21 April 2010

Coffee Bowl Browsing

Re-design for the $100 bill. . .one of the stranger monetary practices in Italy is the tendency of clerks to round down your bill in order to avoid having to make "small change."  For example, a package arrives with a 7.83 euro customs charge.  I give the postal clerk 8.00 euro; he gives me .20 euro change.  The Italians don't like to sweat the pennies!  

Just great!  That Klingon volcano in Iceland is rumbling again.  It's looking like it will take the airlines here in Europe 'til mid-June to clear their backlogged flights.  I wonder if there's a Miami-bound cruise ship leaving from Naples anytime soon.

When it comes to trusting the government, the phrase nullius in verba--"take nobody's word for it"--makes a great philosophical statement:  "It's a solid maxim for any free-thinking people. So let's not treat some nutritious doubt as if it were a bad thing."

At the opening of the most recently aired episode of American Idol, the show's host, Ryan Seacrest, said, "Every time you vote on American Idol, you change lives."  True.  You help to change living children into dead children.

George Weigel spanks Hans "Look At Me" Kung: "You are an obviously intelligent man; you once did groundbreaking work in ecumenical theology. What has happened to you? What has happened, I suggest, is that you have lost the argument over the meaning and the proper hermeneutics of Vatican II. That explains why you relentlessly pursue your fifty-year quest for a liberal Protestant Catholicism, at precisely the moment when the liberal Protestant project is collapsing from its inherent theological incoherence."  Ouch.

Laxist vs. Rigorist heresies in the history of the Church. . .nothing new under the nave.

"Crowded elevators smell different to midgets."  Best comedy one-liners.  NB.  some of these are R-rated. 

Inglorious Grammar B*stards!

"I was thrown from my car as it left the road. I was later found in a ditch by some stray cows."  A site for all the stupid things that people say.

A slightly different description of Christianity.  Yes, words matter.

"A grenade fell onto a kitchen floor in France resulted in Linoleum Blownapart."  Puns, wordplay, malapropisms:  lexophilia.

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Dealing with Doubt

How can I overcome doubt?

Why do I doubt?

Is doubt dangerous for my spiritual health?

The answers to these question are, in order:  Yes, Depends, and Not Necessarily.

There's not a soul on the planet who hasn't entertained a doubt or two about his/her faith.  The apostles, great saints, popes, theologians, philosophers, even ordinary folks have had and have doubts about the most basic insights of our faith.  In some ways, being a Christian is the easiest thing on earth to be.  But when it comes to truly understanding what it means to follow Christ is all about, the doubts can rack up fast.

Let's start by defining "doubt."  Here's the definition from the Cambridge Dictionary of American English"a feeling of not knowing what to believe or what to do, or the condition of being uncertain."  Good basic definition.  Let's leave alone for now what it means "to feel that one doesn't know."  The key here is that there is some sort of confusion about the correctness of a belief, or some uncertainty about what one ought to do in a given situation.  We could add to the defintion: a lack of faith, an absence of conviction, a spirit or habit of questioning.  Synonyms would include: ambiguity, disbelief, distrust, dubiety, faithlessness, hesitancy, incertitude, incredulity, indecision, irresolution, perplexity, qualm, reluctance, skepticism, suspicion, and wavering. You get the idea.  

With these definitions and synonyms it is easy to see why most of us think that doubt opposes faith and why doubting would be dangerous to one's faith.  But not all doubt is created equally.  Not all doubt is a foil to faith.  The Catechism is clear on this point:  "Voluntary doubt [VD] about the faith disregards or refuses to hold as true what God has revealed and the Church proposes for belief. Involuntary doubt [ID] refers to hesitation in believing, difficulty in overcoming objections connected with the faith, or also anxiety aroused by its obscurity. If deliberately cultivated doubt can lead to spiritual blindness"(n. 2088).  VD is the willful act of rejecting a truth of the faith.  ID arises out of intellectual dissatisfaction with how the truth of the faith is taught and defended.  ID can become VD if it is "deliberately cultivated."  Notice the two essential qualifiers that make doubt sinful:  voluntary and deliberately.  In order for doubt to lead to "spiritual blindness," your uncertainty about a truth of the faith must be chosen as a result of deliberation. 

