The close of Advent is not an end but a renewal of the work of deification. Dum medium silentium tenerent omnia et nox in suo cursu medium iter haberet etc. (Sap. 1814). ‘For while all things were in quiet silence and the night was in the midst of her course, etc.’ Here in time we make holiday because the eternal birth which God the Father bore and bears unceasingly in eternity is now born in time, in human nature. St... Read more
Patheos Catholic is pregnant with futurity as it parts with old favorites and invites exciting new voices. This past year at Patheos Catholic has been a time of flux and transition, marked by the departure of the original editor of the channel, Elizabeth Scalia, who continues blogging for us at The Anchoress. On November 1st, Artur Rosman took over as the Channel Manager and I, Sam Rocha, am the new Channel Editor. A steady stream of new bloggers has been... Read more
That between heaven and earth there is no great chaos and no great silence or a sort of generous neutrality, but rather, that lively relationship between Creator and creature going back and forth . . . –Alfred Delp, SJ I want to make amends to the Jesuits for a Star Wars piece comparing them to the First Order with the following post by a Jesuit on a great Jesuit martyr of WW2. In all seriousness, take some time with the following guest... Read more
I gave in to the merchandising juggernaut that is Star Wars VII on Saturday. There was no resisting the pull their peers were exerting on my kids. It is what William T. Cavanaugh would call the capitalist liturgy at its most forceful. I wasn’t surprised to see the Catholic blogosphere trying to catch up with the marketing juggernaut. One article compared Ignatius of Loyola to the Jedi Knights. There’s a Loyola movie coming up the pipes. George Lucas seems to have... Read more
If the post on interreligious dialogue with Muslims is any indication, then the following words from a pope might blow a few gaskets: Today, in addition to interreligious dialogue, there should be a dialogue with those to whom religion is something foreign, to whom God is unknown and who nevertheless do not want to be left merely Godless, but rather to draw near to him, albeit as the Unknown. These words come from Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI again. He delivered them... Read more
As your humble servant I have dutifully collected the 10 most important posts of the past week. I hope you will enjoy them again, or for the first time. 1. Wheaton College Professor Suspended for Expressing Catholic Position on Islam 2. The Pope Who Revolutionized Catholic Dialogue with Islam 3. What Christian Group Says It Worships Same God as Muslims? 4. The Arab Ethnic Liberation Theology of Guadalupe 5. The Cosmos TOP10 Literary Books of 2015 6. Politics is Traditional for the Councils of the Church... Read more
This week’s monthly mailbag comes from tattered tattoos I found on a walrus roaming my neighborhood’s park one evening. The collection might be a codex, but then again everything seems to look that way when pirates are involved. I’ll let you decide. * To the men looking to the West for all the solutions, Don’t look away. Keep your focus. Pretend it’s a needle, piercing the eyelid of a catfish. When you figure it out, let your foot be your... Read more
You might think it’s Francis, but it’s not. The Wheaton College affair seemed like a garden-variety Evangelical-outrage news item to me at first. (See? Secularists didn’t invent outrage culture, nor are Catholics immune!). Then I noticed the professor was suspended for quoting (actually paraphrasing) Pope Francis. In turn Pope Francis was only affirming the little known Catholic high regard for Islam during his speech at the Bangui Central Mosque: Those who claim to believe in God must also be men... Read more
Some of the best Catholic colleges are Protestant. This is the case in Seattle. Take, for example, Seattle Pacific University. Its roll-call includes most of the best Catholic scholars in the Seattle area. You are probably more likely to get a Catholic education at Seattle Pacific than the Jesuit-first-Catholic-second Seattle University. Seattle U, in turn, seems much more secular and hostile to Catholicism than my alma mater the University of Washington where I completed a PhD in Comparative Literature on... Read more
The issue of Muslim identity in America is front and center of late after the Paris attacks, the political debates that have followed, the comparisons between Catholic and Muslim persecution in the States, and the recent suspension of a professor at Wheaton who argued that Christians worship the same God as Muslims. What follows is a guest post from a young Muslim scholar on the topic of assimilating Muslims to American culture. Criticizing America is easy. Let’s face it: there... Read more
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