One popular writer within certain Catholic circles is Gabriele Amorth. He is an exorcist — not the “chief exorcist” that some people make him out to be — and he has used his work as an exorcist to judge and condemn many things from Harry Potter to unnamed Cardinals at the Vatican. He sees a Satanic conspiracy at work in the Church, and many people are quick to believe what he has to say. This is probably because they want... Read more
Torture in any of its forms can never be accepted. We must never allow for excuses or qualifications to suggest that what is torture really is not. We must put a halt to the development and implementation of the culture of death before we can make for a victory for a culture of life. As long as we continue to let the culture of death continue to ramrod new objectifications of rightful subjects in the world, death and its destruction... Read more
Television is both a reflection of the culture at large but also the means by which future generations are being socialized. It is for the second reason I am never against examining the influence television has on society. And what one finds on television can be rather disturbing indeed. There is a general agreement that sexuality, inside or outside of marriage, is the norm, and it does no good to call people into accountability and to require them to be... Read more
There was an earthquake in a country in South America. The anglicized pronunciation sounds like the spice chili. The Spanish proununciation is Ch-ee’-lay. Chill-lay’ is the pronunciation used by many people in the media and the faux-sophisticated. Read more
It’s been a source of great irritation to me for a while now that many on the right are using the specter of abortion to vehemently oppose the current healthcare reform bill – even salivating over the election of a pro-abortion pro-torture senator who might well have had the power to derail the whole process. It’s been clear for some time now that they oppose this reform mainly on individualist grounds – the imposition of a mandate to purchase insurance... Read more
In an amazing turn of events, many so-called “conservatives”[1] are calling into question the social doctrine of the Catholic Church. They act like it is a new idea, and riddled with errors. A common tactic is to say the Church should not be like the United Way; it should be looking for the salvation of souls. To any Catholic with a traditional sense of Church doctrine, this appeal strikes as very Protestant and quietist. We have found ourselves once again... Read more
I certainly understand the concern that my religio-political views — whether one uses the terms “Catholic anarchism,” “anarcho-Catholicism,” “participatory democratic Catholicism,” “libertarian socialist Catholicism,” etc. etc. — are “idiosyncratic.” I try to be patient with such charges, pointing when I can to persons, movements, and teachings in our Catholic tradition as well as among the wider Body of Christ that inspire and support the stances that I take. It might also help to point to contemporary phenomena such as the... Read more
Some time ago, I wrote a post highlighting the fact that Christ’s presence in the Eucharist is not properly understood in a physical way. Many found this post helpful, but others reacted quite strongly against this suggestion. For them, any suggestion that the eucharistic presence is not physical meant that it is not “real” or not “bodily.” Now Church teaching has always professed that Christ’s eucharistic presence is both real and bodily, but never that it is physical. In fact,... Read more
Today, the Second Sunday of the Great Fast, is known in the Byzantine tradition as St Gregory Palamas Sunday. He is one of the great lights of Eastern theology and spirituality. In the past, despite his importance, his thought was lost, and only a few monastics in the East were able to appreciate his work. It was only in recent times that his work re-emerged and become studied by the lay and monastic alike, bringing in a renaissance to Eastern... Read more
Two blog posts by different authors on the same blog on the same day. Both are about boundaries between human beings. The first is a predictable glorification of imperial boundary-making. The author enthusiastically passes along yet another artifact from u.s. american civil religion, this time a hymn to that personification of the nation-state, Uncle Sam. And you’d have to suffer from complete religious illiteracy to miss the deeply theological content here, with its nation-based (i.e. pagan) eschatology and soteriology: For... Read more
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