When I lived in England I made a visit to a place in Somerset called the Cadbury Hill Fort. It is an ancient hilltop settlement which, in various times was used as a fort, castle or fortified village. Some historians believe it was the location of King Arthur’s Camelot. When you visit it can be pretty convincing. We camped overnight and the next morning, rising from the mist was the Great Glastonbury tor in the town where Arthur was supposedly... Read more
I’ve been blogging here at Patheos for a good number of years now and I’m grateful to the Patheos team for hosting my blog and widening my audience. However, in the next week or so I will be moving my blog to my own website. This enables me to return to a more personal style and to open the comments box again. There will be no ads and I will be speaking to perhaps a smaller audience about life, the... Read more
Excuse me for being critical of the USA, but it always happens after I return from Europe. But seriously, have you ever noticed how so much of American culture is like one big trip to Disneyland? Its like everybody is expected to be happy and healthy and smiling and successful all the time. 24-7 Now far be it from me to be a spoil sport, a party pooper or one to rain on anybody’s parade, but its not realistic is... Read more
Collectors of long words should be happy with “latitudinarianism.” This was an attitude which developed within Anglicanism in the seventeenth century and has become pretty much the status quo in the Church of England. From Wikipedia: Latitudinarians, or latitude men were initially a group of 17th-century English theologians – clerics and academics – from the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England, who were moderate Anglicans In particular, they believed that adhering to very specific doctrines, liturgical practices, and church organizational forms, as did... Read more
The Holy Father wants to pull some of authority away from the Vatican and shift it back to the local level. Here's why that may not be a great idea for Catholicism. Read more
When I was a child I was taught the Sunday School song, “Trust and Obey for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus but to Trust and Obey.” So some time ago this song comes back to me when I read the gospel of the healing of the centurion’s servant. A new understanding of this story and of faith hit me square between the eyes. Here’s a clip from the gospel: “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I... Read more
Heresy is never totally wrong. Its just that it is never totally right. Read more
I have to hand it to the nuns. Those sisters with rulers certainly got it into the heads of the young Catholics that missing Mass was a mortal sin. However, one of the troublesome things about hearing confessions is how many older Catholics seem to think this is the only sin, and they do not seem able or willing to make the distinction between missing Mass and skipping Mass. Skipping Mass is when you roll over on Sunday and yawn and say,... Read more
Somebody asked me, “Why don’t you write a blog post about how to love an Islamic terrorist into submission. I like a challenge, so here goes. You don’t start with the terrorist. You start with yourself. By God’s grace you may get to the point where you are so filled with love that you live a life of love. You don’t even know you’re doing it–except now and again you notice yourself living for everyone else but yourself. You stop... Read more
Is it one thing to convert to Catholicism, and another thing to really see the world as Catholics see it? Read more
Fr. Dwight Longenecker
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