Our “Week of Adding Many Bloggers” is coming to a close, (although there may yet be one more name added by Friday!) with two bloggers who may — for now — be only marginally familiar to Patheos readers. It is surely a nice, and a gratifying thing when we can add well-known authors and writers and thinkers to our ranks, but being a baseball fan, I appreciate the value of creating a kind of “farm team” too; spotting good unknown... Read more
Yesterday, we welcomed Kyle Cupp and Rebecca Lane Frech to the Catholic channel, and today, as promised, we introduce two more bloggers to the mix. When you look up “Phenomenology, Catholic” in a search engine, a few names will instantly surface: Pope Saint John Paul II, Saint Edith Stein, and, in time, I have no doubt, Artur Sebastian Rosman. Not because he’s a saint (who am I to judge?) but because, as Sam Rocha notes, he writes on Phenomenology** a... Read more
When I was a little girl, and afraid of monsters in my darkened bedroom, I used to think that if I would just close my eyes and turn my head away, I would be alright. If I could just look away, the monster could not see me, would not get to me, could not use and abuse me. I would be safe. Looking away did not keep the monster at bay. It just ended up fracturing me in ways that... Read more
They are the Mary Queen of Heaven Missionaries, and who looking at them could imagine that they have taken upon themselves — as have so many great missionary sisters before them — such difficult work, serving populations invisible to so many? Nuns reach out to sex workers in fight against prostitution in the Philippines: In a red-light district in Cebu, central Philippines, the taxi stopped when its passenger called out, “There, that girl,” pointing to one of the women standing... Read more
So, here we are – my time as a guest blogger here at the Anchorhold has come to an end. I have to emphasise the extent to which this whole thing came as a bolt from the blue – a random act of grace. I emailed Elizabeth to get Leah Libresco’s email address because I was trying to see if she’d give a talk while she was visiting Ireland. Leah ended up doing the talk (we’re still talking about it), and... Read more
Our Summer Symposium highlighting the issues we anticipate being addressed during October’s Extraordinary Synod on the Family ended several weeks ago, but my ongoing pneumo-drama, and the serious circumstances in Iraq and Syria proved distracting, and I have not been able to tidy up the loose ends by rounding up those pieces that had published after my first round-up of links and issues. On the topics of Divorce, Annulment Reform and the interesting “Orthodox Option” some have been discussing, we... Read more
It is a rare thing for the Patheos Catholic Channel to announce the launch of two blogs at once, and we’re only doing it this time, and the next two times, in order to avoid announcing six new bloggers at once — and great scott, they all look so young! — which might cause distraction and a general feeling of being overwhelmed. Call it, then, “The Week of Launching New Patheos Bloggers”. We take great pleasure in kicking it off... Read more
Not easy, mind you, but simple? As in not overburdened with worldly reason and trendy thought; as in intuitive, rather than taught; as in off-the-grid, beyond the collective and as singular as you and I really are? This is a pretty good argument that yeah, peace and joy may not be easy to find, but the method to attaining them is actually pretty simple. I think she’s correct. Again, and again, Saint Gregory of Nyssa proves true: Only wonder leads... Read more
I’ve never understood why people who have no problem with Elijah and Enoch being assumed into paradise have a problem with Mary — the greatest, and most blessed of all created creatures — being assumed into heaven. “It’s not in scripture” doesn’t cut it, (as Msgr. Charles Pope demonstrates here) because what did the early Christians reference before the bible as we know it finally came into being in the fifth century? Teachings and traditions, as Saint Paul writes to... Read more
I meant to write this earlier but the day got away from me. Now, it’s sundown and past the feastday of Saint Maximilian Kolbe — we’re actually in the Vigil of the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, but I’ll write about that tomorrow. Let’s look at Kolbe one more time before calling it a day, or a night, and I’ll tell you why. Kolbe was a Catholic priest and very much a subversive: He’d been arrested,... Read more
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