This week my wife almost bought me a tie. She’s visiting Ireland with my kids and her mom and they went to see the Book of Kells which is a beautiful illuminated Latin text of the Gospels. It’s 1200 years old and very cool. I was jealous. On their way out they stopped in the gift shop and found that the whole store seemed to be devoted to me. At least at first blush. My initials “BK” are the same as the… Read more

This week I was fascinated with the National Geographic look at the pontificate of Francis so far. They give a glimpse at how Francis is working within and without the traditional structures of the Vatican. It’s worth a read. One thing I found fascinating was the summary of how Francis differs from Benedict in matter of diplomacy. It was offered by Federico Lombardi, the longtime Vatican communications official. Here’s an excerpt from the article: After meeting with a world leader, the former pope [Benedict]… Read more

I will never forget the night my journey to understand the sacraments began. It was 1999 and I was meeting with a small with my Lutheran church. I had recently had a strong personal encounter with Jesus Christ and had begun going to meetings in the Church with a passion and fire to learn and share about Jesus. Then the leader, Byron, said something unexpected. He stated that we received the grace of God in the sacraments. This shocked and… Read more

As pravoslavie.ru reports: The reason of the break-off is the dispute on the canonical jurisdiction of Qatar territories, to which both Local Churches have claims This break has been on the horizon for a couple of years now, and it breaks my heart. Antioch and Jerusalem are among the very earliest Churches and most ancient patriarchates. Although neither of these Churches are in communion with Rome, it’s still very sad to see something, which appears to me as a glorified pissing match, turn… Read more

One of my pet peeves is going to a church where people pressure you to take your kids to a nursery to to children’s church. This was actually a big issue when I was a protestant. It is less of an issue in the Catholic Church. The reason I was bothered by it was because I feared that separating kids from worship would be detrimental to both the spiritual life of the children as well as to the broader life… Read more

Recently Theologues asked me to contribute a few titles to their summer reading list. I thought I would include my selections here you you all. On top of these I have also been reading some Plato, Hume, and a few books by Michael Chabon (just finished this, and started this yesterday). There’s also my comps list too…. which I won’t put down in it’s entirety here, but I’m sure you’ll here about it soon. It’s not really “summer reading” as much as… Read more

I’ve now had time to sink into Pope Francis’ new encyclical on “Care for our Common Home.” I hope to unpack more of it soon but there have been a few quotes from it that have been coming back to me over and over.  These are probably not the 10 things everyone needs to take away from the letter, but I think they might be the things I need to take seriously in my own life. Hopefully in the weeks… Read more