I remember after the Church of England voted to ordain women Pope John Paul II came out with Ordinatio Sacerdotalis in which he concluded with the very terse statement: “Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church’s divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on... Read more

Fr Christopher blogs here on the latest lunacy from Lambeth. It seems a lady bishop from the The Episcopal Church has accused bishops from the developing world of beating their wives. She assumes this is true because wife beating is part of the culture they come from. Once again we’re in the deliciously ironic situation of African bishops accusing liberal American Episcopalians of racism.  This happened at the last Lambeth conference when one of the American bishops said something to the... Read more

I was delighted to learn that Maximillian Kolbe visited Lisieux before his mission to Japan to pray to Therese, who wanted to be a missionary and is the patroness of missions. It’s always cool to see the way the saints work together. Here a Polish pope and an Albanian nun. There a French nun and a Polish friar. If this is true then our work together in the body of Christ is accomplished by a whole wonderful, invisible network of... Read more

As some readers may have picked up, I’m always fascinated by the lunatic fringe of religion. Here’s some information on the real famous snake handlers of America’s Appalachian region: What’s interesting is that it is not something which is dying out. The article here was written in 2003. Indeed, the practice is spreading. I also found a couple of things very interesting in the article. First is that the snake handler interviewed said he came to the practice after praying... Read more

No, she’s not a Protestant Charismatic Snake Handler from Tennessee. She’s a Sufi –a spiritual strain of the Islamic religion. Geesh, those charismatic snake handlers get around! I wonder if the Sufis have ever heard of the Toronto Blessing where worshippers swoon, fall down, break out in uncontrollable laugher. Some of them grunt like pigs, bark and roar like beasts and scoot around on all fours. The article on the Toronto Blessing said one female worshipper kept on sounding off... Read more

…well author of vampire books anyway. Here’s my interview with Anne Rice. It’s also the first piece I’ve had published in First Things. Read more

I’ve just been to see the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight. My verdict is to quote the old Ogden Nash poem:  Here is a good rule of thumb Too clever is dumb. It was way too talky. They had to tell me all their deep philosophical thoughts about anarchy and chaos etc. They had to be blatant with all their cute symbolism and meaningful moments. The plot was too diffuse, there wasn’t enough focus on main characters. We didn’t... Read more

Some critics of Catholicism like to point out that Catholics are also divided. “Look here!” they cry, “You Catholics also have liberals and conservatives. You have homosexual priests. You have women pushing for ordination. You have New Age theologians and the majority of Catholics ignore Humane Vitae, don’t believe in transubstantiation etc etc.”  Of course we do. These are called ‘bad Catholics’ or ‘dissenters’. There is room for differences of opinions and styles, but where it needs to be, the... Read more

Fr Jeffrey Steel writes here on the slippery subjectivity of religious experience. He’s criticizing the liberal’s reliance on personal religious opinion, but the same criticism applies to all forms of Protestantism. What interests me is how the same types or arguments are used by conservative charismatic Protestants as the Liberals they so despise. Try this on for size and guess who is speaking… “The Lord is always doing a new thing in his church. New wine demands new wineskins. The... Read more

Once again Damian Thompson highlights an Anglican detail that reveals all: He quotes the Bishop of Rossdale (who he??) “We have been a Church which has been held together by belief, as contained in the historic creeds, and not by agreeing to particular statements about that faith.” This is such a classic piece of Anglican theological sleight of hand that it ought to be preserved forever not just as a definition of Anglicanism, but a definition of that fuzzy, polite... Read more