What is your understanding of the following passage from the Bible?: For our Gospel did not come to you in word alone, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with much conviction. You know what sort of people we were among you for your sake. In every place your faith in God has gone forth, so that we have no need to say anything. I am not trying to be divisive. I really am curious. Thanks in... Read more
“The Church is always threatened with conforming to the pattern of this sinful world. Recognized or not, these processes of conforming to the world were at work in the great ages of the Church and are repeated throughout its history. The Church, considered structurally and not in the concrete actions of its individual members, tends to suffer declines in its internal life and thus to become incapable of giving life to the world. But it also happens periodically that the... Read more
With many of the same themes as Andrei Rublev, nonetheless The Mission is movie which has a wider appeal to English-speaking audiences than Rublev. Both movies are about men trying to find forgiveness, not only from God, but from themselves. The Mission tells the story of an 18th century Jesuit Mission in South America. Rodrigo Mendoza, played by Robert de Niro, joins the missionary work as a way to find peace in himself after he killed his own brother. He... Read more
Greg Boyd is a pastor of Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. Something that happened in 1992 changed his life. Visiting a July fourth “worship service” in one of the huge evangelical megachurches, he saw something that shocked and appalled him to the core. He watched a video featuring a high ranking member of the military talk about how God is on America’s side, and how that was evident during the (first) Gulf war. The video ended with three... Read more
Of all the things said about Mother Teresa’s (now well publicized) periods of doubt, this is one my favorites (by a commenter at Get Religion, who blogs here): While the secular press and even the writings of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta might indeed indicate some periods of doubt and disbelief on her part, the real truth of the matter is this: Teresa of Calcutta endured in her faith and offered people throughout the world the hope of Jesus Christ, despite... Read more
Our self-proclaimed “pro-life” president proves yet again that, beyond a few minor gestures suggesting a personal opposition to abortion, he has no interest in truly promoting a “culture of life.” The Bush administration is gearing up to release new regulations that would expand the devastating mining technique of mountaintop removal, a process that is used to extract about half of the coal that comes from the Appalachian region of the United States. Certainly, blowing up mountains is an efficient way... Read more
The notion that the morality of an act depends solely on a calculation of foreseeable consequences is endemic in our society. How many people truly believe that the rightness of the act depends primarily on the object chosen by the deliberate will, and that intentions or consequences are irrelevant if the chosen behavior is evil? Consider the following seven (obviously non-exhaustive) examples: (more…) Read more
What “choice” hath wrought. Read more
Following from Michael Joseph, Alexham, Rick Garnett, and Michael Joseph again, I thought I would add something on the topic. In discussing the licitness of the death penalty, I will be guided by Cardinal Dulles’s essay on the topic (often quoted by those casting doubt on John Paul’s teaching, which was not the intent of Dulles at all). In traditional Catholic teaching, punishment can serve four distinct purposes: rehabilitation, defense against the criminal, deterrence, and retribution. A key question is... Read more
Pickabacking my post on the execution of Johnney Ray Conner and Alexham’s post on Justice Anthony Scalia, I would like to post on an important document that was just realized by the Vatican. On August 21st, the Agenzia Fides of the Pontifical Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples issued a 13-page dossier on the death penalty. The dossier describes the various faces of capital punishment around the world, reports which nations have abolitioned its use and which maintain it, and... Read more
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