Patheos to God

If you have a friend who is either considering or in the process of converting to the Catholic faith then by whatever means necessary do not let them near the Patheos blogs. It’s filled with some of the most misinformed Catholics you can find all under the banner of being Catholic.- FB Catholic

That you would link to Patheos only shows you are not someone to be taken seriously.” And again: “Patheos Catholic is anything but. And that’s what you linked to. Dave Armstrong is no exception.” He has also referred to “the Patheos ‘Catholic’ crowd” (9-18-19) Steve Skojec

Dear FB Catholic and Mr. Skojec

It’s never good to paint anything in a broad brush, especially when your incorrect. Although I have found some posts in Patheos Catholic I find disagreeable, I find a lot of the writing a great source of refreshing and edifying Catholic Content. 

Patheos Catholics on the site are not misinformed buy highly educated Catholics who like Mr. Skojec want to share, express and write about their faith. I think if you get rid of your prejudices and give writers the benefit of the doubt you might find some good Catholic content.

“Beware of condemning any man’s action. Consider your neighbor’s intention, which is often honest and innocent, even though his act seems bad in outward appearance. —St. Ignatius Loyola”

Patheos Catholic CEO and Leader explains it well….

The Font Where Many Catholics Dip

First Post: 9/14 Last Post: November 13, 2019

Unlike the bulk of Catholic media platforms that are driven by a single ideological focus, Patheos Catholic is able to provide our readers with an array of perspectives, not just with pieces that have been vetted to suit a specific agenda. Yes, some of our writers have a decided ideological slant, as many of you have probably noticed. I myself am responsible for producing some of the more radically leftist material to be found under our wide umbrella. But each writer’s slant is her own. If you read and dislike an article of mine, what you dislike is not “Patheos Catholic” but “Rebecca Bratten Weiss.” And chances are, if you spend time looking at our different columnists, you will find one who better suits your tastes.

What you will not find, however, is an echo chamber. At a time when ideological bubbles are becoming increasingly impermeable, Patheos Catholic is committed to remaining a “free speech zone,” within the bounds of journalistic responsibility, and beneath the broad aegis of “Catholic identity.”

But insofar as Patheos Catholic represents “catholicity” in a broad, genuine sense, I want to make sure that we are abiding by the revelations at the heart of our faith. First, the revelation that Truth is not a dogma, but a Person. Secondly, that this Person, both divine and human, manifests the presence of infinite love in the midst of the scandal and bitterness of human history. Thirdly, that this Person remains present to all the world not only in the sacrament received by baptized communicants, but in every living being bearing the divine image. “Whatever you have done to the least of these, this you have done to me.”
Pax et bonum,
Rebecca Bratten Weiss Catholic Readers: Pondering Our Identity In A Time Of Crisis (September 3, 2018) The Font Where Many Catholics Dip @ Patheos Catholic

René Albert chimes in…
We at Patheos Catholic are a diverse group of thinkers, much like the many members that make up the Body of Christ. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” We all contribute to the evangelism of the Church through our writing in the best of our creative abilities, whether it’s apologetics, political commentary, prayerful reflection or theological musings. Many of them, like yourselves, are passionate defenders of orthodoxy – including myself. I highly recommend the works of Dave Armstrong, Joanna Wahlund, Fr. Matthew P. Schneider and Fr. Dwight Longenecker whose articles are available at your leisure.
René Albert An Open Letter to Church Militant (March 14, 2019) Coffee & Crucifix @ Patheos Catholic

Here is what some other’s have said…

*Patheos is a useful model for Catholic bloggers in the new "agora".
Terry Nelson Thank you Pope. (Thursday, January 24, 2013) Abbey Roads

There is no other one-stop-shop for Catholic blogs like what managing editor Elizabeth Scalia has put together in the Catholic Channel at Patheos. You have priests and religious sisters, moms and dads, commentators and newshounds, critics and world travelers, normal people and quirky writers. It’s truly a little bit of everything, and it’s a buffet of good writing.

Sarah Reinhard Untangling the Catholic Web (June 4, 2014)

If you look, you will find some good writing about Catholic topics from every author. If Patheos Catholics look they can find some really good content in your writing and on your website.

Just look what you and Mark Shea have in common…

Our culture has almost no place left where matters of philosophy and theology can be discussed freely in the public square. It’s out of court in politics, it does not sell beer and shampoo on television, our Chattering Classes are so ignorant of the most elementary points of both that the less said the better on almost any talk show you could name. But in the countless worlds of science fiction and fantasy, there is still limitless room for a talented Catholic writer to spin a yarn and proclaim the gospel thereby. God send more gifted apostles to this new Areopagus!

Mark Shea Science Fiction/Fantasy and the Areopagus (May 14, 2009) catholicexchange.com

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked up at the stars in the night sky and wondered, what if…
And really, I think that the larger reason why science fiction has endured for me as a lifelong passion is that it embodies the one thing that makes stories utterly compelling: the thrill, and often the fear, of the unknown. Not knowing what’s out there, how dangerous it is, how inevitable it is, is an utterly terrifying concept that is uniquely exciting.
It’s like standing outside in a particularly powerful storm and wondering just how much destructive power it will bring to bear.
Steve Skojec SciFi & The Thrill of the Unknown in Storytelling (Jul 24, 2019) steveskojec.com

SEE you can find common ground.