To reinforce this distinction the CCC goes on to define incredulity "Incredulity is the neglect of revealed truth or the willful refusal to assent to it"(n. 2089).  Incredulity has three ugly children:  heresy, apostasy, schism.  These three are what happens when you choose VD and act on it:  you knowingly and willfully believe/teach error; renounce the faith; and separate yourself from the Body of Christ.  Obviously, for a Catholic, VD is serious business.  Most of us do not entertain this level of doubt.  If we did, we wouldn't be all that worried about how to overcome the temptations to doubt the faith.

Most of our anxieties about doubting the faith arise involuntarily.  A family member sends a link to an anti-Catholic website that lists the gross sins of the Roman papacy.  A friend reports on a book that reveals the occult origins of the Mass.  A pamphlet left on the windshield at church interprets the Book of Revelation in a way that demonstrates that the Catholic Church is the Whore of Babylon.  The circumstances of our involuntary doubt are probably more personal than this. I don't feel the presence of God.  Do I really believe that the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ at Mass?  Why did God allow my child to commit suicide?  My son is gay and I'm told that I should reject him, but I can't.  My sins are so bad that not even God can forgive them.  These are all doubts I've heard expressed before.  Real doubts that real Catholics experience and threaten to undermine their faith.

So, what can be done?  

First, don't panic!  Having a doubt about the faith is something akin to suffering from acne.  Even when you are past the worst of it, it will occasionally pop up again.  Don't do anything drastic as a cure.   Put your heart and mind in prayer and wait.  Just wait. 

Second, separate your emotions from our thinking.  Emotions are pretty fine, perfectly natural.  But in times of crisis, emotions can lead to imprudent action.  What you need immediately is a clear picture of exactly what it is that you are doubting.  How we think and feel are intimately bound together.  Anxious feelings lead to anxious thinking and vice-versa.  The process of teasing out how you feel from how you think is helped along by a spiritual director, friend, pastor, etc.  

Third, try to get a clear idea of what it is that you are doubting.  It helps to distinguish between intellectual doubts and emotional doubts.  Intellectual doubts arise when the logic or reasoning of your faith is challenged.  For example, an atheist friend points out a flaw in how you understand the power of prayer.  Or, you discover the often unpleasant history of the Church.  Emotional doubts arise when you encounter rejection, abuse, or some other distressing event in your faith life.  For example, a priest refuses you communion b/c you are divorced.  Or, you are angry at your bishop for his confessed role in covering up your pastor's history of sexual abuse.  Doubts arising out of strong emotions are the most difficult to deal with b/c they do not readily submit themselves to rational evaluation and treatment.  

Fourth, once you are certain about the nature of your doubt, take action to address it with the best tools you have available.  If your doubt is intellectual in nature, assume that you are misunderstanding the teaching you are having doubts about and begin to do some research.  Check facts.  Make the proper distinctions.  Consult those who may know more.  Suspend judgment for as long as possible. If you are too quick to accept as true the objections made to the faith, you might want to evaluate your motivations for doing this.  Has your friend given you an easy out, and you're taking it because you find the teaching too difficult to live with?  Sometimes it is just more convenient to move into voluntary doubt and incredulity than it is to seek out the truth.  If you doubt is emotional in nature, sit down with someone and talk it out.  Be as angry as you need to be.  God is a big boy and he knows your heart.  The Psalms are not exactly free of angry outbursts directed at God!  Get to the bottom of your feelings by being honest.  Most of the time, I've found that people who are angry with the Church over some issue are really angry about something else entirely.  The event that they claim to be angry about turns out to have been a trigger.  The woman who is angry about the way the Church treats divorced Catholics is really angry about her family's rejection of her new husband.  It's just less complicated to cuss at the Church.  This doesn't mean that your emotion response is always about displacement; it means that your doubt cannot be overcome if you cannot be honest about what it is that's bugging you.

Fifth, all of the steps above assume that you are committed to resolving your doubts, regardless of their cause and nature.   If, even in the face of the worst possible doubt, you remain committed to resolving the problem, then you can be at peace b/c that commitment alone speaks volumes to the strength of your faith.  If you are not committed to resolving your doubts, then you won't do any of the above steps and your doubt won out long before you gave it much thought.  So, what happens if you are absolutely committed but cannot resolve the doubt?  I will answer that question with a question:  what is motivating your commitment even though you have failed to resolve your doubt?  

