The Answer to the Problem of Ecclesiadicy

Last updated on: September 8, 2014 at 1:13 pm By David Mills

Read this after posting The Theology of Bad Bishops: Catholic New Testament scholar and convert Leroy Huizenga’s reflections on the problem, titled Ecclesiadicy, which he explains means “an attempt to justify the concept of apostolic succession in light of episcopal sin in the same way theodicy concerns attempt to justify an all-good, all-loving God in the face of profound human suffering.” He quotes St. John Chrysostom’s famous remark about the road to Hell being paved with the skulls of bishops, notes the... Read more

The Theology of Bad Bishops

Last updated on: September 8, 2014 at 1:13 pm By David Mills

Bad leadership, especially the sort that undermines Catholic teaching even when not denying it, “is the hardest question for converts to Catholicism — at least those who are theologically informed,” wrote a scholarly friend in an email conversation in which various people had brought up various silly remarks from bishops. Someone had just mentioned the Italian bishop who reportedly said, according to CatholicCulture, that “when couples in irregular marital situations are excluded from the sacraments, it ‘is an unjustified price... Read more

The Missa My Little Pony

Last updated on: August 27, 2014 at 5:43 pm By David Mills

One wants to think the comparison is unfair, but upon consideration has to admit that it’s not. See, or rather listen to, Dan Schutte’s “Missa My Little Pony”. In it Jeff Ostrowski passes on a hybrid Mass setting he’d received from an apparently anonymous liturgical director, and adds his own comments as well as links to other, and quite good, reflections of his own on liturgical music. My thanks to Brandon McGinley for the link. Read more

When God Seems Completely Unfair

Last updated on: August 27, 2014 at 12:14 pm By David Mills

Otherwise known as when bad things happen to good people and good to bad. In A Strangled Baby and a Gold Cup, on the Alliance of Confessing Evangelical’s Reformation21 website, which I commend, Pastor Mark Jones relays a story from the fourteenth century Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Bradwardine’s De Causa Dei contra pelagium addressing the problem. The story goes that a hermit, vexed by this problem, leaves his hermitage and wanders the world. He’s joined by an angel in disguise, who on... Read more

White People Like Being Spiritual

Last updated on: August 27, 2014 at 12:35 pm By David Mills

As it turns out, not only is being “spiritual but not religious” a spiritual and religious dead end, as I noted in People Who Find God in Sunsets and also here, it’s something white people like. It’s number two on the list in the book Stuff White People Like, in fact, under the heading “Religions Their Parents Don’t Belong To.” White people will often say they are “spiritual” but not religious. This usually means that they believe in any religion that doesn’t... Read more

We’re Not a Family, We’re a Nation, So Take That

Last updated on: August 25, 2014 at 9:57 pm By David Mills

“He [Obama] invoked the American family last week. It’s a lie, brother. You’ve got to be able to tell the truth to the American people. We’re not a family. We’re a people. We’re a nation. And a nation always has divisions. You have to be able to speak to those divisions in such a way that, like FDR, like Lincoln, you’re able to somehow pull out the best of who we are, given the divisions. You don’t try to act... Read more

Why You Look Like Your Dog

Last updated on: August 25, 2014 at 10:48 am By David Mills

Or your dog looks like you. Your pick. A Japanese scientist has found that people do, apparently, look like their dogs. (Which is a finding I’m happy with, because my dog is beautiful.) It’s something in the eyes. One value of this study is its ability to tell us which physical cues people aren’t using to correctly match dogs with their human owners. It’s not about hairstyles, obesity, gender, height, or even eye color. As Nakajima points out, since all of the... Read more

The Lord of the Fly

Last updated on: August 25, 2014 at 10:48 am By David Mills

In case you were curious, the meaning of Beelzebub, from the always interested Philologus writing in Forward: Beelzebub comes, via the Latin Bible, from Hebrew ba’al z’vuv, literally “Lord [or Ba’al] of the Fly.” (Most people know this phrase better as “Lord of the Flies” from the title of William Golding’s best-selling 1954 novel, but in the Bible, z’vuv, “fly,” is in the singular.) Ba’al was the ancient Canaanite sky god and the senior figure in the Canaanite pantheon, and Ba’al Z’vuv is mentioned in... Read more

The Soviet Joker

Last updated on: August 22, 2014 at 2:26 pm By David Mills

With admirably gleeful contempt for their former overlords , Bulgarians are painting the figures on old Soviet monuments to look like comic book superheroes, Ronald McDonald, and the Joker. The Russians, being Russians, demand that the Bulgarian government stop this treatment of those monuments to Russian oppression, punish the painters, and protect the monuments. Read more

Selling Jewish Sperm

Last updated on: August 21, 2014 at 3:33 pm By David Mills

In an “Aldous Huxley, call your office” story, the Forward explains 6 Things You Need to Know About Jewish Sperm. The quality has dropped even among what one purveyor calls the “A-team of sperm,” which means it’s worse for everyone else: A 2012 study of Israeli sperm donors found a noticeable decline in sperm quality over a 15-year period. Sperm counts fell by over a third, from 106 million sperm per milliliter of semen to 68 million. . . . If current trends... Read more