If you didn’t realize that one of your own authors has posts at OnePeterFive and Patheos Channel. Be careful who you say is Catholic or not.

So in an attempt to show you and others the Catholic Content of Patheos Catholic, I have compiled a sampling of every Catholic past and present that I could find who has written for Patheos.  Take a look and see that Catholic thought runs deep, even if you disagree with some of the theology or expression.

I have to admit I have been a little excessive in collecting content and have neglected other duties in an obsessive rush to get this all done. I need to add some info in places and cut down some samplings to bite sized nuggets. Some have too many quotes and some have too little.  I have some editing to do to make it more pitch perfect, but I’ll get back to that later.  I have to work, find more time for prayer (especially at Lent, especially regarding my family) call friends I have neglected and spend time with my wife.

I have also compiled a sampling of OnePeterFIve authors. Again that needs to be edited.
I have also compiled a sampling of many Catholics in a file so big, blogger won’t publish it the way I want it to be published.

Anyway, let’s love one another.

Thanks, for the work you do and honestly you have some really good posts, mostly when your not judging others have tunnel vision of your own preferences for how things should be. I would say the same to the Patheos crowd as well.

Enjoy this sampling of fine Catholic Cuisine.

Sincerely,

The CatholicBard


PS

 The newest blog at Patheos has written columns for FirstPeterFIve

 I am beginning to wonder now if the story of Robin Hood actually helped me make sense of the story of Jesus Christ, or indeed simply brought it more deeply into perspective for me. Because Robin, in a most inverse way, was still living out the Gospel by filling the hungry with good things and sending the rich away empty and was laying down his life in the process.
Avellina Balestri, Growing Up with Disney’s “Robin Hood” (April 15, 2020) Longbows & Rosary Beads @ Patheos Catholic

P. P.S.

Some folks have too many quotes.
Some don’t have enough.
Some are too long.
I don’t think many are too short.

Sorry for the less then perfect job. Maybe I’ll fine tune it at some point.

25 and Catholic by Mary Kate Knorr

First Post: 9/17 Last Post: January 28, 2018
Our Executive Director - Illinois Right to Life

I’ve tried very hard to make a practice of giving everything back to God. I’ve tried to practice, in both good and bad, offering every moment in life up to Him as an opportunity to do His will. Missed the bus on your way to work? It’s Yours, Lord. Burnt your dinner? It’s Yours, Lord. Get your car towed twice in one month? Still, yes. It’s Yours, Lord. Do everything in life for Him, and be filled with the peace that comes with surrendering your life.

In the book Love & Salt, one of the writers comments that the unfortunate part of being Christian is that we don’t have the luxury of giving up, because there is always hope in the resurrection. I believe she’s exactly right. Doesn’t it feel some days as though it’d be easier to just give up? To abandon our goals and our convictions for the sake of some instant, momentary satisfaction? Of course. But we can’t. Because through the resurrection, we know there are better days to come.
Mary Kate Knorr 25, Catholic, And Super Stressed Out.  25 and Catholic @ Patheos Catholic

After the Ecstasy, the Laundry…by Cynthia Schrage

First Post 7/08 Last Post: April 3, 2017

Pray, pray, pray. Don’t wait until you’re already involved with someone to get involved with Jesus (though better late than never). Instead, get a spiritual life now. As a person who thought chastity was for naïve fools and those in religious orders, I can only attribute our success thus far to the powerful intercession of Saint Faustina Kowalska (who has entirely redeemed herself in my jaded eyes), the Virgin Mary, my beloved Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, and the grace of an entirely benevolent Jesus. Get some friends in Heaven. Pray for the Holy Souls in Purgatory. Ask. For. Help. It is my utterly sincere belief that the saints are overjoyed and delighted to help.
Cynthia Schrage  How NOT to Have Sex with Your Boyfriend After the Ecstasy, the Laundry…@ Patheos Catholic

Hail, Holy Queen, Enthroned Above!
Today is the Memorial of the Queenship of Mary. What a lovely, lovely feastday. Let’s imagine the Blessed Mother, shall we? She has only been in Heaven for a week now, and still doubtlessly absorbing the wonder of the place. But what is this? Angels, coming for her? Again? And where are they taking her? And what are they placing on her shoulders? This ermine-trimmed robe, heavy with golden embroidery. And where are they leading her? To this astonishing court of thousands? Millions? Singing, shouting in triumph! She might not even know what to make of such grandeur. But, at the end of the red carpet (because of course), she can see her Son. Naturally she moves towards Him, because, in the end, there is nothing left to be done but to move toward the Son.

