After my ordination a perky seventeen year old girl at school said, “Fr Longenecker, do you feel ontologically different?” A delightful question which goes to show the high level of orthodox catechesis at St Joseph’s Catholic School. A parishioner asked a similar question, “Does it feel different saying Mass as a Catholic priest than it [...]

Some of my Evangelical friends argue that the Catholic Church is not a missionary Church. Amy Welborn has a post with statistics on the number of Catholic missionaries who gave their life for the faith in 2006. When we take the trouble to read the history of the Catholic Church we learn that in every [...]

One day last summer I got into a conversation with a woman at our community pool. She was an Evangelical Presbyterian, and was intrigued to hear that I was Catholic. Before long I got all the questions fired at me, and we finally got to Mary. The woman asked why we worship Mary. I said [...]

In all the discussion of how terrible (or not) the execution of Saddam was, maybe we didn’t pray enough. Remember the story of Therese of Lisieux’s answer to prayer with the murderer Pranzini. If she was a human little flower he was a most noxious weed. Here’s the story: In the early summer of 1887 [...]

Fr Tim Finegan links to a site that sells the Pope’s Cologne. I thought the Pope’s Cologne was one of B16′s German cathedral cities, but it seems a California perfumier has resurrected a formula for a papal perfume. This adds a whole new dimension to ‘smells and bells’. I wonder if there is a special [...]

David Palmer’s British blood runs cold at the hanging of Saddam, and Evangelical Catholicism supports the Vatican’s line that the execution of Saddam Hussein accommplishes nothing. Jimmy Akin and Gerald Augustinus think justice has been done. What does his execution accomplish? Is this really justice or is it revenge? C.S.Lewis has a very interesting essay [...]