My friend Artur Rosman got a job. I don’t know why so many of us were surprised that he did; maybe it’s because we’re more used to having to defend him when he gets defamed, or maybe (and more likely) it’s because he got one at our collective dream school Notre Dame. He’s the managing editor of Church Life Magazine now. He’s going to do a very good job. Some of us were a bit dismayed when Artur announced that... Read more
There has been a little bit of a dust-up in the Latin Church recently about converts talking too much, especially about Pope Francis. I am not one to comment on the internal affairs of the Latin Church, and I certainly don’t have much to say about the Bishop of Rome today; his recent ‘magisterial’ comments on liturgical reform, for example, seem to have much more to do with the liturgy of the Latin Church than the Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom.... Read more
At the center of contemporary debate about the Charlottesville protests is a statue, at least on the surface. The monument in question is that of Robert E. Lee, Confederate general and Southern gentleman, and by now, we have all heard that Lee never wanted to have a figure of himself anywhere and that the image was put up in Charlottesville during the Jim Crow era of white supremacist segregation. And yet, in a clash between those defending the statue and those... Read more
Today on the Newer Calendar of the Kyivan Church, we commemorate three African saints: our Venerable Father Moses the Black, our Holy Father Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, and the Holy Martyr Gebremichael, Illuminator of Ethiopia. It would be trite of me to turn this feast into an opportunity for me to reflect on my family’s solidarity with black people. It is, however, tempting. My father, after all, was probably the first Chinese American to be ordained in the Progressive National... Read more
Over the duration of the Dormition Fast on the New Calendar (August 1-15), I wrote fifteen reflections on the presence of the Most Holy Theotokos in the world. The final post was written last week, just in time for the Feast of the Dormition. The idea came to me because I had written a draft of something on my own relationship to the Theotokos prior to the fast. In fact, I was trying to write a Catholic corollary to my... Read more
I started this blog right before the Dormition Fast last year. Because of that, I announced that I wanted, among other things, to write about the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos. This was a new step for me; my previous forays in the blogosphere had been as a surreptitious Anglo-Catholic known as ‘Chinglican’ and as a commentator on contemporary religious happenings – and selectively so, at that. Still, I was encouraged by some of the Eastern Catholics I had met... Read more
Recently, a priest of the Latin Church impressed on me the significance for the West of Pius XII defining the Dogma of the Assumption ex cathedra. He said that I had to keep in mind the time that Pius XII was writing: it was after the devastation of Europe in the Second World War. Cities had been bombed out, millions were dead, and fascist ideologies had been revealed not only to be bankrupt, but they also take down the world into... Read more
Psychoanalyze me, but I am often given to being taken in by the advice of Wise Older Women. Sometimes, when the advice is good and the person is actually wise, it works out. More often than not, though, I’ve been failed by such counsel, usually because Wise Older Women are sinners too, and some of them look wiser than they are. Perhaps it can be said that my impulses are born from my very imperfect feminist and womanist sympathies (imperfect because I am... Read more
My friend, the journalist and filmmaker Julian Hayda, has written a paper that he let me review recently; it hasn’t been published, but he has given me permission to share about it, even while he makes his revisions for future publication. The paper is about the personification of the Divine Feminine in the history of Ukrainian folklore; the argument is that the feminine personifications of four concepts in Ukrainian myth – ‘Wisdom (Sophia), Protection (Pokrova), Fate (Dolya), and Freedom (Volya)’ –... Read more
Once, when I was eleven, my mother picked me up from school during lunch. I was used to having lunch with my friends at school, so I knew it was important, especially when we arrived at McDonald’s soon afterward and she made no objection to me ordering a 20-piece Chicken McNuggets (this never happened). I even had barbecue sauce with them; my mom had always made a point to get Sweet and Sour. I found out what was up as... Read more
Eastern Catholic Person
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