Probably the most important thing to remember about the faith is this:  we believe in order to understand.  Modernist culture has flipped this and made understanding a prerequisite for belief.  If you wait around for absolute understanding before believing, you will be waiting long past your funeral.  Faith is the good habit of trust.  Trust is a risk.  For us, to believe, to trust, to have faith are all gambles.  We trust our kids to daycare.  We believe that our CPA won't steal us blind.  But we know that the daycare could hire a molester and that the CPA could be an embezzler.   Fortunately, our faith is given to One Who has never failed, never lied, and will always keep His promises.  There is no gambling here, no risk.  We may feel that we are risking everything and we may think that we are gambling everything, but where there is no chance of failure, there is no danger of losing. 



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20 April 2010

Coffee Bowl Browsing

On conflating anti-government political movements:  anti-democracy vs. anti-Big government, or "Timothy McVeigh was no Tea Partier"

Rhode Island's bishop, Rt. Rev. Thomas Tobin orders his hospital to withdraw its membership from the pro-ObamaCare Catholic Hospital Association. 

Bishop Brant of Greensburg, PA refuses to allow dissenting sisters a place in his upcoming diocesan vocations promotional material.  The Sisters of St Joseph in his diocese were signatories on the pro-ObamaCare letter NETWORK. 

Yes, it is still dangerous to be TOO Catholic in some seminaries. . .no worries, though. . .the clock is ticking on the Burlap Vestments & Felt Banners Hegemony.

Mahony throws the Nazi Card when describing the recently passed immigration reform law in AZ.  Yea, that helps. 

Unable to find any anti-Tea Party protesters at a T.P. rally, the local "news" station creates a few

A very weird way to die. . .


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BOOM! (UPDATE)

My summer plans have blown up in my face.

Starting from scratch. . .@#$%!

UPDATE:  looks like a solution is in the works. . .

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19 April 2010

On the dangers of telling the truth

3rd Week of Easter (T)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
SS. Domenico e Sisto, Roma

Podcast*

Stephen stands accused of blasphemy before the Sanhedrin. He faces conviction and execution. Rather than backtrack on his earlier remarks, Stephen goes for broke and tells the truth: “You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always oppose the Holy Spirit [. . .] You received the law as transmitted by angels, but you did not observe it.” Like most people who are told an uncomfortable truth, the crowd is none too happy; “they were infuriated, and they ground their teeth at him.” At this point in the confrontation, Stephen's lawyer should have objected and called for a recess. His publicist should have released a statement to the media clarifying his remarks and calling for calm. Then Stephen could have called a press conference a few days later and apologized for his apparent intolerance, announcing that he was checking into into rehab for substance abuse treatment. All would have been forgiven. But b/c Stephen is filled with Holy Spirit and unable to lie, he says, “Behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” And b/c the crowd hates the truth and will not hear it, “they cry out in a loud voice, cover their ears, and rush upon him together.” Stephen is stoned to death, dying with the name of Christ on his lips, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. . .do not hold this sin against them.” Had his executioners been paying attention, they would have understood Stephen's death as a sign of God's presence; they would have received his dying words as a gift freely given. 

On a day sometime before Stephen faces his own hostile crowd, another group confronts Jesus with a demand: “What sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you? What can you do?” It's important to understand what they are asking for here. They aren't interested in words of wisdom, or profound teaching. They don't want a clever exegesis of the Law. The crowd is demanding a miracle, a performance that can only be explained as an act of God. And not just any old miracle but one that benefits them immediately. They note that God gave them manna in the desert. So, they want Jesus to do the same. They want concrete, irrefutable—and dare I say it, edible—proof that Jesus is who he says he is. Rather than promising them additional farm subsidies, or a new government food program, Jesus says, “I am the bread of life.” Eat this bread and never hunger; believe in me and never thirst. This is not the miracle they were hoping for.

Stephen, somewhere along the way, heard and believed. He ate the bread of life and drank from the cup of salvation. He was filled with the Holy Spirit and went out to preach the Good News. The crowd clamoring for his blood didn't see Stephen as a miracle, as a sign of God's presence. They saw a blasphemer, a condemned heretic. They wanted humble contrition from him, but they got the truth. Like the crowd that demanded a concrete sign from Jesus, they wanted a sign from Stephen that their lives were not about to be turned upside down. They wanted consolation, assurance, a guarantee that they everything they thought they knew about God was just right. Stephen disappointed them, so did Jesus. They got the truth, and it set their teeth on edge.

