I think it was Robert Benchley who once said that there were two kinds of people in the world: those who divide the world into two kinds of people and those who don’t. Regardless of whether he was right, one thing is certain: there are two sorts of questioners in
Most people know there is a rather intimidating portrait in the Old Testament of a stormy Yahweh thundering from Sinai. It is a portrait to give one healthy pause. It reminds us that “our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29), the awful and perfect Judge who can see into
Last week we spoke of Mary as the New Eve and Virgin Bride and noted that virginity always speaks of purity. The purity of Mary’s faith, so closely bound up with her virginity, leads to the other great Marian image found in John’s Gospel: Mary as the Virgin Mother. For at
The first thing to note about the Perpetual Virginity of Mary is that it’s the natural extension of the dogma of the Virgin Birth. Many modern people assume that, at its core, the Virgin Birth was basically a stunt. That is, the common modern assumption is that the meaning of
Last week, we looked at the basic evidence for the Perpetual Virginity of Mary: the “why the Church thinks that the record shows, as a matter of historical fact, that she remained a virgin” evidence. But, of course, the question remains, “Why does the Church think this is a big
This being V Month, I thought it might be novel to turn our thoughts away from PC obsessions with sex and have a little fun subverting of the Dominant Paradigm. To that end, I thought it might good to run a little series on the Perpetual Virginity of Mary, both the evidence for
“Where is this Purgatory stuff in the Bible?” ask my Protestant friends. “As far as I’m concerned, Christians go straight to Heaven, washed in the blood of the Lamb and ready to stand before the Throne. How come you Catholics think you have to work your way to Heaven? Haven’t
All who die in God’s grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven. (Catechism of the Catholic Church – #1030) Few doctrines of the Catholic faith
Last week, we looked at the Pharisaic approach to purity and contrasted it with Jesus’ approach. As we noted, it is easy to turn the Pharisees into cartoon villains and not see them as human beings who made… pretty much the same mistakes many of us make today. They saw
Our place in the cosmos has been a source of fascination since the first human looked up at the splendor of the night sky. Every culture has reacted to the spectacle of the heavens with various sorts of religious awe. Babylonians watched the stars for omens, as did the Chinese.
Prudence has acquired something of a bad name these days. It is easily associated with words like “prune”, “prude” and “George Bush” (“Wouldn’t be prudent.”). People think it is a synonym for “timidity”. But for St. Thomas, Prudence means something more like common sense. The prudent person is the one
What a day! Bus late, no breakfast, missed deadline, headaches, depression and post-nasal drip. And when I got home my kids were whiney, my wife mentally quick-fried to a crackly crunch and I was as prickly as a porcupine. Summoning fatherly concern to its height, I brushed past my weepy
Thomas Cahill, in his book The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels, says, “Most of our best words, in fact-new, adventure, surprise; unique individual, person, vocation; time, history, future; freedom, progress, spirit; faith, hope, justice-are the gifts of the Jews.” Without a sense of history which was quite literally invented by the Jews, we
One of the most curious facts about prayer is that we do it at all. Believers often overlook this fact because prayer is such an integral part of life that it’s just part of our mental furniture. But prayer is not at all obvious to people who stand outside a
I once knew four women with a gift for musical harmony who made a recording. When they played the tape back they could hear a beautiful fifth voice joining them when their voices blended just so. They knew, of course, that there was nothing supernatural here—the phenomenon is known as
Praising is profoundly misunderstood in our culture. We tend to think of it in terms of either therapy or power. On the therapy end of things, we “praise” little kids in order to guard their fragile little egos. Similarly, we’ve all seen Stuart Smalley characters on TV, those “support group”
Hopelessness assaults us from all sides. When a culture no longer looks to the eternal God, it starts looking to this passing world—and it passes. So we fret about demographic winter amid the barrenness of a contraceptive culture facing its doom both economically and socially (as the Muslims happily attest).
Once upon a time there was a newly married couple. Every few weeks, the new missus would buy a pork roast, cut off an inch or so from both ends, and pop it in the oven. This went on for several months till one day the new hubby asked, “Why
Last week we talked about the curious taboos that marked the Old Testament. As we discussed, such taboos are not really very strange to us if we think about it, which is why you did not start your day with a heaping helping bowl of nutritious insect larvae, despite the
Everybody knows that the Old Testament is full of rules aimed at keeping Israelites from ritual defilement–rules which no longer bind Christians. We tend to read these regulations through a pair of glasses that has one lens from the ancient Christian tradition and one from a modern, post-Enlightenment perspective. The
One great thing about being a humanities major is that it helps you to despise all the money you’ll never make. Another great thing about it is that it prepares you for approaching religious literature in ways that, mysteriously enough, don’t seem to occur to so many people with a
I have to travel semi-frequently, so I’m supposed to complain. It’s more or less expected. Particularly when you do it by air. So I suppose I should gripe that there are a lot more Catholics out east than there are out west–at least, English-speaking Catholics. Consequently, one of the disadvantages
Everybody loves a riddle. See if you can guess what ties these people together based on the MSM coverage: ..”At home I expose my children to all faiths. I put a different book on the stairs leading up to our bedrooms – books on Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Christianity and so
If you had asked 15 years ago why my non-denominational church did not celebrate communion as all Catholics and many Protestants do, I would have given several reasons. First, Hebrews 9:27 teaches that Christ was “offered once to take away the sins of many” and sternly warns the church (Hebrews 6:6) against
Once upon a time, on the Internet, someone from an Eastern Orthodox background posted a little note concerning the Feast of the Holy Innocents. According to this post there is apparently an old Orthodox tradition that the number of those slain by Herod was 14,000–a rather steep number for a
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