And He is there, smiling. And she kneels before Him, because of course. Every knee shall bend before Him, the King of kings. And he has a crown so wondrous, so spectacular, it beggars the imagination. Twelve stars, fresh from their orbits, endlessly swirling and twinkling (they make diamonds look dull). And He, grinning like only the Son of such a Mother can, places it on her bent head. And she weeps with joy. And He wipes every tear from her streaming eyes. Because of course. And He gives her His hand, and helps her sit on her throne, soft and cushiony, and covered with jewels and probably held slightly aloft by angels. Nothing is too good for Mary. Nothing.
Cynthia Schrage What Does It Mean to be a Queen? After the Ecstasy, the Laundry…@ Patheos Catholic

Among Thorns, Eucharist and Pizza  BY JOEL DE LOERA 

First Post: 2/19 - Current

As a pro-lifer myself, I passionately believe that we need to defend the unborn, but let’s not stop there: let’s also defend and support the mother, the poor, the minority, the bullied, the immigrant, the refugee, the religious persecuted around the globe, the death-row inmate, and everyone else suffering from injustice and inequality in our country and in our world.
JOEL DE LOERA BY Pro-Lifers: Let’s Get Consistent!  (MARCH 6, 2019) Among Thorns, Eucharist and Pizza @ Patheos Catholic

I am still in the Church because no matter how bad things get, Jesus will always be truly and sacramentally present in the Holy Eucharist, and God’s grace will continue to infuse our souls through the sacraments Christ Himself instituted. Humans stumble and fall but God never fails and never breaks His promises.
JOEL DE LOERA   Why remain Catholic after all that’s happened? (FEBRUARY 26, 2019) Among Thorns, Eucharist and Pizza @ Patheos Catholic

I pray that those of us who bear the title of Catholic may put our allegiance to our country and its laws and political party affiliations in second place while prioritizing our allegiance to Christ, His Holy Church, the Vicar of Christ and the Successors of the Apostles on matters of faith and morals.
JOEL DE LOERA   The Church as the Homeland for All People  (FEBRUARY 26, 2019) Among Thorns, Eucharist and Pizza  @ Patheos Catholic

Be Not Afraid with Gary Zimak by Gary Zimak

First Post: 5/19 Last Post: November 11, 2019
GoodReads Profile
Website: Follow the Truth

Everything you do can be done for Jesus. Preparing dinner, cleaning the bathroom, waiting on customers, changing diapers or working on the computer can all be offered to the Lord as a prayer. Keeping that in mind and remembering to chat with him as you work will increase your prayer time and decrease your stress level.
Gary Zimak  The Question Nobody Ever Asks About Martha And Mary…  (July 21, 2019) Be Not Afraid with Gary Zimak @ Patheos Catholic

The Internet can be such a nasty place. No matter where you look (Twitter, Facebook, the blogosphere), everybody seems to hate everybody. Although I’ve done it in the past (and regretted it), I now try very hard to avoid posting anything that could be interpreted as snarky or mean. Here’s something to consider. It’s just as easy to post a positive comment as it is to post a negative one. Because of the Holy Spirit living in us, we have the power to be a witness for Christ and comfort someone who really needs it.
Here’s what Jesus said before he ascended into heaven…
“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8)
Think about that for a minute. You have the power to be Jesus’ witness to the ends of the earth. One positive comment may be all it takes to comfort someone who is hopeless and needs to encounter Jesus. Wow.
Gary Zimak Before You Post That Nasty Comment, Read This… (July 27, 2019) Be Not Afraid with Gary Zimak @ Patheos Catholic

A Belief Observed by Timothy Putnam

First Post:  1/16 Last Post: May 19, 2018  
Podcast: Outside the Walls

It’s much harder to be a witness than it is to be a watcher. A witness has to be in close proximity to those he wishes to influence. A witness has to get his hands dirty. A witness has to protect the dignity of all. A witness accepts the sinner where they are, and accompanies them out. A witness is the visible presence of Jesus Christ in a fallen world.

The next time you are drawn into a debate over the faith, look through the fog of war to see the person on the other side, put down your weaponry, and engage the person instead of the argument.

Be a witness, not a watcher.
Timothy Putnam Of Watchers and Witnesses (MAY 17, 2016) A Belief Observed @ Patheos Catholic

Betty Duffy  by Elizabeth Duffy- Perspectives on Family, Life and Culture

First Post: 11/12 Last Post: March 16, 2016
Former Patheos Colum: The Constant Convert
 Website:  bettyduffy.blogspot.com Last Post: July 3, 2018

I believe in miracles, because as I’ve experienced them, they almost always occur in revelation rather than material change. The Holy Spirit opens my eyes, providing an awareness of where I stand before and in God.

The miracle is never that everyone and everything else is transformed while I remain the same. It’s the opposite. I am transformed. Nothing may have changed exteriorly. But the interior life is the only thing that matters.

When the interior is transformed, then slow change in my material circumstances begins to manifest, because I can no longer interact with my environment and in my relationships in the way I did before.

As long as I protect and encourage this Divine life, the longer the miracle lasts, and the larger it becomes. There is potential enough for an earthly lifetime, as physical pain in my knee, for instance, becomes not an obstacle, but an interior opportunity.
ELIZABETH DUFFY Miracles Don’t Happen If You Never Ask For Them  (APRIL 13, 2015)   Betty Duffy @ Patheos Catholic


I came across an old home movie recently, of a picnic with my siblings and cousins when we were all on the cusp of adulthood. My sister and her fiance were manifesting their first timid acts of public affection, the rest of us were clowning around. Since that day, about twenty years ago, we have all married and had children, so that now, between all of us, there are roughly thirty new people in existence. The oldest of our children is just ready to start college.