The crowds that gather before the Church now haven't changed in 2,000 years. Neither has the truth. Stephen didn't apologize nor did he clarify his remarks. Jesus didn't do any magic tricks nor did he argue a thesis. Confronted by demanding mobs, Jesus and Stephen do exactly what they were sent to do: they spoke the word of truth for all to hear. Stephen forgave his killers even as he died, revealing the way of mercy. Jesus reveals the way to salvation, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”

*I've had one report that this file hosting site tried to upload a virus.  Please let me know if this happens to you.  Monday's homily has been d/l'ed 46 times and there's only been one report so far.

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Coffee Bowl Browsing

U.S. reputation on the rise in the rest of the world. . .given the state of the rest of the world, this is not news to celebrate.  I wonder if the rest of the world realizes that the American foreign aid goodie baskets they are addicted to will disappear when the U.S. economy collapses.  

The Left needs racism. . .here's why.  This is not to suggest that there are no genuine racists out there; there are.  But no one takes these yahoo's seriously, so they don't serve the Left's purpose in smearing your average conservative American voter as a racist.


I haven't commented on the latest circus antics of Chicago's Fr. Hollywood b/c there's little doubt I could manage to keep from cussing. 

HA!  Great letter to the editor. . .from a drunken sailor.  (H/T:  Chris Johnson)

Folks, please, be very, VERY careful with stuff like this.  Remember:  Jesus himself said that he doesn't know the day or time of his return.  If Jesus doesn't know, we don't either.

In Malta, the Holy Father calls the Church a "wounded sinner."  For those who know nothing about the Church (e.g. the media), this sounds like a monumental confession.  Those of us in the Church know that this a long-standing and perfectly accurate description.  

B.O. tells California voters that Barbara Boxer might lose her Senate seat in 2010.  Ah, that's a shame.  Frankly, I think Babs needs a break.

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Posting suggestions

A mille grazie to all those HancAquam readers who requested post-topics.  

Of the topics requested, there were six that I feel qualify to post something about. 

Some will require a bit more research than others, so I will tackle the more familiar topics first.

This week look for a post on "Dealing with Doubt."  If time permits, I will also put up a post on the limits of clerical creativity while celebrating the Mass.
Again, merci beaucomp!

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Novice of the SDP. . .Congrats Rudy!

Congratulations to Mr. Rudy Barba of El Paso, TX!  Rudy was admitted to the Southern Dominican Province's novice class of 2011 over the weekend.  He and his novice classmates will begin their novitiate in Irving, TX sometime in August.  I will post a pic of the full class once one is available from our vocations promoter.

Rudy is a former student of mine from U.D.  He was given the arduous task of being my campus ministry intern, i.e. "the one who made sure my over-caffeinated squirrel brain was focused just enough to get something done."  Rudy is a good friend, and now he will be a great brother!

Please pray for him and his novitiate brothers. . .


As you can see from this pic, Rudy possesses the most telling characteristic of any Dominican friar. . .he likes to eat!  However, he is too skinny to be entirely trusted.  ;-)
 
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In Government We Do NOT Trust

A chart for my non-U.S. readers. . .this is why the Tea Party Movement is growing. . .this is why ObamaCare is so unpopular:



Public confidence in government is at one of the lowest points in a half century, according to a survey from the Pew Research Center. Nearly 8 in 10 Americans say they don't trust the federal government and have little faith it can solve America's ills, the survey found.

[. . .]

The survey found that just 22 percent of those questioned say they can trust Washington almost always or most of the time and just 19 percent say they are basically content with it. Nearly half say the government negatively effects their daily lives, a sentiment that's grown over the past dozen years.

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Podcasting is back!

Back by popular demand. . .Podcasting!  Or, something very similar. 

I found a free audio hosting site for my homilies.

We'll see how it goes!

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18 April 2010

Working for food that endures

3rd Week of Easter (M)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
SS. Domenico e Sisto, Roma

Podcast

When an organization loses sight of its purpose, its leadership will come together and hammer out a mission statement, a declaration of the institution's goals, a description of its overall reason for being. More often than not, these statements are packed full of vague verbiage, lofty rhetoric, and completely unrealistic, if not outright unachievable, objectives. If the mission statement isn't simply ignored by the worker-bees of the organization, it is usually mocked or only quoted in the breach. Human resource trainers take it very seriously, but not many others do. The lesson for all involved is that refocusing the machinery of any organization to achieve its basic mission is tough work. The Easter season is not only a time for the Church to celebrate our Risen Lord, it is also a time for us to reconsider our mission as the Body of Christ and focus again on essentials. The crowd surrounding Jesus asks him, “What can we do to accomplish the works of God?” Jesus answered, “This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent.” That's our mission: to believe in the One God sent to us.

