I was a young Anglican priest and serving as an assistant curate in a parish in which Father John my boss (the pastor) was also a convert from a conservative Baptist home. We were con-celebrating Mass on the evening of All Souls Day, and our parish was blessed with a good choir and music director who [...]
Our Lady of the Rosary in Greenville, SC is located in a part of town that is challenged in many ways. The church campus is surrounded by low income housing, high density population, a large transient population and all the difficulties associated with modern American poverty: high unemployment, homelessness, human trafficking, prostitution, substance abuse and broken [...]
There were plenty of frightening things when we were growing up in the countryside of Southeastern Pennsylvania. There was an abandoned tumbledown log cabin in the woods with the door swinging on its hinges. The interior was still furnished with rotting sideboards, beds and a rusty old pot bellied stove. We crept inside expecting to [...]
If he is guilty, Slovenian ex-Jesuit Markos Rupnik is clearly a pretty trashy guy, but what about his art? It's junk and here's why: First we have to understand what sacred art is supposed to be and do. To do that one has to know a bit about art history. In the earliest days Christians were [...]
You don't have to be a mystical, supernatural prophet to see the future. If is possible to simply read the signs of the times. While most of the future remains unpredictable, it is possible to see where things are going and make some fairly accurate predictions. One of these concerns the human population. Every indication is [...]
One of the themes echoing through the discussions on the synod on synodality is the question, "How can we create safe and welcoming spaces for those who feel excluded from the church?" A chasm has appeared in the response to this question. Progressives appeal to the need for compassion for those they perceive as excluded victims [...]
There is a fair bit of uninformed talk in the church during this synod on synodality about the development of doctrine. Various hot button issues are discussed in breathless terms by progressives who are all excited about the possibility of change. First we should affirm that, while church doctrine does not change our understanding of the [...]
Being raised in an Evangelical Protestant world I was taught to reject the belief in purgatory for three reasons. First, it isn't in the Bible. Second, we are saved by "Faith alone" and purgatory smacks of earning your salvation. Third, we believed in the Calvinist doctrine of eternal security IOW "once saved always saved" and purgatory [...]
My parish's patronal feast is today--the Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary. The photo illustrating this post shows the ceiling of the baldachin in our new church. The starry dome portrays the night sky over Lepanto on Oct 7, 1571. The Feat of Our Lady of the Rosary--previously known as Our Lady of Victories--commemorates the [...]
As Halloween approaches it brings to mind witches and wizards, magic and mystery, and recent events and experiences in the Catholic Church cause me to ponder the attitude so many of my fellow Catholics seem to have about the sacraments and sacramentals Too many treat them like magic and the priests like magicians. I don't suggest [...]