It boggles my mind when I think about it. Who were we back then, without these new people in our lives? I thought I knew myself well at seventeen, but I had no idea.

A priest once told me that you can tell Catholic art from other religious art, because Catholic art is always relational–Mary is surrounded by the Christ child and St John. The subjects often make eye contact with each other or with the viewer rather than looking inward. We find Christ and ourselves in the transformative and redeeming grace of relationships.

Catholicism didn’t create the newer generation that is now picnicking and clowning in our stead. It didn’t conceive and bear my own six children, but it suggested them, and my life is certainly richer and more interesting because of it
ELIZABETH DUFFY Why I am Catholic, because… Life!… in Abundance! (APRIL 1, 2013) Betty Duffy @ Patheos Catholic

Beyond All Telling by Accidental Mystic

First Post: 4/18 Last Post: December 18, 2019
Website:  New City Rising

(I used to attend a charismatic prayer group at St. Anthony’s Shrine in Boston with Dr. J David Franks and his wife, back in the 90’s.)

The charismatic style of prayer and worship is not for everyone; the Holy Spirit works through an infinite variety of characters and charisms. In the Eucharist, Jesus is as powerfully present to the reserved nun bowed in prayer, or the father stoically wrangling a toddler, as He is to the worshipers who lift their hands in ecstatic praise. Sadly, few realize this, so few receive His Presence frequently in faith and awe and openness to its burning transformative potential. But Jesus thirsts infinitely to pour out his True Blood into our hearts, until someday we will become like Him, and be able to behold His Presence, not as an oppressive weight, but face to face.
ACCIDENTAL MYSTIC The Real Presence of Jesus (June 3, 2018) Beyond All Telling @ Patheos Catholic

Biblical Evidence for Catholicism  by Dave Armstrong

First Post: 4/04- Current
First Time on Patheos: ?
GoodReads Profile

Our task as apologists is to vigorously share and defend the truth, with charity and gentleness and wisdom. The results are up to God, since it is only His grace that moves any heart closer to Him in the first place. Sometimes we are opposed and seem to achieve no result whatever (like Jeremiah); other times there is abundant visible fruit (as on the day of Pentecost or with St. Francis de Sales, winning back many thousands of Calvinists). Jeremiah was not at fault; nor could St. Francis claim final credit for “his results.”

We mustn’t be naive enough to actually think that Satan and his demons won’t put up a vigorous fight against anyone who is effectively sharing and defending God’s truth and the fullness of the Catholic faith. We can count on it. It’s not peaches and cream and all method and PR and getting folks to like us. Apologetics is ultimately spiritual battle. We can be friendly, nice, charming; all that (and I sure hope we all strive to be that way), but that doesn’t nullify the fact that it is, bottom line, a battle (thus, “young guns” is a very apt metaphor indeed!).
- Dave Armstrong Apologetics is Always a Difficult Spiritual Battle & Struggle (December 3, 2018) Biblical Evidence for Catholicism @ Patheos Catholic

Fish in Greek is ichthus. It actually has five letters in Greek:
i (Greek letter iota)
x (chi)
0 (with horizontal slash in the middle) (theta)
u (upsilon)
s (sigma)

This was perhaps the original acronym: each letter stood for something else, which is why the fish was the Christian symbol (even before the cross, as I understand it).

i = Iesous = Jesus = Greek transliteration of the Hebrew Joshua
x = Christos = Christ = Messiah = literal meaning anointed
0 = Theos = God (“0” is the “th” sound; root of theology)
u = Huios = Son
s = Soter = Savior (root of soteriology)

Early Christians thus quickly identified each other (in those dangerous times) by use of the fish symbol. In so doing, they were saying they believed in “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.” It was the first Christian “creed,” so to speak.
Dave Armstrong “Xmas” & the Christian “Fish”: Etymology & History (December 23, 2016) Biblical Evidence for Catholicism @ Patheos Catholic

People may decide what box to put me in. I think I’m in a pretty good place. I now use the word radical Catholic reactionary for folks who want to classify obedient, orthodox Catholics such as myself as somehow second-class Catholics. Hence, I’ve been called a modernist, neo-Catholic, neo-conservative, Vatican II lover, a Novus Ordo Catholic, an integrist, even a money-grubbing, unscrupulous apologist who makes a living by ill-gotten gains, by some.
But I’m just an . . . orthodox, obedient, devout Catholic, who loves Holy Mother Church, loves the Holy Father, and the Blessed Virgin Mary (to whom I have a great devotion: lots of writings defending her and Catholic Mariology)
- Dave Armstrong Am I a Catholic Traditionalist? (Well, YOU Decide!) (October 14, 2015) Biblical Evidence for Catholicism @ Patheos Catholic

Born Again Catholic by Patty Knap

First Post:  12/17 Last Post:  July 1, 2018
Writer @ National Catholic Register and Aleteia

“We priests do a lot of wakes and funerals, and I’ve seen all sorts of things go in the casket.”  He understood the natural impulse some people have to place objects representing a favorite activity in the casket.  “A football helmet, a baseball glove, a fishing rod…I’ve seen it all,” he continued.

