22nd
Jun 2017
Give today!
Richard Dawkins, like his intellectual forebears David Hume, Feurbach, Emile Zola and countless others, claims not to be religious. In saying so, he is not being entirely honest, for whether Dr. Dawkins realizes it or not, Man by his very nature is a religious being. Aristotle claimed that Man was a rational and, therefore, a political, animal (and therefore one could escape neither thinking nor, alas, politics). The Church goes further, and declares that Man also cannot avoid the fact that he ... (Continue reading)
A blessed and grace-filled solemnity of Corpus Christi to one and all, a feast that has a long and varied history dating back to the early Middle Ages, with Saint Juliana of Liege (+1258), who, based on private revelations from God, advocated for a day outside of Lent (for on Holy Thursday, we also commemorate the Eucharist, in its inauguration at the Last Super) to celebrate devotion to this Sacrament of Sacraments, the source and summit of the Christian life, ... (Continue reading)
Games. Always playing games. Filling up the mind with plotting, and our heart’s surge crested with the thrill. Our little games, so all-important to us in the apex of victory or the crush of defeat, so turbulent as the rush of adrenalin. We are making love with conflict. We love to choose our sides, for our security, and make the others “Other”. And once that is done, we fly our pennants and chant our war-cries. For we are caught up ... (Continue reading)
Pope Francis, in his General Audience of June 7th, has raised another theological controversy. Various commentators have offered their own two cents, including this writer in an article on LifeSite, but here are some further thoughts: First, what the Holy Father said, in translation from various sources (the full English translation has yet to be posted on the Vatican webpage): Dear brothers and sisters, we are never alone. We can be far, hostile; we can even say we are ... (Continue reading)
An interesting factoid I recently came across, one borne out by anecdotal evidence, is that 3 out of 10 Americans now have tattoos, and I presume that number to be at least as high in Canada, signifying widespread acceptance of a practice that was once relegated to 19th century British sailors, who in turn adopted it from Polynesian South Pacific Islanders. Eventually, tattooing spread through the ranks of the military, biker and other types of gangs, mobsters, Russian and ... (Continue reading)
Homily of His Holiness John Paul II Sunday, 31 May 1998, The Solemnity of Pentecost Credo in Spiritum Sanctum, Dominum et vivificantem:I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of life. With the words of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, the Church proclaims her faith in the Paraclete; a faith that is born of theapostolic experience of Pentecost. The passage from the Acts of the Apostles, which today’s liturgy has offered for our meditation, recalls in fact the marvels worked on the day of ... (Continue reading)
Father Joseph Koterski, S.J. One of the distinctive traits of each letter by Saint Paul is his pattern of emphasizing some significant aspect of the mystery of Christ and showing the correlative trait that ought to be found in His followers. In the Letter to the Philippians his theme is Christ’s humility and our need to imitate His humility. The letter begins in prayer for the Christians at Philippi, a city of Thrace (north-eastern Greece) that Paul visited on his second missionary ... (Continue reading)
ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI Lourdes Grotto, Vatican Gardens Monday, 31 May 2010 Dear Brothers and Sisters, I join you with great joy at the end of this traditional prayer meeting which concludes the month of May in the Vatican. With reference to today's liturgy, let us contemplate Mary Most Holy in the mystery of her Visitation. We recognize in the Virgin Mary who goes to visit her kinswoman Elizabeth the clearest example and the ... (Continue reading)
The gauntlet has now been thrown down, that computers, or more specifically artificial intelligence will soon be able to create more perfect art than humans. This prediction, or threat, depending upon your point of view, applies in particular to music, the most mathematical and 'algorithmic' of the arts, following set patterns of chord structure, harmonies, frequencies, intervals and such, but may be extended to everything else, painting, sculpture, even writing, which will make students’ essays a whole lot easier. The ... (Continue reading)
Today, May 26th, is the feast of one of my favorite saints, Philip Neri (1515-1595), born and raised in the renaissance city of Florence during the height of that glorious era, one which, for all its artistic and scientific accomplishments, or perhaps because of them, was losing the sense of God. As a charismatic, talented, attractive, noble and virtuous young man, Philip could really have been anything, but his heart, in a very real and literal sense, was fixed on ... (Continue reading)