All that we do, say, think, feel, everything that we are flows out of our belief in Christ Jesus as the One sent by God to grace us with eternal life. The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council in their teaching on divine revelation, Dei verbum, tell us that God reveals Himself to us in scripture, through created realities, and, perfectly, in the words and deeds of Christ. They also tell us why He revealed Himself. Our Father unveils Himself for us in order to proclaim to us that "[He] is with us to free us from the darkness of sin and death, and to raise us up to life eternal”(4). To put this another way: the purpose of scripture, of creation, and of Christ himself is to show us, uncover for us, our Creator's mission among us: our freedom from sin and our lives with Him for eternity. Our mission is to believe His revelation and carry on doing the good works of God according to His will.

How do we do this? How do we carry on with God's work? Jesus says first we must believe in him. Why? How does believing in him first change the character of our good works? Good works are good works, right? Yes and no. Good works are good works. True. But note what Jesus says to the crowd: “Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life. . .” So, what distinguishes between “working for food that perishes” and “working for food that endures”? The distinction is made real when we believe that the work we do enacts God's revelation to His creation; when we think, act, feel in ways that show that God is working out our redemption through Christ Jesus. This is how we know and all who see and hear us know that the food we work for is food that endures, food given to us by the Son of Man for our eternal lives. If our good works are done for prestige, political advantage, public reputation, or money; if our good works are done out of any motivation but the working-out of God's revelation to us, then we work for food that perishes. 

Luke tells us in his Acts that “Stephen, filled with grace and power, was working great wonders and signs among the people.” Those who opposed his work could not withstand his wisdom b/c the Spirit was with him. When they brought him before the men of the Sanhedrin on charges of blasphemy, the men “saw that his face was like the face of an angel.” Stephen did not work great wonders and signs on his own. He didn't perform tricks to impress the gullible, or to build a profitable reputation for himself as a prophet. He worked as one who embodied divine revelation; he showed out God's holy purpose for His creation. Like Stephen, our mission, our goal is straightforwardly simple: show everyone that God is with us to free us from sin and death and to bring us all to eternal life. This is food that endures.

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17 April 2010

Dei verbum: God's Self-revelation

The key to reading and understanding the documents of Vatican Two is reading and understanding the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei verbum.

Christ is the Fullness of All Revelation:  In His goodness and wisdom God chose to reveal Himself and to make known to us the hidden purpose of His will by which through Christ, the Word made flesh, man might in the Holy Spirit have access to the Father and come to share in the divine nature. Through this revelation, therefore, the invisible God  out of the abundance of His love speaks to men as friends and lives among them, so that He may invite and take them into fellowship with Himself. This plan of revelation is realized by deeds and words having in inner unity: the deeds wrought by God in the history of salvation manifest and confirm the teaching and realities signified by the words, while the words proclaim the deeds and clarify the mystery contained in them. By this revelation then, the deepest truth about God and the salvation of man shines out for our sake in Christ, who is both the mediator and the fullness of all revelation (DV 2).

Divine Revelation through Created Realities:  God, who through the Word creates all things and keeps them in existence, gives men an enduring witness to Himself in created realities. Planning to make known the way of heavenly salvation, He went further and from the start manifested Himself to our first parents. Then after their fall His promise of redemption aroused in them the hope of being saved and from that time on He ceaselessly kept the human race in His care, to give eternal life to those who perseveringly do good in search of salvation. Then, at the time He had appointed He called Abraham in order to make of him a great nation. Through the patriarchs, and after them through Moses and the prophets, He taught this people to acknowledge Himself the one living and true God, provident father and just judge, and to wait for the Savior promised by Him, and in this manner prepared the way for the Gospel down through the centuries (3). 

