And he took a child, and put him in the midst of them; and taking him in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me.” John said to him, “Teacher, we saw a man casting out demons in your name, and we forbade him, because he was not following us.” But Jesus said, “Do not forbid him; for no one... Read more
…is a perfectly typical headline from 2019 America. So typical that it will be forgotten by lunch. “Three children raped by priest” still gets a rise out of people. But not “Three children shot in the head by cops”. It’s worth asking why. Why do people say, as they should, “The Church needs to fix this and the state needs to punish the Church till it does” but the response of so many people to cops shooting kids in the... Read more
…is for honoring those who have fallen in defense of their country. “Country” is a complex word. It can mean the very land on which we live. It can mean the state. It can mean your fellow citizens. It can mean the ideals for which your country stands (and this is especially true for the United States since it is, as Chesterton noted, the only country founded on a creed and not on an ethnos, whatever the white supremacists in... Read more
“I’m not a racist, but…” is another shoe I hate having to wait to drop. Read more
Here is a photo and comment that washed up in my Facebook feed: Sean Carter: “This package has been sitting outside my house for days now. Why? Because we are black. And yes, I’ll explain. UPS mistakenly delivered this package to the wrong house. The address on the package is for a house just a block over, so we are waiting for UPS to pick up the package and deliver it to the right house. “But Sean, why wouldn’t you... Read more
…and will be back on Tuesday. But fear not! I’ve loaded stuff in the hopper to post while I’m gone. Here’s a little something I wrote in gratitude for the gift God has given us in this place of healing, joy, and love: Lopez Island For thirty years we have come here to do necessary tasks of almost nothing. Snooze. Read. Pray. Walk among elder ents who sniff the salt air and mark our brief passing. Once I watched a... Read more
Yesterday in this space, I discussed the failure of conservative Catholics in our engagement with gay people. It could just as easily have been a discussion of our failure with virtually anybody who is not already a conservative Christian. The response to almost everybody outside the conservative Catholic culture war bubble is to regard them as an enemy, not as somebody for whom Christ died. Case in point: me. I’m somebody who believes virtually everything that conservative Catholics do. I’m... Read more
One of the things I most regret as a Catholic writer is the aid and comfort I have given in the past to treating gay people first as a problem and only second, if at all, as a human being. A gay Christian, even if he or she is faithful and obedient to the gospel in every way is consistently treated by the overwhelming majority of “faithful Catholics” (at least on-line) as a fifth columnist and constantly told they are... Read more
from Robert G. Christian III With the rise of Donald Trump, however, populist nationalism—another ideology deeply at odds with Church teaching—has become increasingly important among both elites and the public. One consequence has been the rise of what many are calling alt-Catholicism. Alt-Catholics in the U.S. set up their own alt-magisterium, one that permits them to reject Church teaching on a range of subjects. The term is fitting because many of these ideological positions align with positions held by the... Read more
I have always loved paleontology. Learning to think in terms of Deep Time keeps you humble. And compared to the age of the earth–or the universe, which is more than three times as old as our entire solar system–the Mesozoic is practically yesterday. Read more
Catholic and Enjoying It!
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