputations
Men are sex-driven hominoids with a brain tagging along for the ride to serve the occasionally useful purposes of making money and performing manual labor. None ever came willingly to civilization unless dragged there by a woman – his befuddled brain balancing the bane against the blessing, the agony of her victory against the ecstasy of her teat – or by a religious conversion. Of this latter group some are even serious about it, wearing hairshirts or disappearing into the desert or behind tall walls. But the rest of us take the old man everywhere we go, even to church. When we made the profession of faith, there were two guys standing there, one who wants to be a saint and one who misses the bad old days; one who wants to love one woman and another who is impressed by numbers; one who wants to be a good man and one who would be a man about town; one who is serious about humility, but who can't stop taking himself seriously. In short, our brains may be narrowly focused, but expansive enough to be of two minds on at least one issue. - William Luse of Apologia, on the issue of public breastfeeding.
It has become increasingly apparent to me that the extent to which you trust church tradition is really the central question of Christianity. It's an even more basic question than whether you trust the Bible, because the Bible is itself part of church tradition. Catholics and Orthodox see the whole thing as one unbroken chain; Martin Luther (and, I'm guessing, Calvin) had no quarrel with the first thousand years or so, but thought things went astray after that; more radical types have tried to recover the spirit of apostolic times, or their own personal encounters with God, and regard that whole history as born of human error and political interests.... And yet everyone relies to some extent on the old texts, because what else do we have? Yet if you don't really trust those who wrote them or compiled them, it can lead to some odd readings. As often seems to be the case, I can see both sides here...Either way we have the problem of knowing God through human limitations, always a tricky business even in the best circumstances. --Camassia
Brevity, traditionally, has been a sign of a good confession, along with honesty and humility. You're not going to confession because you feel bad; you're going to confession because you did some bad things... I find that monthly confession is an excellent practice. When I was researching medieval confraternities for my dissertation, I found an Italian confraternity rule from the 14th century that recommended the practice with the analogy, "In the world, men shave or change their shirts once a month..."- Henry of A Plumbline in the Wind
'Sen. John Edwards (N.C.), the prototypical modern Democratic presidential candidate, was handed the hot potato in a recent Democratic debate. The question was, "Do you have a faith, and would you invoke the name of God when discussing a policy?" Edwards, a longtime Methodist, responded like an artful dodger: "My religion does not inform my public policy, but it does inform my values."' Makes sense, that would mean that his public policy has no value. --Jeff of Curt Jester
For the last hundred years or so, there has been a concerted effort to sever women from femininity in the name of feminism. The major social and technological factors that have made this even remotely possible have been contraception, abortion, and bottle feeding... The wide spread acceptance of bottle feeding was what originally made it possible for women to become a part of the industrial work force...Because we are fallen, we have come to see breasts as primarily sex toys for slavering men, rather than seeing that their sexuality derives from their nurturing function. When we separated the meanings of sexuality from each other, when soi-disant 'feminism' advocated the masculinizing of women, we created the situation where the very thought of a child suckling on the breast gets the 'ick' response, but the thought of feeding a child chemical soup from a plastic container through an artificial nipple does not. --Alicia of Fructus Ventris
When I was first given the desire to bring souls to God, I also felt, at the same time, the fear that I would not bring them closer to God at all but instead turn them into little clones of myself. I see that kind of thing happen all the time, usually in the Evangelical churches: new converts are recreated in their pastors' images and likenesses. Personality cults are scary. Antony taught me to pray, "Jesus, do not let them be like me. Let them be like You." Having several versions of a mere person is neither catholic nor Catholic. We are called to be Christ figures. - Enbrethiliel of Sancta Sanctis
As medieval Homer would say, d'oheth! - Robert of Hokie Pundit
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