What? Ash Wednesday was two days ago, and I haven’t sworn for going on three days. What do you mean, Lent will start on Sunday? The answer is a matter of arithmetic. How do you count Lent’s40 days? In this post I will present what I learned from a liturgist, whose name I forgot, back in the 70’s. I have not heard this method of counting anywhere else, so judge for yourself. I think it makes more sense than what... Read more
I have an attachment to my material things. If it’s a rock that I found and loved as a child, I probably still have it. Unless I gave it away, which also is a way of honoring the thing. If it’s an item of clothing, I wear it until it falls apart or my mother rips it off my back. I don’t trade in my cars. I run them into the ground and then buy someone else’s trade-in. In this... Read more
Everyone is free in the free market, but what kind of freedom is that? William T. Cavanaugh analyzes the sense in which we are free in the free market, the sense in which we are slaves to that market, and what a truly free market might look like. This is the second in the series on Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire. Rosa’s story The story of a worker in El Salvador makes me think about connections in a worldwide... Read more
Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire is the second book by William T. Cavanaugh to find a place on “Lost in a One-Acre Wood.” Earlier I posted on Torture and Eucharist. The first in that series also contains information about Cavanaugh, the author, plus a list of his major works. In Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire, Cavanaugh delves into economics and desires for their spiritual core. I borrow language from elsewhere[i], to describe Cavanaugh’s accomplishment. He identifies demonic elements in... Read more
This month, February, we remember events and heroes of the civil rights movement. I’m thinking of a less well-known figure who made an impression on me when a seminarian for the Diocese of Green Bay, Wisconsin. A hundred miles to the south in Milwaukee, a priest named James Groppi was in the front of a parade of protesters, practicing non-violence. They faced angry white Milwaukeeans throwing bottles, stones, cherry bombs, bricks, and feces. Their goal: a fair-housing ordinance for the... Read more
Altar call: A tradition in some evangelical Christian churches in which those who wish to make a new spiritual commitment to Jesus Christ are invited to come forward publicly. – Wikipedia Billy Graham: You cannot give God a definite maybe. Compared to Catholic Church history, the altar call does not have a long tradition in Christianity. Its origin dates only to the 19th century with Charles Finney, Dwight Moody, and Billy Sunday. It can be manipulative, stress emotion over solid... Read more
Last fall’s Synod on the Amazon made clear the difference between Catholic and some evangelical mission approaches. (See this post on the Amazon Synod.) Catholic and mainline Protestant missionaries see God at work in indigenous cultures. They want to preserve what is good in them. Fundamentalist evangelicals, however, see these cultures as dark places and their people as “lost.” These fundamentalist groups are now in a new position of power in Brazil. The Catholic Church in Brazil and indigenous people... Read more
Women couldn’t be teachers, at least not of men, in the early centuries of the Christian world. On top of that, St. Jerome, the genius who made the first translation of the Bible into Latin, was entirely too fastidious about contact with women. But Jerome gave in to the request of Marcella of Rome to teach to the community of women she founded. Thus began a long friendship in which teacher and student often traded places. Dr. Joan Ferrante and... Read more
In recent years I have seen some priests taking a step backwards to my childhood at the Consecration of the Mass. There’s a prolonged pause as the priest raises the host or the chalice as high as he can. I recall such a ritual from the old Latin Mass, but I’ve grown accustomed to a shorter, less exalted and less dramatic Consecration. Is that step back for better or worse or neither? Thinking about backwards and forwards is no way... Read more
“Ecological sin: Idea of updating catechism sparks debate.” Catholic News Service ran this article as the year was just beginning. Several news organs reproduced it, including National Catholic Reporter in its EarthBeat section. Pope Francis had announced his intention to add a new category of sin to the catechism – ecological sin. It was one of the recommendations of the recently concluded Amazon Synod. Offhand, it seems that there must be such a thing as ecological sin. All sorts of... Read more
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