I was talking with a man I’ll call Henry today who lost his wife just before Christmas. She was only in her early sixties and had premature dementia. It was a terrible disease. Horrible to see an intelligent, active, prayerful woman laid low, and terrible to see the suffering of her husband and family as they watched her decline. Henry was brought up a Southern Baptist and converted a few years ago, finally following his wife and children into the... Read more
…this would seem to be the message the world’s media is trumpeting in the wake of the silence over 2,000 slaughtered by the Boko Haram in Nigeria. London’s Guardian paper asks why the massacre in Baga has been ignored. France spent the weekend coming to terms with last week’s terror attacks in Paristhat left 17 dead. The country mourned, and global leaders joined an estimated 3.7 million people on its streets to march in a show of unity. In Nigeria, another crisis was... Read more
To be led by God’s patient love into this attitude of unconditional self surrender is painful, but there is no avoiding it for anyone who seriously wants to pray. It requires no special conditions or peculiar way of life. The ordinary experience of work, daily hardships and living with people is the field of obedience to God. To love people now, in your situation as it is and not as you would like it to be, is to obey God... Read more
There’s an amusing article here in today’s Daily Telegraph by an Englishman chortling away at Americans’ ignorance about Britain. The author does a pretty good job of tossing off the usual snooty English comments about Americans. British visitors to America often report how shocked they are to discover how little is known about their country. It’s not that Americans get their facts wrong, although they often do (more about that later). It’s that they rarely think about Britain at all.... Read more
The headline is linked to this article online about Georgia Walker who claims to be a Catholic priest. You can go here for a very entertaining picture gallery of the “ordination” If they are not aware of it already, folks should realize that Georgia Walker in Kansas is as much a Catholic priest as David Bawden is Pope Michael over in Oklahoma. There is no need for indignation or formal excommunication. Georgia Walker the Catholic priest is not only as authentic as Pope Michael, she... Read more
The Jihadist murders and subsequent mayhem in Paris have got me thinking about free speech, bullying, vengeance and retaliation. As usual, it is all much more complicated than we first think. We’re the ones who are rational, educated, refined, witty and tolerant right? But in fact, the cartoons at Charlie Hebdo were anything but rational, refined, educated, witty and tolerant. They were irrational, crude, inflammatory and intentionally vile and blasphemous. Did you see the one with God the Father sodomizing God the... Read more
…Be Jesus. In other words, there is more, much more to being a disciple of Jesus Christ than simply trying to imitate him. How dull is that? Instead we’re talking about becoming Jesus Christ alive in the world today. He wants to do more, much more than we can ask or imagine, and he does so through the sacramental economy. Catholics have an understanding of the Christian life that is stranger and deeper and more mysterious than any other. This... Read more
I think this blog and our tired old world needs an injection of spirituality. As a Benedictine oblate I sure need to pray more and should be sharing about prayer with my readers more. When I was an Anglican priest a friend gave me a book of quotations on spirituality, theology and philosophical fragments that had been compiled by an old priest over many years. It’s bound in a heavy red cover. It has been a source of strength to... Read more
Are you familiar with the poet Christopher Smart? The poor man spent many years in an asylum. Opinion is still out whether he was insane or merely persecuted for being a religious extremist Take time to enjoy reading Christopher Smart’s Jubilate Agno and be glad for the incarnation imagination of poets. For they teach us of unimaginable ways of seeing. For they are mystical and magical. For they are fools for suffering For they are suffering for fools For they... Read more
This article for National Catholic Register explains why Anglicans claim to be Catholic, but have repeatedly burnt their ecumenical bridges. Over the last four decades, Anglican-Catholic relations have become increasingly strained, as member churches of the Anglican Communion adopted an increasingly progressive agenda. In 1975, the Episcopal Church of the USA was the first to approve women priests; then, one by one, other member churches agreed first that women could be priests, and then bishops. The Church of England... Read more
Fr. Dwight Longenecker
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