Nothing wrong with celebrating the fun we’ve had.  But will it help at all at the moment of judgment?  Probably not.  It’s crucial that we are aware that the things and activities we love aren’t what our eternity is based on.
Patty Knap The Things We Put in the Casket (MAY 15, 2018)   Born Again Catholic @ Patheos Catholic

I suppose I could hoard worse things than Catholic books.  I once saw a show on people’s collections and one person collected used oil can’s from the 1930’s, another had thousands of penguin stuffed animals lining every inch of her home, and another woman collected rooster salt and pepper shakers.  All entirely fine but may I say reading great Catholic books helps us not just in this life, but into eternity!  No rooster salt shaker can do that.  
Patty Knap   Book Hoarding: Reading Our Way to Holiness  (APRIL 15, 2018)    Born Again Catholic @ Patheos Catholic

This past year with my first grade CCD class was pure joy.  Their curiosity about faith is so great, and their reactions and observations to Bible stories, learning about the Sacraments, the Mass, saints or prayers they’re learning for the first time can be quite entertaining!

We were reading the story of the Lost Sheep.  Andrew, who never raises his hand, calls out, “The guy stood there counting 99 sheep?? That’s a little weird!”

Lucas’s question of the day:  “Why did God come up with just 10 Commandments?  I mean there’s a bunch of other stuff we’re not supposed to do  My mom and dad have a lot more rules than just ten! ”  

Antonia wanted to know what Jesus’s last name was.  Two other kids answered, “Christ, Jesus Christ! That’s his full name.”

I alluded to salvation, heaven, eternal life at the end of our earthly life.  A few children mentioned a grandparent or someone in their family who had died.  Clearly Julie wasn’t convinced that heaven is such a special place.  “So far I really haven’t heard anything that great about heaven!” she announced.

Some of my students had no idea what a difference prayer makes.  “Just think, prayer is the most powerful force in the universe,” I said.  “What?!” one little girl said.  “Why didn’t anyone tell me that before?!”
Patty Knap   Faith: Jesus Amazes First Graders (DECEMBER 24, 2017) Born Again Catholic @ Patheos Catholic

For those of us who are lead busy lives, getting to Mass can often be the last on the “list.”  And really there’s no excuse for that, with every Catholic church offering such a wide choice of Mass times, usually from Saturday evening through Sunday evening!  But excuses we make, always finding other things that need to be done instead of getting ourselves where God speaks to us.  Put Him on your list reminds us that God has called us to keep holy the Sabbath day (it’s not just ‘nice’ to go to church; it’s an obligation…one of the Ten Commandments!), and to refocus our lives on our authentic purpose – uniting ourselves to Him, submitting our will to His plan, and orientating our lives so we can live with Him forever in heaven.

However long it’s been since you’ve been to church – it doesn’t matter!  God’s waiting and ready to welcome you back with open arms…no questions asked!  Whatever else is on our Christmas list, let’s make sure getting closer to Jesus and following Him are on the list.
Find out more at www.PutHimOnYourList.org, and check Mass times at a parish near you, for weekdays or Sundays, at www.MassTimes.org.
Patty Knap   Put Jesus on Your Christmas List (DECEMBER 15, 2017) Born Again Catholic @ Patheos Catholic

Catholic and Enjoying It!  by Mark Shea

First Post:  4/02
First Post on Patheos: 1/26/09 – Current

GoodReads Profile

(I had the privilege of meeting Mark when he came to Boston to do a talk. First got into his writings when I saw him at the Defending the Faith Conference at Franciscan back in 1997)

In the long span of time we Homo sapiens have been around (roughly 200,000 years by best guesstimates), fully one third of that time has been spent with our entire race asleep eight hours out of each day. For every Caesar, Cleopatra, Napole-on, Thomas Edison, or Attila the Hun who blazes a fiery comet of fame and storied greatness across the firmament of history, there are millions and millions of anonymous people (chances are you and I are among them) who live and die and only God remembers them. A whole forest of leaves falls, and only one or two get saved in the scrapbook? What’s up with that? - Mark Shea: Empty Space (October 19, 2010) Catholic and Enjoying It! @ Patheos Catholic

God, being God, could have done the efficient thing and sent His only Son at that moment to clear up this nasty little glitch in the program of Creation and Salvation. He did not. Instead, He allows creation to unfold naturally according to the laws of nature, human freedom, and dignity that He Himself created — resulting in vast periods of waiting, which explain why the Old Testament is so very much longer than the New. These periods of waiting exist in union with His creative governance and power over creation, so that He begins the long process of actually including us and our free choices in the work of redeeming the world. One need only read the Old Testament to see that mysterious process unfold, with its strange interplay of divine providence and knowledge, coupled with human freedom, dignity, and sin.
Mark Shea The Theology of Waiting Around (June 7, 2011) Catholic and Enjoying It! @ Patheos Catholic

If you went to your local Cinemaplex 2000 to watch Star Wars and it was also showing something blasphemous on one of the other 19 screens, why should you feel guilty?  You aren’t watching that thing.  And would you have to pledge to never go to that theatre ever again?  How many theatres would you have to boycott over time?  If you go to buy a can of beans at the store and they are selling The Da Vinci Code on the cheesy book rack, does make you guilty of shopping at your grocery store? What grocery or bookstore would ever be pure enough to meet such rigorous standards?

