The Non-Catholic More Catholic than Some Catholics One of my first college teaching jobs was at a Catholic college where I met, for the first time, priests who seemed less Catholic than I was. Since I was not Catholic at all, this seemed odd to me, fascinating, if a bit sad. The fathers did not seem to like the Pope, since canonized, and if they are still alive, they probably do not like that either. What to do? Listen and... Read more
Some are damned like Macbeth, men with great potential slowly dragged to hell with prophetic warnings, ghosts, and horror. Then there are the rest of us, damned by our comfy chair which tempts us to watch just one more episode of Hell’s Kitchen and listen to Gorden Ramsey bleep away our pain. We don’t do anything and so are people neither hot nor cold and so spewed from God’s mouth. We are the Wall-E people in our comfy chairs: dullards damned.... Read more
My favorite pub (Richmond Arms) doesn’t, but some pubs will give you salty food hoping for more drink orders. Salty snacks spur thirst, thirst drinking, and in a pub, perhaps more alcohol than a man should have. Dry a man out, have him eat salt, and a pub crawler might run up a tab quenching a fierce thirst. Atheism and materialism are salty snacks for humankind. They deny reality: ideas, numbers, God, and the mind. The denial sets up a... Read more
I asked for new voices and got some outstanding writers! Today we hear from the erudite James R. Harrington. James R. Harrington earned his M.A. in Ancient History at California State University Fulleron and is a member of the Torrey Honors Institute. James has been a classical educator in a variety of settings over the past thirteen years. He lives in Houston with his wife, Sharon, and their daughter. Mr. Harrington responded to thoughts on his first post. Harrington wrote about... Read more
There is a line of lazily written greeting cards that begin with the Socratic “What is . . .” And fill in with the holiday being celebrated. What is a mother? What is Christmas? One greeting card I have yet to see: What is sin? Sadly, I know by experience what it is to sin: to fall short of God’s will. A person can do a thing without being able to define it as anyone who breathes knows! That a thing... Read more
Easter was, Pascha is. The truth endures, because the truth is found in the eternal God-man: Jesus. How do I know? I found Jesus at the altar, knew Jesus through childhood prayers, and read His words of life in the Bible. As a boy I recall the first Easter where I had chosen to follow Jesus. Dad and Mom surprised me with a Bible in my Easter basket that I still own forty-seven years later. When I sit with Mom... Read more
Easter was last week, the Orthodox celebrate Pascha this week. A benefit of being a theist is that every human has value, created equal by the Creator, and we do not have to be the most valuable to ourselves. When theists who are Christians say “Jesus is Lord,” they say something even more valuable: I do not have to awesome, but God loves me. Secularism (at least the Internet ubiquitous white American variety) has an impossible challenge: individuals must create... Read more
Easter is past, but Pascha is almost here for the Orthodox. Death was the plan when people chose badly. The Cross of Jesus was the way God redeemed death by making it a gateway to Paradise. Love lets the beloved reject even what is good, true, and beautiful, because love does not demand acceptance. Yet if a person rejects love, as is his right, then he rejects all that might have been. When humankind rejects God, we turn our backs on... Read more
Easter just took place globally with Pascha still to come for the Orthodox. This is a weekend of history, but also of mystery. What’s a mystery? A mystery is not mere woo, an assertion based on a feeling, power, or rhetoric. That’s a bad way to live life: check with any ethicist. Finding the good life based on our immediate desires is a great way to become a terrible person. (Lord have mercy!) Ancient people afraid of the after life (scary!) invented... Read more
Beauty matters. Easter is just behind for many, but Pascha is Sunday as the Son rises for the East. Wednesday takes us close to the historic events of Holy Friday, Friday, and Saturday. Pascha may be coming, but first bread, wine, wood, iron, all material reality will be transfigured. Jesus was constantly making archetypes visible: this week He began to knit the invisible back to the visible, the spiritual to the material. On Wednesday, however, a woman was used by God to... Read more
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