This week’s article for Aleteia highlights the Holy Father’s homily for the solemnity of Mary, Mother of God In his homily for the Solemnity of the Mother of God on New Year’s Day Pope Francis made the very clear point that we cannot have Jesus without Mary. The Pope taught, “The two were together, just as they were together at Calvary, because Christ and his mother are inseparable: there is a very close relationship between them, as there is between... Read more
My article this week for the Imaginative Conservative discusses the way the ancient myths were embodied in the history of the Hebrew people What very few have stopped to realize is that in the midst pagans telling fantastical stories of star gods visiting earth and titanic struggles between the deities of their pantheons, the same dramas were being lived out by this unremarkable tribe of nomads. There was a deeper point to it all of course. All the little dramas... Read more
Some time ago a blogger wrote an “open letter” to me inviting me to engage in discussion on a topic where we disagreed. To avoid specifics and get down to the core issues, let’s say the topic was the pastoral care of remarried divorced people in church. So I went to the blog and read the open letter. It came across as rational, polite, sensible, compassionate and most of all spiritually sensitive and “listening to where the Spirit is leading the... Read more
I’ve got this gadget on my home page that generates quotable quotes. You don’t know what you’re going to get next. Some are funny, some wise, some rude, some silly, some stupid. My favorite silly one is from Groucho Marx: “Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.” Geddit? Anyway, there’s one from George Bernard Shaw today, “There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.” This is typical of Shaw–who regularly debated with... Read more
Pope Francis announced that he plans to canonize the Franciscan missionary to California Junipero Serra It thrills my heart to learn that he is to make a saint of another bald headed person. St Junipero Serra joins St Francis de Sales, St John of the Cross, St Maximillian Kolbe, St Paul, and the prophet Elisha. I am making a list of bald headed saints and would be delighted to hear from you. Names of holy baldies to [email protected] please. ... Read more
I suppose that headline grabbed a few readers. It’s a serious topic though, and this article in the Daily Telegraph profiles a mother and daughter who weigh over 600 pounds between them. A mother and daughter who get £34,000 ( $51,000.00) a year in handouts because they are too fat to work say they’d rather be happy and on benefits than depressed and thin Janice and Amber Manzur weigh a total of 43 stone and are so overweight they have to... Read more
Carol is a friend of mine in England who had a good writing gig. She churned out romance novels under an assumed name. She produced four a year and she was good at it. Many people have romantic ideas about writers. They assume we live in a garret surrounded by piles of books, writing novels in smoke filled rooms. Carol is the person who encouraged me when I first started writing and gave me a dose of reality by saying,... Read more
View image | gettyimages.com So Pope Francis was wrapped in a Hindu prayer shaw? I expect before too long he will have stones thrown at him by angry and frightened Catholics for compromising the faith. They’ll use the picture from now to eternity along with the one of Pope St John Paul II kissing the Koran to throw mud at the Holy Father. Instead of getting all het up that the Pope is being diplomatic and nice to members of... Read more
Whenever I am involved in conversations with non-Catholic Christians I go straight to the authority question. If that question is not resolved then every other discussion is only matter of swapping opinions. It is important, therefore to be clear on the basics of the Catholic understanding of authority. It is rooted in the fact that Jesus Christ was sent by God and had all authority on heaven and earth. (Mt 22:18) Jesus exercised this authority by 1. Teaching the truth... Read more
View image | gettyimages.com How do you fight fundamentalism? An article in London’s Daily Telegraph reports that a British government attempt to stop young Muslims from being turned into jihadist radicals is not working. Baroness Manningham Buller, who was the director general of the Security Service at the time of the 7/7 bombings, said the decision of 600 Britons to fight in Syria and Iraq with Isil was evidence that the Prevent scheme had failed. After nearly a decade of... Read more
Fr. Dwight Longenecker
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