Stick with the Church’s teaching on remote material cooperation and don’t let the bullies ride you down.  Indeed, feel free to tell some other scrupulous person, “We don’t have to take this anymore!  The Church herself says so!” and explain to the remote material cooperation with evil.  Or if you want, just quietly go about your business.  But don’t let the bullies beat you up.  The gospel is about liberty from puny human rules and silly shibboleths.
Mark Shea Prayer Wednesday : A reader struggles with scruples about Netflix (March 11, 2020) Catholic and Enjoying It! @ Patheos Catholic

Catholic Authenticity by Melinda Selmys

First Post:  6/15 - Current
Catholic Authenticity Books


Writing about God is difficult. You can write about the idea of God, of course. You can defend God. Argue in favor of God’s existence. Argue endlessly about what God would probably want if He showed up and weighed in on the state of the modern world. It’s easy to write around God. But to write about God is a different thing.

Because God isn’t a concept, an idea, a champion or a moralizer. God is God. He is simultaneously so completely Other that anything we say about Him is kind of laughable and cartoonish. Even something like the use of male pronouns is misleading – though the use of female pronouns or impersonal pronouns would just be misleading in a different way. Any statement that we make about God, any analogy that we draw, is going to be more unlike than like God.

And yet, at the same time, all of the analogies do contain some truth.
Melinda Selmys A Monstrous Monstrance, or Why Does Religion Suck? (AUGUST 12, 2018) Catholic Authenticity @ Patheos Catholic

Over the past couple of weeks, there’s been an unusual amount of drama in my particular corner of the social media world and it’s got me thinking about the problem of loving one’s enemies.

Christ clearly commands us to do this. He doesn’t say that we have to be friends with everyone, but He does say that we have to love everyone. He models this Himself in a truly astonishing way, praying for the guys who are literally driving nails through His hands. Not only does He forgive these men, but He prays that God will forgive them “for they know not what they do.”

One of the difficulties, of course, is that we don’t have the ability to read hearts. We have no idea whether the people who hurt us know exactly what they’re doing, or whether they are completely clueless. This is especially true when the folks who hurt us are strangers. With a close friend or relative, I can pretty easily step outside of myself and see why they are behaving in a way that causes me pain. But with a stranger? I have no idea.
Melinda Selmys   Love Your Ideological Enemies (APRIL 21, 2018)  Catholic Authenticity @ Patheos Catholic

The Catholic Book Blogger by Pete Socks

First Post:  11/12 Last Post: October 17, 2018
Website:  Catholic Book Bogger 

In our ever media driven world one thing we terribly lack as a society is humility. Every one of us wants to be right. With a few keystrokes and a press of the “enter” button we can create an atmosphere of superiority above those we are responding too. Frankly we need a dose of humility more than we ever have before.
 Pete Socks Book Review: We could all use a little humility (October 10, 2018) The Catholic Book Blogger @ Patheos Catholic

Memento mori is an ancient tradition dating back to the early church that involves one reflecting upon their death daily. That may sound a bit morbid…but it is quite a useful practice that has been encouraged by numerous saints through the centuries. What are the benefits? By spending some time each day remembering that indeed one will die and leave this earthly (no matter how hard we try to ignore that fact), we can regain a focus on what is truly important in this life. It allows us to put into check the consumeristic culture we are entrenched in and instead focus on the eternal life we are striving for after breaking the chains of this world.
Pete Socks Remember Your Death: Memento Mori Lenten Devotional (March 9th, 2019) @  Catholic Book Bogger 

There is a niche in the Catholic publishing world that has steadily gained a foothold in the years since I began reviewing books. That niche is Catholic fiction. What makes good Catholic fiction? A great story and gentle nudges towards Church teachings without being heavy handed.
Pete Socks The Sleeping Witness. Discovering good Catholic fiction – Off the Shelf 080 (July 9, 2018) @  Catholic Book Bogger 

Catholic News by Catholic News

First Post: 5/12 Last Post: November 7, 2017

Pope Francis said that in contemplating death we are reminded of our ultimate purpose – and how the choices we make here on earth will determine whether we eventually spend eternity in heaven.

