There has in the Catholic Church “grown up the opinion, or better the heresy, that Mass without communion is not valid. The whole preoccupation with communion for the divorced and remarried, which has little to do with the Eastern vision and practice, is a consequence of this,” writes the Catholic theologian Nicola Bux here. “Not valid” seems so extreme no educated Catholic would ever claim it, but Bux knows the world he’s describing. Most American Catholics, I think, wouldn’t use... Read more
“Well, the Orthodox allow second and third marriages” is an argument made by some Catholics for loosening the Catholic Church’s teaching on marriage, which seems harsh and rigid and legalistic in comparison with Orthodoxy’s pastoral oikonomia. Orthodoxy does go farther than the Catholic Church teaches Scripture allows, but the rules aren’t nearly so lax as these advocates of liberalizing marriage claim. Nicola Bux, a professor of theology, explains in the always useful Chiesa that the Orthodox Church gives a second opportunity... Read more
The pope and the prime minister weren’t fighting about what language Jesus spoke, explains The Tablet, though several major newspapers reported they had. The article includes the video, which shows an exchange that ” which to a normal observer would appear to be an amiable conversation between friends (albeit one mediated by a translator).” “But the real shame here is not that the media got something wrong,” continues the story. It is that they missed the powerful and poignant significance of this... Read more
“When,” writes Abraham Socher, “the great Yiddish writer and folklorist S. An-sky said that the “people of the shofar must become the people of the clarinet,” one wonders whether he realized quite how completely the shofar, and the meanings carried by its blasts, could disappear from Jewish consciousness, or quite how impossible it would be for a people to be defined by their devotion to clarinets (or culture).” Writing in a Mosaic forum on the future of Jewish culture, the editor... Read more
David Mills
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In