Wow! What a weekend. I attended my first March for Life in Washington DC. Fifteen students from St Joseph’s Catholic School joined others from the diocese and huge numbers from all over America to protest our country’s abortion laws. Highlights of the trip were the prayer vigil at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and the youth rally before the March where over 20,000 Catholic young people gathered at the Verizon Center in central DC for Mass. The place... Read more

  David Palmer has an interesting post about life after death which got me thinking. It is imagined by naive unbelievers that religious people sign up because they get to have pie in the sky. It’s thought that we poor ignorant folk follow our faith because we have been promised eternal life and happiness forever, and that the whole thing is a huge case of corporate wishful thinking. Is it? I think the Christian believer’s position is actually quite thoughtful... Read more

It’s theology my precious… Gollum shows us the Catholic understanding of humanity’s problem with sin. Peter Jackson’s film portrayal faithfully reveals Tolkien’s deep understanding of the tangled web that humanity has fallen into. First notice that Gollum has been twisted and hideously deformed by sin. Smeagol was good once, just like the other happy hobbits, and in every scene of Jackson’s film, a glint of Gollumy goodness shines through. Never is Gollum totally devoured by the evil. Even as he... Read more

When I was an Anglican priest on the Isle of Wight I spent a lot of time at Quarr (pronounced ‘core’) Abbey. Quarr is built just a few hundred yards from the ruins of a medieval abbey. The architect was Dom Bellot–one of the monks who came to the Isle of Wight from Solemses during a persecution of religion orders in the beginning of the twentieth century. At Quarr I was priviledged to be friends with a monk who has... Read more

Not knowing about agnosticism is like saying, ‘Deja vu? Haven’t I met you somehwere before?’ When you think about it agnosticism is really a no man’s land. It is a country you pass through, a stage on a journey, and never a destination. The human heart hates a vacuum, and the emptiness of agnosticism cannot last forever. In conversation today with Chapman the Younger, three types of agnosticism emerged from the fog of our minds: There is a healthy type... Read more

The Greenville News covers the story of my ordination and pulls in the Bob Jones University link. The comments add local color. Read more

  Do you remember the apostate bishop on the bus ride from hell to heaven in C.S.Lewis’ masterpiece The Great Divorce? He wallows in a sentimental spirituality mixed with a pompous intellectual vagueness that values ‘the spirit of inquiry’ instead of following Truth.In reply to the friend who asks him to repent and come to the light the apostate bishop says, “Ah, we must all interpret those beautiful words in our own way! for me there is no such thing... Read more

In viewing some of the photos from my ordination I’ve had several questions about my peculiar clerical garb. For those interested in questions of clerical haberdashery, I wear an Anglican style cassock as a reminder of my former incarnation in that most venerable, but now faded and jaded denomination. With that I wear a Roman style cincture and over it all, the Benedictine scapular. I am an oblate of Downside Abbey in England, and oblates who are entitled to wear... Read more

One of the good things about Netflix is that you can get minor movies that are only a few years old to watch again. I don’t think Pleasantville was too hot at the box office, but like Groundhog Day, it is a fascinating fantasy film with strong theological themes. The plot involves two contemporary teenagers from a broken family who get sucked into a black and white TV show. It’s called Pleasantville and its a 1950’s Andy of Mayberry, Dick... Read more

A friend recently said that his brother, who is training to be a Baptist pastor, has got engaged to his soon to be third wife. The second marriage only lasted two years. It brought to mind a conversation with another former Anglican priest friend a few years back who had just exited the Anglican Church. One of the deciders for him was the fact that the Anglican Church seemed to have virtually no agreed standards when it came to marriage.... Read more