“A fundamental mark of the Christian is a sense of anxious expectation of our final encounter with God,” the Pope said Nov. 3. “Death makes definitive the ‘crossroads’ which even now, in this world, stands before us: the way of life, with God, or the way of death, far from him.”
CNA Daily News Choose everlasting life, not death, Pope Francis says (November 3, 2017)   Catholic News @ Patheos Catholic

The Catholic Working Mother by JoAnna Wahlund

 First Post: 4/15 - Current
Book: The Catholic Working Mom's Guide to Life (May 10, 2019) by JoAnna Wahlund

It is not theologically correct to say “everyone who has an abortion commits mortal sin” or “everyone who misses Mass on Sunday has a mortal sin on their conscience.”
We can’t know if either of those two statements are true because we don’t know if “everyone” who has committed them has met the three criteria for mortal sin. It is more theologically precise to make statements such as “abortion is gravely sinful” or “contraception is an intrinsic evil, which means it is grave matter,” and leave the judging of the mortal sinfulness up to a person’s confessor and/or God Himself.
JoAnna Wahlund Common Misconceptions: The Difference Between Grave Sin and Mortal Sin (March 12, 2019) The Catholic Working Mother @ Patheos Catholic

 “What do you do all day?”
As a working mother, I rarely get this question. It’s most often posed to stay-at-home-moms, and it really makes no sense to me. Do the people who ask this question really have no idea of the massive amount of work it takes to manage a home, especially if you have multiple small children? There’s cleaning, laundry, meal planning, cooking, homework/homeschooling, home repair, yard work, paying bills… the list seems endless, and even if one parent stays at home there often don’t seem to be enough hours in the day to get everything done.
JoAnna Wahlund Making You a Priority (June 24, 2015) The Catholic Working Mother @ Patheos Catholic

God’s ways are mysterious. He can bring good out of our own bad decisions and bad situations.
Sometimes we can act as virtuously as we can and yet things still go wrong.

In those cases, all we can do is trust God that there is a larger plan, and that He will bring good out of whatever bad situations we find ourselves in, whether or not those situations are the result of our own bad choices. Easier said than done, right?
However, we need to make the distinction between trusting God and tempting God. We trust God to take care of us, but in turn God trusts US to discern wisely and try our hardest to make decisions that are in conformity to His will.

We tempt God when we make decisions that are reckless or irresponsible, especially if we make those decisions on the basis of trusting God to protect us from the consequences of our actions — which He doesn’t always do. I can’t throw myself off a cliff and trust God to save me. He will allow me to suffer the consequences of my own bad choices, even if He chooses to somehow bring good out of them.
Okay? Okay. 
JoAnna Wahlund What the Catholic Church Teaches About Responsible Parenthood (April 5, 2018) The Catholic Working Mother @ Patheos Catholic

Chaos and Old Night by Sean P. Dailey

First Post:  5/18 - Current
Book: (Introduction)(2009) The Ball and the Cross (1909)by G.K. Chesterton  

One of the benefits of reading Chesterton, as opposed to getting him filtered through other sources, is that you get Chesterton, and not a false “Toby Jug” caricature: the beer-swilling, cigar chomping, absent-minded journalist who was good with a quote and had a talent for paradox but is of little use otherwise.

Chesterton is undergoing a revival, but some of those promoting the revival like to indulge the caricature. I don’t know why. The reality is so much more exciting, moving, and interesting. If you decide to find out more about Chesterton, I implore you: read him for yourself and don’t trust anyone, not even me, to try to tell you about him.
- Sean P. Dailey Discover G.K. Chesterton (June 14, 2018) Chaos and Old Night @ Patheos Catholic

It’s a safe bet that Satan could not possibly have imagined the consequences of wounding humankind’s primordial innocence, particularly that God would choose to identify with our fallen nature, rather than with the order of the angels to which Satan belonged. He could not possibly have foreseen “things more wonderful” such as the Incarnation; the Nativity; and the Redeemer rising from the dead after allowing his own creatures to brutally torture him to death, healing the ancient rift caused by the “truly necessary sin of Adam.”
Sean P. Dailey Mine instrument’ (December 7, 2018) Chaos and Old Night @ Patheos Catholic

Christian Democracy by Jack Quirk

First Post: 4/18 Last Post: June 22, 2019

I hope you’re sitting down, because I have some earth shattering news about the pope. It seems that he had been engaging in some serious sensuality himself. He kept a number of mistresses. He fornicated with widows, and even with his own niece. He dealt with his opponents among the clergy with extreme severity; chopping off the hand of one cardinal, and killing another. He blinded his confessor. Moreover, he toasted the devil with wine, and invoked pagan deities when playing dice.
What can be done about such a pope?
Fortunately, we don’t have to deal with the problem, because the pope I’m describing has been dead for over one thousand and fifty years. I haven’t been describing Pope Francis, but Pope John XII.
Jack Quirk If He Did It (September 2, 2018) Christian Democracy @ Patheos Catholic

In seeking the influence of Catholic social teaching in society, it is important to remember where we stand in relation to that society. The United States is not a Catholic country. But it is to be hoped and prayed for that enough people will become persuaded of the value of Catholic social doctrine so that what it teaches us can find implementation through the nation’s legitimate democratic processes.
Jack Quirk The U.S. Is Not a Catholic Country (June 29, 2018) Christian Democracy? @ Patheos Catholic

Coffee & Crucifix by René Albert

First Post: 2/16-Current

So what do feminism and Christianity share in common in this philosophical minefield? From my perspective, how we view women determines how we treat them. The basic principle of the feminist movement is for men to view them as equally human, not objects of gratification. The way Christians view biblical female figures truly affects their theology of how they ought to be treated; and one of the major factors is how we view Mary as the Mother of Christ. If the Ten Commandments tell us to honor our father and mother, why shouldn’t we honor His own Mother? While Eve was formed from Adam’s rib, God chose to be incarnated in Mary’s womb — a most humble inversion. This is why Catholics view Jesus as the New Adam (1 Cor. 15:45) and Mary as the New Eve.

