[youtube]https://youtu.be/R1dy44jV8EM[/youtube] Modern Major General I found this online and thought my readers would enjoy it...If you're unfamiliar with the song from the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta watch the video. I am the very model of a modern German cardinal I’m kind to all minorities peripheral and marginal I know the mobile numbers of my seniors political I [...]
My essay this week at Imaginative Conservative is on the contemplative life and is entitled, On Windows, Work and Wasting Time I am just looking out the window. That is all. What am I looking at? A tree. A squirrel. A cardinal and a jay. I see the dog luxuriating in the morning sun. I see [...]
Why is this one so hard to understand? Doctrine determines Discipline. As Cardinal Pell points out here, During Tuesday’s press briefing a journalist asked the panel if they would confirm whether the question of communion is one of discipline and not doctrine, and can it therefore be explored and developed during this Synod? On Wednesday, asked [...]
Tu es Petrus - The Dome of St Peter's As the synod meets in Rome there is much talk about the Catholic Church changing. The reason the Catholic Church is still here after 2,000 years is that she has not changed according to every fashion that comes along. The Catholic Church's role is not to adapt [...]
Lutheran Deaconesses Over at CRUX I weigh in on the question raised by Archbishop Dubrocher that the Church ought to consider ordaining women to the diaconate. Therefore, the evidence from the New Testament and the early Church could provide arguments for women being ordained as deaconesses. As the order of permanent deacon was [...]
Fr Steve Grunow gives an excellent outline here of the history of today's feast. It's all rooted in the great Battle of Lepanto in 1571 when the course of world history was changed. He hints at one of the facts that I related to the children at our school Mass today--the fact that if the Sultan [...]
No Lobbyists for Leo My latest blog post for National Catholic Register is here What progressives can’t seem to get into their head is that the Catholic Church is not simply another political agency like the United Nations, the European Union or some Congress or Parliament. The Pope, Bishops and priests of the Catholic [...]
Can You Become as a Little Child? I'll be honest. I'm tired of the grumbling, grousing, griping and gossip. Why are there so many Catholics who are down on Pope Francis, biting their nails over the Synod on the Family and searching the skies for signs of the world's end? To be sure we [...]
My latest article for CRUX examines Marquette theologian Daniel Maguire's suggestion that Catholicism might split into three branches: Traditionalist, Magisterial and Progressive I agree with Maguire that these three tribes can be discerned within American Catholicism. Where I disagree is that there can be any formalized arrangement that establishes three separate groups. The three groups exist within [...]
My article for Imaginative Conservative this week reflects on the need for laughter in the face of the gathering dark. Let’s get theological. If we’re created in the image of God and we are able to laugh, then does God laugh? Is comedy divine? I’m convinced of it. Because he sees how all things work together [...]