Back in February of 2006 we suspended further posting on Detente, the blog Rick and I were sharing that explored various issues through the sometimes sympathetic, sometimes contradictory lenses of Catholic (me) and Evangelical (Rick) perspective. The problems were time, energy, and a paucity of things we really felt motivated strongly enough to argue. While [...]
How little we remember of things. I look at the kids, the baby at eight months sleeping in Kris’ arms as she sits next to me on the couch, Sofia at three, David at five, and think, what tiny scraps they will have of these moments, and I pity (is this the right word?) them – [...]
Via Ironic Catholic… This is an interesting video … can provoke a number of trains of thoughts. A few of mine follow (you may want to watch the video before reading my comments)… As I watched this, I got the grateful feeling I think it was supposed to evoke for Christians – "that's Jesus, totally [...]
Continue reading about The Good O Meter Proves Thought Provoking
Advent begins today – and this weekend signaled the end of Ordinary Time in the liturgical seasons. At Mass this morning, the vestments had changed, the first candle of the Advent wreath was lighted, and at home the decorations are being set up. Today I crank up the Christmas music – with some of the [...]
Continue reading about It’s The End of Ordinary Time As We Know It
With the kids and Kris still getting over the last sniffles of their second bouts of colds this season, and with a few days yet to go before the flu shots kick in, I can't help being paranoid about getting sick. I never used to think about it. I rarely got sick, and when I [...]
Continue reading about The Cold Paranoia Season and (non-) Antibacterial Holy Water
Historian Will Durant writes in the Lessons of History that almost every vice was once a virtue, and so our proclivity to vices today is a reflection of man's rise, not The Fall. It's an interesting idea to ponder – not that I think Durant was speaking theologically; The Fall made for a strong metaphor [...]
Continue reading about Vices and virtues in the philosophy of history
There has been much written about Mother Teresa's long, long dark night of the soul recently (see the Time article here). A new book containing correspondence between Mother Teresa and her confessors reveal, according to Time, "that for the last nearly half-century of her life she felt no presence of God whatsoever — or, as [...]
Continue reading about ‘Feelings’ of God don’t make or unmake faith
The newest issue of Wired (not on the site yet, so I can’t link to it) has an essay called “Down with Happiness” which criticizes the possibility of technologically or pharmaceutically eliminating unhappiness. As self-evident as the horror of a soma-fied society ought to be (but probably isn’t); it’s a good piece. What especially caught [...]
Continue reading about Happiness Is… Being Almost Good Enough
From yesterday, a good piece on confession in the Union Leader. The first graph really says sums it up nicely: "Puzzled by the national obsession to confess dark secrets on television talk shows and in tell-all books, the Roman Catholic Church still offers its ancient antidote: confession." The pastor of our church, Father Marc, is quoted: [...]
This has been an amazing Lenten journey this year — which I'm not feeling eloquent enough to explain without descending into cliches, so I'll skip that for now. There are two weeks and some days left in the season. So while we're waiting for Easter, I'm going to repost the piece I wrote at the [...]
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