Video Meliora, proboque; Deteriora sequor

I think the model of youth ministry which focuses on serving and catering youth is a dead end. The best mode of youth ministry is one that rather challenges youth to serve: simply a variation of and preparation for life as an adult Catholic: discipleship. The Church isn't here to entertain you - you're here, a baptized Christian to love Christ and serve others, filled with that love. Would that parishes learn and live by this: emphasize continued spiritual and formation of all parishioners, as well as encourage discipleship - offering opportunities within the parish as well as pointing outward toward the mission territory right outside the door - of all parishioners, old...and young. - Amy Welborn

I found this article [Leaving New Orleans and the Catholic church] on NCR [National Catholic Reporter] to be rather ironic...Now even for NCR it is difficult to understand this article appearing. Would you see in the National Review "Why I am no longer a conservative" or the new Republic "Why I am no longer a liberal." Or do they just allow an ode to leaving the Church since in many ways they have also done so? - Curt Jester

As it is, it should be shorter, and much funnier [as should Bernanos's novel, come to that]. - Tom of Disputations, on his parody post entitled "Dairy of a Country Priest"

There is one disease that has not only infected the world, but it has also invaded the Church...This disease, for which I do not have name, is typified by a radical contempt for Authority - an unwillingness to submit quietly to the decisions of Authority even when one disagrees. This most often comes up when Authority seems to have made a prudential mistake...The dust-up at Ave Maria School of Law is a case in point. The students there don't like the fact that the administration wants to move the school to Florida. And on the surface, I must admit that it seems like a very bad idea. But the reaction to this decision on the part of some students has been one of the most un-Christian and rebellious I have ever seen. - Jeff of "Hallowed Ground"

It was rumored that Anne Bolyn asked to see John Fisher's head before it was placed on London Bridge. The tale is most likely false-but behind it certainly lies some truth. You can be sure that Anne Bolyn nagged Henry for the death of John Fisher-he was a lone voice reminding Henry of his sinful ways. Anne probably knew that Henry also had a fascination for truth (as Herod did), and that she needed to force the issue if she didn't want to lose her place. This drama is carried out over and over at different levels in our own lives. We betray God with sin because we fear some earthly consequence more than we fear God. - Jim at "Bethune Catholic"

Aside from good television, Irwin was to me a reminder of the natural affinity Americans have for Australians...If we were not Americans but given the choice of what to be, I believe that many, perhaps most, of us would gladly choose to be Australians. We have a common national equation: vulgar Englishmen plus wilderness. With the Canadians, there’s some Frenchiness with which we can’t connect, and the English themselves seem somewhat above us. But we can look at the Australians and say, “If we were there, and had funny accents, that’s what we’d be like.” - blogger at "Snarky Bastards"

In the proper calendar of the Discalced Carmelites, today is the feast of the Transverberation of the Heart of St Teresa. - John at "Inn at the End of the World" - I have no idea what he said but it sounded cool.

As Ronald Knox shrewdly observed in The Hidden Stream, all supernatural mysteries are rooted in natural mysteries: "It’s not surprising that there is a problem of free will in revealed theology, because there is a problem of free will in common or garden philosophy. The mystery comes in just where you would expect it to come in; where there is a mystery anyhow. The way I have tried to put it . . . is that you may picture human thought as a piece of solid rock, but with a crevice here and there—the places, I mean, where we think and think and it just does not add up. And the Christian mysteries are like tufts of blossom which seem to grow in those particular crevices, there and nowhere else." The supernatural mystery of resurrection grows in a place where there is already a rather difficult philosophical puzzle, namely: What makes a thing the “same thing” through time? - Steven Barr of "First Things"