Religion

Dogma, the question of what we can know and what is real, is essential to religion. We can’t commit ourselves to what is nonexistent or utterly unknowable. We need God because we lack something, and what we lack must be supplied by something not ourselves. The God we need is therefore one who is real, … More ...

I’ve been reading or paging through a couple of books critical of antiliberal Catholics: Their Kingdom Come: Inside the Secret World of Opus Dei, by Robert A. Hutchison, and Smoke of Satan: Conservative and Traditionalist Dissent in Contemporary American Catholicism, by Michael W. Cuneo. Both give some interesting background info, although the first … More ...

All roads lead to Rome. Looking at what I’ve posted on Metanoia it seems my own road has been more through metaphysics, ethics and law than anything else. All of which are important and even necessary things but somewhat ancillary. They point beyond themselves and set the stage so that the real work can begin.

I’ve started reading Jonathan Kwitny’s Man of the Century, which seems a competent account of the Pope’s life by a very industrious New York journalist well-known as an investigative reporter. The author’s basic outlook is that of a mainstream New York journalist—my guess is that he’s a secular Jew—but he admires the Pope and … More ...

The obvious reason to become a Catholic is that you accept the claim of the Church to be a divine institution meant for all men, yourself included. A lot goes into that claim—what the world is like, how the Church fits into it, Church doctrine, ritual, organization, history, and what not else. One can discuss … More ...

I have no piercing insights on the Lord’s Prayer, but I should try to get my thoughts a bit more straight on the subject, so here are some reflections. (I’ll use the Latin version because it’s more Popish and so more in line with the blog’s theme.)

Pater noster, qui es in caelis,

It’s “our” … More ...

We continue to go through Ratzinger’s The Spirit of the Liturgy in “RCIA” (in fact, it’s a one-priest/one student affair). I found the historical discussion fascinating, for example with regard to the traditional orientation of Christian prayer to the East because of the association of the rising sun with Christ.

It seems to me that … More ...

Here’s a link to a couple of comments I made at another blog I maintain in which I bring back the theory of contemporary advanced liberalism as a gnostic heresy. I suppose it’s not exactly gnosticism, though. The gnostics (it is said) believed this world is evil, while liberals as liberals believe only that it … More ...

Now there’s a title that should make this entry even more crowd-pleasing than others I’ve posted recently. Still, I feel the need to mull over some basics, and those who get bored can skip entries.

Anyway, “essentialism” is considered a big sin among a lot of educated and intelligent people today. It seems to be … More ...

I wonder whether what these women are doing in Piero’s Discovery and Proof of the True Cross constitutes “full, conscious, and active participation”? One guy’s doing everything, everyone else is just watching, and he’s not paying the slightest attention to the audience or even facing them. I call it hopelessly bad liturgy.