In Jennifer Fulwiler’s conversion story Something Other Than Godshe recounts the time when she and her husband began to wake up to the implications of their pro-abortion convictions. She was into her second pregnancy when the reality of their views suddenly clashed with the reality of the ultra sound scan of their new baby. Here was a child, and here they were supporting a society that endorsed and made legal the clinical and careful dismemberment of the unborn child in... Read more
Maybe it’s just me, but I seem to hear an increasing amount of grumbling from about the state of the church. Some folks complain about the new generation of priests, “All these guys seem to care about is lace and china tea cups! Are they all pansies? What’s going on? Why do they have to return to all this fancy folderol? Why the obsession with ornate liturgy? I thought we were over that.” Other Catholics grumble because they think members... Read more
I once attended a seminar on the deliverance ministry conducted by the author and psychiatrist Kenneth McCall. During the questions and answers three rather excitable women told Dr McCall that there was a witches coven meeting in their town and they wondered how to get rid of it. Dr McCall was a very softly spoken man with a deep spirituality. He said quietly, “In my experience, in most cases, all that is necessary to rid a place of evil is... Read more
Some Catholics are up in arms over Cardinal Dolan agreeing to be the Grand Marshall of the St Patrick’s Day Parade in New York which has been infiltrated by homosexual activists. Elizabeth Scalia has stirred the pot with this post comparing Dolan to Jesus who ate with sinners, did not condemn the woman taken in adultery, rebuked Pharisees and told the story of the prodigal son. Her post is written in her gentle and probing style, but it has attracted the... Read more
Today is the birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and at mass this morning I inflicted upon the faithful the long genealogy of Jesus at the beginning of Matthew’s gospel. It’s here if you want to read it. I did so for a good reason. The genealogy is a very unusual document. Firstly, it is unusual because it includes women in the list. Usually the genealogies focus only on the men. So and so begat so and so. It’s a... Read more
Some Catholics talk disparagingly of the “Church of Nice” They are referring to the modernist church where indifferentism, complacency and tolerance replace the truly Christian virtues. They object not to niceness, but to a church that is nothing but nice. I’m with them. I can’t stand watered down religion. Modernist Christianity has eviscerated the gospel, removed the supernatural, “de mythologized” the message and turned Catholicism into nothing more than a do gooder religion for the country club set. As one... Read more
I was brought up in a Protestant church steered by dispensationalist theology. The preachers loved to study the Biblical books of prophecy almost like fortune tellers to try to predict the future. They tried to read the Biblical books of prophecy in one hand and yesterday’s paper in the other. That process never yields very good results because, while the prophetic books of the Bible do look forward to the future, they are also locked into the historic and cultural... Read more
Here’s a little list. Ten Things I Like About St Gregory the Great He was a Benedictine monk. I’m a Benedictine oblate and the monk in me will always hanker for the cell, the cloister and the bell. He was a scholar. You got to love a Pope who is brainy. He was a liturgist. Gregory’s great great grandfather was Pope Felix III – So he had a married clergy link! He came from a wealthy, noble Roman family. Those... Read more
The last few years have seen a shelf load of worthy books de-bunking what is called the New Atheism. I’m sure it is a mighty good thing to explain and expound the five proofs of God’s existence, but it seems to miss the point. I’d rather present the reality of God’s work in the world and show that there is one event which, if it really happened, proves the existence of God. The bottom line argument is very simple: If... Read more
Saved from Sacrifice: A Theology of the Cross by S. Mark Heim is a fascinating exposition of the thought of Rene Girard to the theology of the atonement or “what really happened when Jesus died on the cross. I’m reading it as part of my research for a book I am working on called The Sacred Sacrifice which will be an explanation and expansion of Girard’s thought for a popular audience. Toward the end of the book Heim meditates on an element of... Read more
Fr. Dwight Longenecker
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