I had a Southern Baptist friend who thought it was amusing, when visiting Catholic churches, to wave to the image of Mary and say, "Hi Mary!" When I challenged him on what seemed a mark of disrespect he said cheerily, "Y'all say, 'Hail Mary' and 'Hail' just means 'Hi', so it's my way of saying 'Hail [...]
Images of the Blessed Mother in the Old Testament I was brought up in an Evangelical home, and every Sunday our church service consisted of a long Bible study as the sermon. My favorites were when the pastor went through the Old Testament and pointed out the prophecies of Jesus which were fulfilled in the New [...]
I had a terrific compliment last week. This person didn’t praise me for being extraordinary. She didn’t thank me for being intellectual or handsome or holy or amazing. She thanked me for being normal. We are so often attracted to what is weird. We follow the details of the lives of the stars of athletics and [...]
The Cowper Madonna by Raphael "To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant" wrote Bl. John Henry Newman. As part of my research for a book on married priests I am reading Christian Cochini's tome Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy. It's a masterful piece of scholarship which examines the early church's views [...]
In learning more about St Kateri Tekakwitha I was struck by the connecting points between her and St Therese of Lisieux. Both were orphaned. Both suffered from a terrible disease. Both died at the age of just 24. Therese was called "the Little Flower". Kateri was called "the Lily of the Mohawks" Pictured are two antique [...]
Remembering that the New Testament is hidden in the old and the old is made manifest in the New, yesterday's feast provides three powerful images from the past that converge at Pentecost: Wind, Fire and Witness. The mighty rushing wind connects back to the first day of creation where in the first verses of the Bible [...]
May Magnificat by G.M.Hopkins MAY is Mary’s month, and I Muse at that and wonder why: Her feasts follow reason, Dated due to season— Candlemas, Lady Day; But the Lady Month, May, Why fasten that upon her, With a feasting in her honour? Is it only its being brighter Than the most are must delight her? [...]
There are very few Catholic titles for the Blessed Virgin Mary more likely to get Evangelical Protestants upset than Mary Co-Redemptrix or Mary Mediatrix. Immediately the Bible Christian will quote I Timothy 2:5, "For there is one God and one mediator between God and Man--the man Christ Jesus." For them it is a done deal. "The [...]
I was brought up as an Evangelical fundamentalist Christian and when we read the verses in the Bible that spoke of Jesus' "brothers and sisters" we concluded that they were the other children of Joseph and Mary. What I didn't know is that this idea was unheard of in the early church, and that even the [...]
Calling Mary the "Queen of Heaven" seems to most non-Catholics a title too far. How can the simple girl from Nazareth be "Queen of Heaven"? Isn't that a pagan term? In fact, isn't the "Queen of Heaven" actually condemned in the Bible? In Jeremiah 44 the Hebrews are blamed for turning back to false gods and [...]