Revelation through the Inspired Word and the Word Made Flesh:  Then, after speaking in many and varied ways through the prophets, "now at last in these days God has spoken to us in His Son." For He sent His Son, the eternal Word, who enlightens all men, so that He might dwell among men and tell them of the innermost being of God. Jesus Christ, therefore, the Word made flesh, was sent as "a man to men." He "speaks the words of God," and completes the work of salvation which His Father gave Him to do. To see Jesus is to see His Father. For this reason Jesus perfected revelation by fulfilling it through his whole work of making Himself present and manifesting Himself: through His words and deeds, His signs and wonders, but especially through His death and glorious resurrection from the dead and final sending of the Spirit of truth. Moreover He confirmed with divine testimony what revelation proclaimed, that God is with us to free us from the darkness of sin and death, and to raise us up to life eternal (4).

Thoughts:

God spoke the Word of Creation.

He sent the Word Made Flesh to redeem His Creation.
And we have the Word of Witness in scripture, an account of Christ's words and deeds.

At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit gave birth the Church, the living Body of Christ, thus making the Church the living, breathing, thinking, acting Word in the world--the Sacrament of God's Self-revelation for all to see and hear.

In Christ, we have the perfection of God's Self-revelation -----> the Church on pilgrimage in history
In created realities, we have the divine revealed in the natural -----> reason, science
In scripture, we have a record of our ancestors meeting God -----> words, deeds of the faithful

Why did God reveal Himself in these different ways?  


One reason:  to proclaim that "[He] is with us to free us from the darkness of sin and death, and to raise us up to life eternal."

Alleluia!

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16 April 2010

Coffee Bowl Browsing

That Icelandic volcano with the Klingon name is still spewing.  If this keeps me from going home in June, I will be most disappointed.

Why is it that Dems only seem to fret about anti-government rhetoric when one of their guys is in the White House?  We need to distinguish between "anti-gov't rhetoric" and "anti-administration" rhetoric.  I'm a big fan of republican (little "R") government.  Just not a big fan of the B.O. administration.

Changes in the tax law and B.O.'s budget proposals will reduce charitable giving.  This is planned.  If charitable organizations go bust, guess who gets to pick up the slack:  Big Government!

Report on the embarrassingly weak turn-out for the Tea Party Crashers.  Like most lefty astro-turfing it was all blow and no hard.  Also, the Partiers shunned the GOP Washington hierarchy, thus putting the lie to the MSM meme that the T.P. is all about Republican astro-turfing.

Hmmmmm. . .forget the Kindle and the iPad. . .what sort of handgun would be right for the discerning friar?

An interview with the woman who helped dioceses and religious orders hold their clergy accountable to the norms in sexual abuse case:  "Several men I know have “tested” the CDF (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) and found no tolerance for sexual abuse in the priesthood and no sympathy for the cleric who disagrees with programs of prayer and penance. Evidence of where Pope Benedict XVI stands can be found in the following examples:  here."

102 Things to Remember if you ever become an Evil Overlord.  My fav is #34:  "I will never turn into a snake.  It never helps."  Hey, that's just good practical advice for every day living.

Foreign Accent Syndrome. . .I wonder if there's a part of the brain you can whack that will  start  you speaking French?

According to complexity evolutionists, if you leave them alone for a billion years they will eventually grow into a real boy.

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15 April 2010

Order your HancAquam post!

Here's your chance to order up a HancAquam post!

When  I started the blog five years ago, my only purpose was to post the texts of my homilies.  With the encouragement of my boss at U.D.'s campus ministry, Denise Phillips, I moved to podcasting.  My natural soap-boxing tendencies compelled me to comment (sometimes crankily) on all things liturgical, theological, and political.  Then, I started getting questions from readers about doctrine, history, pastoral problems.  Eventually, HancAquam turned into an all-purpose Catholic blog with a daily average of about 450 hits.

Since my public preaching has been reduced to a once a week thing with the promise of an un-preached Sunday homily in there somewhere, the original focus of HancAquam has shifted rather dramatically. 

I want this blog to be user-friendly.  As a Dominican preacher and teacher, I want readers to go away knowing more about their faith then when they arrived.  

So, if you could order up a HancAquam post. . .on most any subject. . .what would you order?  I can't promise to fulfill your order, but there's a good chance you'll get your wish!

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Christian, brilliant, and probably teaching near you

A list of the 20 Most Brilliant Christian Professors in the U.S. 

The subject of my thesis, the Rev'd. John Polkinghorne is listed, so is the legendary U.D. English professor, Dr. Louise Cowan.

Also, note the number of accomplished scientists on the list.

H/T:  Newadvent

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