Spanning the Proverbial Globe to Bring You the Constant Variety of Posts
Perhaps Mr. Riddle can answer this: how is it that the Carmelites have avoided the twin temptations of polyester & labyrinths? - Bill of Summa Minutiae
Readers were asked to write a one-sentence description of the simplest way one could tell apart two books titled Witness, one by Whittaker Chambers and the other by Amber Frey. Tim's winning answer:"One witness is about a small group of people spying on an entire society, the other witness is about an entire society spying on a small group of people." - Dawn Eden of Dawn Patrol
My good friend Tim tells me often that he believes that it is my vocation to struggle. And I believe him. I'd like to be a person of great faith. I wish I could move mountains and cure the worlds ill with one fell swoop, but I've heard the position is already Filled. While struggle is a maddening vocation, as I'm sure they all are, I'm happy for it. It keeps me grounded and as humble as someone such as I can be. It leaves me questioning and seeking, and though I sometimes give up for a bit and take a break on the side of the road, I can never stay complacent long. And that leaves me so wonderfully blessed. - Crystal of Some Day Saint
Whose story is it, really? - Roz of "In Dwelling", title of post describing a challenging year (2004)
Christ bore the wounds of His passion in His resurrected body. Though He will no more suffer the pain, will it ever be forgotten? Pain is an existential fact of every man's life, a part of his story, his history; none can pass it by, and insofar as it tends toward salvation, its contribution will live forever. I, like all, have had such moments (I am not in the market for any more at the moment), and a couple of them have made me thankful to be alive. The pain is gone, but the gratitude lives, and it cannot live without the memory. - Bill of Apologia
In our modern day and age, we do not lack whores, prisoners or bankrupt debtors. Our Lord loved all of these classes of people because they depict so well the reality of sin that obtains for all of us. All three classes of people are deemed worthless elements of society. All are branded by bad decisions in their past. Even if they did not fully realize what they were doing at first, the scandal of their misdeed clings to them. Even if they now earnestly desire to undo what wrongs they have done, it is impossible. What a canvas for grace! What a clear anti-pelagian image for theology. -- Old Oligarch
Gelernter examines the Hebrew Scriptures through Puritan eyes. This approach ignores the fact that Puritan theology would have been impossible without Catholic intellectual capital. Any inherently oppositional phenomenon like Puritanism depends for survival on what it opposes. Without something to protest, there is no Protestantism. To put this metaphorically, by identifying Puritanism as the V-8 under the hood of the American experiment, Gelernter slights both pioneering Catholic work on the internal combustion engine, and Presbyterian motor oil, which was Protestant but not necessarily Puritan. Gelernter’s only concession to Catholic influence is a passing reference to “anglo-Catholicism” by way of illustrating the similarity between Americanism and American Zionism. In fact, the first edict of religious toleration in Western history dates back to Constantine rather than to William Penn, John Winthrop, or Thomas Jefferson. Similarly, the right of the people to “alter or abolish” any form of government that fails to secure their God-given rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is an echo of what Augustine of Hippo wrote in his City of God. - P. O'Hannigan of The Paragraph Farmer
I was not offended by Hart's "style"... though when one is accused of heresy one ought to be able to take it personally. It's just that after upwards of two years in this entirely unprofitable weblogging business, I've developed a pretty thick skin, and heretic is the least of the many things I've been called. Many of them are unprintable. You have no idea the names Christians can think of to call you should you, say, write a review of the movie Signs in an effort to disabuse them of its religious pretensions. Noting the 280 emails in his inbox one day, Mr. Hart seems to have encountered this problem and become a bit frazzled by it, such that, in a letter to me, he swears "never again to assay to address such matters in popular publications." This I think would be a shame. If God has given one a gift, I think he is duty-bound to use it. That's what he was trying to do in the WSJ piece - get the Christian voice into the secular sphere; he then found himself under attack, not by frenzied screams from the ACLU and People United for the Separation of Religion from the Rest of the Universe, but from an unlikely quarter: fellow Christians of whose contentiousness, once they get the bit in their mouths, he had no notion. I hope now he has learned the virtues of the delete button and the ineffable pleasure of using it. - Bill of Apologia
I do think that the consumer mentality sneaks into mating in ways that people may not notice. I've observed, for instance, that while some people take marital vows about sickness and health and so on very seriously, this leads them to choose a mate rather the way I'd choose a car: since I can't afford to buy a new one very often, I need one that'll need as few repairs as possible. Which brings me to a remark at Evangelical Outpost about National Public Radio, of all things: "Listening to NPR is like dating a charming and beautiful woman that has a semi-serious personality disorder; you're enchanted by her yet know you can’t commit to someone so troubled. " Yep, emotionally troubled women are fine to fool around with, but heaven forbid you should actually marry one. Why, that could be hard work! - Camassia
Europe has been the site of immense suffering over the past hundred years. This suffering may have led to the attitude: "Ask not what you can do for God, but ask what God can do for you." What has the Catholic Church done for me lately? How is it helping me? What can the Church offer to a culture so utterly committed to the opposite of sacrifice? What can a man who gave his life upon a cross have to say to those who spend the greater part of their domestic GDPs on preventing any human burden whatsoever? When the focus of one's life is one's own ease, enjoyment and comfort, there really isn't much Christianity has to offer. - commenter on Amy's blog concerning the decline of faith in Europe
But, to my mind, the very fact that God gave Adam and Eve free will despite the consequences, and then chose to redeem mankind without destroying it, suggests how important it is to Him that we have it, which in turn suggests the enormity of coercing the will of another human being.- Tom of Disputations
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