Reading Paul Elie’s excellent quadruple biography of Thomas Merton, Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy and Dorothy Day. The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage is a wonderful book about these four American writers at a crucial time in America’s history. While living in England I was busy reading English contemporary Catholic-Anglican writers: Lewis, Waugh, Graham Greene, Tolkien, Eliot. I had read Merton, but only on my return to the USA am I being introduced to Dorothy Day, Walker... Read more

In my recent post admiring and recommending Ralph Martin’s book The Urgency of the New Evangelization: Answering the Call  I mentioned that universalism was a cancer eating away at the church and reminding readers that the Scriptures are clear that hell is a reality and it is likely to be highly populated. Some objections came up in the combox to the effect that to preach hell will drive people away and assuming that to preach about hell was to always... Read more

There’s an old joke about the Protestant New Testament scholar Rudolph Bultmann: Q: Dr Bultmann, what would you say if archeologists, without any doubt, revealed that they had discovered the bones of Jesus Christ? A: So he really did exist then? Bultmann was the main proponent of demythologization. This is the idea that the Scriptures, to be intelligible to modern man, must be stripped of their “mythological” elements. The miraculous must be explained as parables and symbols. The incarnation means... Read more

I’ve never had that much time for Prince Charles. He always seemed to me to be rather spineless. However, he’s taken a stand now against the Islamic murderers who are persecuting Christians across the Middle East. In this report from the Daily Telegraph we learn that he has gathered faith leaders together and spoken of the persecuted Christians in the Middle East as his “brothers and sisters in Christ.” I have for some time now been deeply troubled by the... Read more

There is a theme coming through Pope Francis’ pontificate which is at once attractive and alarming. It his his message of joy in the proclamation of the gospel. Evangelii Gaudium is brimming with exhortations to joy. The pope’s own ministry is abundant in joy. He reaches out to others with the attractive joy which is the fruit of the Holy Spirit. That this joy is attractive there is no doubt. That it reveals a new, dynamic way of living is a... Read more

It has been such a crazy busy day that it’s now 8pm and I’m just getting around to this blog post which has been sitting in my noggin all day. The Immaculate Conception reminds us of the original problem with original sin: blaming others. When things go wrong the first thing we do is blame others. God: “Adam, did you eat the fruit?” Adam: “Eve gave it to me.” God: “OK. Eve, did you eat the fruit?” Eve: “The devil... Read more

John Allen’s book The Global War on Christians: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Anti-Christian Persecution is an excellent and sobering read for Advent. The result of his usual meticulous research and objective reporting, Allen chronicles the growing persecution of Christians worldwide. What’s interesting about the book is its scope. We usually think of this as a problem with radical Muslims. Allen shows that extremist Buddhists, Hindus and fellow Christians persecute. The persecution is not just torture, imprisonment and death, but... Read more

You are created in God’s image right? God is omnipotent right? So if you’re created in his image you must also be omnipotent. The little bit of God’s omnipotence that he shares with you is called your will. You have free will. You can decide. You can choose. You can act. There’s a hitch of course, and that is the fact that we are all omnipotent. We all have bits of God’s ultimate power within us and we therefore clash.... Read more

I’m not really that fond of the song Make Me a Channel of Your Peace. It was originally written as a folk song, and when it is sung as a hymn it doesn’t work. The rhythms are irregular and people swoop up and down…not good. However, take a moment to listen to this fantastic rendering by a young Italian Franciscan tenor. He tinkers with the timing of the words and turns it into a first rate number. In the midst... Read more

This week the politics and power people continued to read the Catholic Church in terms of their own agenda. Rush (Windbag) Limbaugh huffed and puffed about the Pope being a Marxist while this journalist at Fox echoed him in saying that Pope Francis was the Catholic Church’s Obama. Meanwhile El Presidente mouthed a pull quote from Pope Francis about income equality. It was the one about headlines being made when the stock market drops two points but not when a... Read more