Peter sinking in the water after walking on it [Flickr / Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license] From an old Facebook post (dated 11 August 2014) * * * * * Matthew 14:28-31 (RSV) And Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, bid me come to you on the water.” [29] He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus; [30] but when he saw the wind, he was... Read more
. . . “Case Study” of the Novena to Our Lady of Perpetual Help Our Mother of Perpetual Help, a 15th Century Marian Byzantine icon. [public domain / Wikimedia Commons] (originally posted on 11 January 2013 on Facebook) * * * * * Protestants habitually object to “flowery” Marian devotions, thinking that they teach an “idolatrous” and “blasphemous” notion of Mary being equal to Jesus in power or prerogatives. On one occasion, the Novena to Our Lady of Perpetual Help was critically... Read more
Pope Francis at Varginha in southwest Minas Gerais state, Brazil (27 July 2013) [Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Brazil License] (originally written on 6-18-15) I read the whole thing a short while ago. There are innumerable riches here, and a fabulous integrated treatment of environmental / resource problems. This will clearly become the definitive Christian statement on the topic. For too long, Christians have been accused of being (or, too often, actually were in practice) indifferent to the problems... Read more
Wenceslas Bible, a German translation from 1389: almost a hundred years before Martin Luther was born [public domain / Wikimedia Commons] * * * * * We commonly hear accusations along these lines: such as that the Catholic Church for centuries provided only a few difficult-to-access “chained Bibles” and forbade Bible translations in the vernacular. This broad topic is one of the most cherished anti-Catholic myths, yet in point of fact it’s an outrageous falsehood: easily overturned by fair-minded... Read more
One of my all-time favorite photos of my wife Judy, from 10 February 1984, at a friend’s wedding, about five weeks before we started going out and being an official couple and going from “like like” (best friends) to “love love”! I swore this passage was about my wife Judy!: 1 Peter 3:3-4 (in my [editor-only] Victorian King James Version) You are not to adorn yourselves on the outside with braids of hair and gold jewelry and beautiful dresses, 4... Read more
Dried fish or meat, such as beef jerky (pictured above), have been eaten since very ancient times. [Wikimedia Commons /CC BY-SA 3.0] * * * * * How does one even come up with such a topic for a post? I’d never thought about this in my life, and I’ve been a seriously committed Christian for 35 years. Well, as usual, our atheist friends will make sure that every conceivable alleged disproof of biblical inspiration of Christianity will be trotted... Read more
Abraham and the Three Angels, engraving by Gustave Doré (1832-1883) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons] * * * * * I’d like to examine several relevant biblical texts in support of this practice which is fully embedded within Catholic tradition, but strongly contested by our Protestant brethren. Genesis 18:1-2, 22 (RSV) And the LORD appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the door of his tent in the heat of the day. [2] He lifted up... Read more
The Annunciation, Philippe de Champaigne, 1644 [public domain / Wikimedia Commons] * * * * * Here we have another massive misunderstanding as to the Catholic meaning of a striking phrase: similar to the false perception of “Mother of God”. Having a child conceived by the Holy Spirit has no direct analogy, because it was a one-time extraordinary event, in order to bring about the incarnation. We should fully expect to have some difficulty understanding it. But Christianity is... Read more
+ 34 Prominent Priest-Scientists and Mathematicians (8-20-10) Georges Lemaître, Belgian Catholic priest (1894-1966), c. 1933. He proposed the theory of the expansion of the universe, widely misattributed to Edwin Hubble. He was the first to derive what is now known as Hubble’s law and made the first estimation of what is now called the Hubble constant, which he published in 1927, two years before Hubble’s article. Lemaître also proposed what became known as the Big Bang theory of the origin of the Universe, which he called his “hypothesis of the primeval... Read more
The Baptistry, Florecne, Tuscany, Italy, c. 1897. It was constructed between 1059 and 1128 in the Florentine Romanesque style. [Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license] This is from a little Facebook dialogue from March 2013, with William C. Michael (words in blue): I think he is a fellow Catholic. * * * * * The danger of all of the Christian energy wasted on political action is that, eventually, it leads to a let-down, as the Crusades led to the Renaissance. We’re not... Read more
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