Milton’s famous phrase from Paradise Lost has been used in countless contexts, in print or in private. Meant to exclaim that it was because of man’s fall that Christ came, and implying, for those who wonder about such things, Would Christ not have come if we had not sinned and made his coming necessary for our salvation? Did [...]
These days, the Church discourages the use of the term “confession” in preference to “rite of reconciliation”. I don’t know why, but it may be because of the negative connotation the word has received from an anti-Catholic culture, which sees confession as enforced, even oppressive. So many good things are discarded now in a fruitless and [...]
I just encountered a young man doing his morning run and we stopped and chatted. I live near a university, so I wasn’t surprised he was a student; a grad student getting his second undergraduate along with a master’s in music and music therapy—and a master’s from the “University of Theology and Spirituality” whatever that is. [...]
I am no scholar of scripture, and I’m dubious of those who claim to be, even within the Church and its long history of scripture scholarship. Not only is complete fluency in the ancient languages of scripture necessary, but also a thorough knowledge of the ancient cultures in which those languages were spoken. At the church [...]
Sometimes a little life experience sticks in our memory and we don't know why we still remember it after six or seven decades. I think it might be because the experience is a lesson, like a little parable from God. It stays with us because we are meant to learn something from it, something important. I [...]
My friend Ann Frailey has written another lovely little meditative piece, http://blog.catholicwritersguild.com/2021/02/i-lift-my-gaze.html. It’s about death and grief, a coincidence because the same topic has been on my mind. Her opening quote, which was from Tom Hanks’ character of Walt Disney in the film Saving Mr. Banks, put my own thoughts in focus: “That’s what we storytellers [...]
At the beginning of the pandemic, I wrote a post pondering what the meaning of it might be, suggesting we “pay attention.” There were well-intentioned attempts by many to diminish significance by pointing to epidemics, plagues, and natural disasters of the past, but we have never had a pandemic in human history, a deadly disease of [...]
I got sucked into a quarrel yesterday. I hate to admit that, but there it is. The only value such an experience has is the self-examination it evokes, not just to determine whether I was truly “right” but more importantly, to determine what made me lose my cool. I raised my voice—something I never do—then realized too late [...]
(This has nothing whatever to do with Catholic culture.) If you are lucky enough to have a friend who lives in South Georgia and has a pecan tree, you might have received pecans this year for Christmas, and you might have thought, Now what am I supposed to do with this. Well, a word or two [...]
Roseanne Sullivan over at Dappled Things has written a piece on the ghastly nativity scene at the Vatican, https://dappledthings.org/18296/if-2020-was-a-nativity-scene/ appropriately titled “If 2020 was a nativity scene”. If you haven’t seen it, you might want to brace yourself: Not included in the photo here is the figure of an astronaut and something that looks like Darth Vader with a [...]
