See this for a discussion of Pope Benedict’s speech on 2010/11/07 during his pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. For those who’ve not heard of this place, it’s said by some to be the burial site of St. James the Apostle, brother of St. John the Apostle. The traditions are too recent, Medieval Age, … [Read more…]
From a letter in the Library of America collection of Flannery O’Connor’s works (page 953): To see Christ as God and man is probably no more difficult today than it has always been, even if today there seem to be more reasons to doubt. For you it may be a matter of not being able … [Read more…]
What’s infallible and absolutely true is what God said to Moses and St. Paul, not what they said to us and certainly not what they said to us as filtered through human interpreters and human commentators.
In a recent article, Freedom and Structure in Human Life — When Do We Become Persons?, I quoted a summary of a view of man developed by the theologian Metropolitan John Zizioulas of the Greek Orthodox Church. I see much good in that view as stated in the summary and didn’t go into a detailed … [Read more…]
In a recent newsletter, (Letter #50, 2010/09/24, see Inside the Vatican magazine), Dr. Robert Moynihan, a journalist covering the ‘Vatican beat’, discusses a recent meeting in Vienna of high-level church officials from the Catholic and Orthodox churches. At least some of those officials are also theologians. It would seem good that there are serious movements … [Read more…]
I wouldn’t wish to complete the sentence in the title because I think the obvious completions are too pessimistic, yet, there is little room left to claim that human beings place a generally high value on freedom. Or that they can even recognize it. It might be the case that a desire for freedom, the … [Read more…]
Analogies can be taken too far and too literally, yet I wonder if we can apply to the human social organism, ultimately the Body of Christ, the example of a long-ago and primitive immune system ‘spinning off’ a neurological system. As I understand this particular line of speculation in evolutionary biology, and it was years … [Read more…]
So goes the claim in an antiphon somewhere in the “Christian Book of Prayer” (one-volume version of the liturgy of hours, Catholic version). Man was made to glorify God. This statement points to a great truth for sure, but we have to understand that all truths, even the greatest of truths revealed by God are … [Read more…]
I haven’t read Stephen Hawking’s most recent book where he’s said to argue that a Creator-God is unnecessary nor have I read more than summaries of the efforts of certain Christian theologians to shoot down those arguments. I’ve read that Hawking argues gravity fills the need for such a God, but that’s irrelevant to the … [Read more…]
I’m making another novel, The Open Independence of the Sea , available for download, free for personal use and distribution. The license is Version 3.0 of the Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works license as written and published by Creative Commons Corporation. This license can be found at the Creative Commons website . I also append a copy … [Read more…]