At his most authoritative, the Pope of the day has been the one who speaks on behalf of the community of Catholics, at times even on behalf of the community of all sacramental Christians—in centuries long past, those now called Eastern Orthodox accepted the authority of popes of the caliber of St Leo the Great. … [Read more…]
I’ve proposed that the Body of Christ, the real and not nominal or virtual, community into which the friends of God will be integrated is a civilization with the Christian Church as His central organ. In this proposed understanding, the Church isn’t the entirety of the Body; after all, I think that all that is … [Read more…]
In a recent article, Sacred Music. An Appeal To Restore Hearing To the Deaf, the Italian Catholic journalist, Sandro Magister, writes of criticism by musicians and musician-scholars of the loss of tradition in the liturgical music in the Roman Catholic Church: “This disdain for Gregorian chant and traditional repertoires is one sign of a much … [Read more…]
Or… Are they? That is, are the roots really amoral? More appropriately, do we humans see wrongly when we separate moral order from other sorts of order, raising moral order to angelic, ethereal realms? Once upon a time, when the West was truly Christian, we Western men did that with human nature. By tying Christian … [Read more…]
Unfortunately, we don’t have a public Christian intellectual elite which is re-understanding Creation and its Lord-Creator by way of courageous and honest responses to what is known from various fields of human exploration and speculation. We have a Christian intellectual elite more inclined to try to fit new knowledge into old schemes. We have ecclesiastical … [Read more…]
Rod Dreher posted an interesting essay on March 23, 2016: Millennial Landslide. I’ll start with a snippet of a quote he provided from another source: The percentage of Americans who prayed or believed in God reached an all-time low in 2014, according to new research led by San Diego State University psychology professor Jean M. … [Read more…]
A good question: Why did Peter, the shepherd of the flock of Christ, go to Rome, the center of earthly power in its most centralized and most brutal manifestation yet seen. [In fact, we shouldn’t forget that China was at a similar level of power and wealth, but no higher so far as I know.] … [Read more…]
Based on greatly expanded knowledge about human being, individual and communal, even Christian churches which have passed through periods of excessive claims to authority have come around to acknowledge there are many realms of a complete and perfect human life which lie beyond their institutional understanding and authority. I’ve discussed this in various places in … [Read more…]
There are those who prefer facts and rational thought. There are even those who are Christians and realize that participation in a campaign of lies against a man or a country is a mortal sin. Moreover, Christians should realize that a mind deformed by lies is a disordered mind, a mind of a human being … [Read more…]
I have published two essays in this short series: Traditional Morality is Dead, Long Live Traditional Morality: A World of Evolution and Development and Traditional Morality is Dead, Long Live Traditional Morality: The Dangers of Understanding God’s Acts-of-being. Now I will write about the greater meaning of this line of thought. I’m writing in response … [Read more…]