The first Christian and greatest saint who ever lived was, in fact, a woman!
Respecting women to be equally human is really not much to ask for. It doesn’t make anyone less of a man, but more Christlike in character. From my perspective, it’s about humbling ourselves to the ones who gave birth to us and bear our children. It’s a recognition for women to be equally human as men, having the capacity to make their own decisions, having abilities that men do not retain and not to be viewed as mere objects of pleasure at our disposal. It is an utmost respect for all life from conception to seniorhood, and a willingness to put the livelihood of the vulnerable first ahead of our selfish desires.
René Albert Is Feminism Compatible With Christianity? (March 8, 2019) Coffee & Crucifix @ Patheos Catholic

But if God’s glory is beyond our comprehension, why would He not be intimidating? The Ancient Jews knew they were in the very presence of God when they worshiped the Holy of Holies, and acted accordingly. ¹ It seems as though people have created a false dichotomy that the God of the Old Testament suddenly turned into some apathetic, all-embracing hippy-messiah. If God is apparently the same yesterday, today and tomorrow, then His nature should not have changed even after Jesus’ time on earth. ²
René Albert Put The Tabernacle Back Where It Belongs! (March 20, 2019) Coffee & Crucifix @ Patheos Catholic

When the Tridentine Mass suddenly dissolved, many people were understandably upset. Some were furious to the point of blatant resistance, such as famed Catholic author J.R.R. Tolkien. He was apparently so adamantly opposed to the English liturgy that he would boldly say the responses in Latin, much to the embarrassment of his grandchildren.

Most Catholics who knew Latin came from a background of higher education, though I personally believe the Gospel ought to be shared in a language that people can understand. Phillip’s discourse with the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8 comes to mind. Though the thought of attending a Mass in a different language adds an exciting level of heavenly mystery.
René Albert I Long For Catholic Unity (March 6, 2019 ) Coffee & Crucifix @ Patheos Catholic

Contemplatio Culture by Theresa Zoe Williams

First Post:  12/18 Last Post:  December 30, 2019

Writer @ Epic Pew

Concealed within my body is a unique human person.
This person is very small and currently doesn’t look much like we think humans should look. But nonetheless, this person is present.
Concealed within bread and wine is the God of the universe. More powerful, more intelligent, and more loving than any other being in existence. Ever. In the bread and wine, He doesn’t much look like we think a Supreme Being should look. But nonetheless, He is there.
Theresa Zoe Williams Motherhood, Pregnancy, and the Eucharist (March 27, 2019) Contemplatio Culture @ Patheos Catholic

The world was created to be beautiful.
And this in a deeper sense than we can ever truly know this side of heaven. We were created to be beautiful. “Beauty will save the world,” Dostoyevsky wrote in The Idiot. Beauty born of love will save the world. Beauty is love and Love illuminates beauty. Am I speaking only of physical beauty? No. Certainly, physical beauty can be deceiving. I am speaking of the beauty of a new baby in the arms of her mother. The beauty of late night coffee and conversation with a kindred spirit. The beauty of a declaration of faith in the midst of persecution. The beauty of the Savior mangled and dying on the cross to wipe away all sin and open the gates of Heaven. The beauty of saying, “Lord, I want to believe. Help my unbelief.” The beauty of painted toe nails.
The simple things can be an anchor to the wonder of the physical reality we’ve been gifted. But they can also be a diving board into the depths of Love. Ever deeper and deeper until we are positively drowning in love and beauty. This is how I wish to die– never forgetting and ever exploring the depths and beauty of Love, and with my toe nails painted.
Theresa Zoe Williams A Meditation on the Depths of Beauty of Painted Nails (January 23, 2019) Contemplatio Culture @ Patheos Catholic

Convivium Salon by Suzanne M. Lewis

First Post: 12/18 Last Post: July 6, 2019

GoodReads Profile

The Church uses funny criteria to assign patronage. Take St. Apollonia, who is the patron saint for those suffering from tooth pain because a violent mob, “by repeated blows, broke all her teeth.” Do you think she maybe rolls her eyes when she hears a petitioner ask, “Please ask God to miraculously heal my cavity. I hate to get fillings because novocaine makes me drool embarrassingly…”? When her tormentors built a pyre and threatened to burn her alive, St. Apollonia broke away and voluntarily jumped into the flames to deprive them of the pleasure of setting her afire. Perhaps we’re meant to feel abashed for complaining about our petty trials to someone so fierce.
Guest Contributor wormholes (January 4, 2019) Convivium Salon @ Patheos Catholic

To engage with Christ means to engage with other people.
The sacraments educate us to the need to gather as “two or more” in Christ’s name, to recognize that we are parts of one whole Body (John 15), that we cannot baptize ourselves, that no matter how sorry we are, we cannot be reconciled to God without an intermediary person, and that we can’t achieve communion without the contributing “work of human hands.” Much as some would like to imagine themselves to be consumers who go to church as individual units in order to acquire their sacraments and leave, the liturgy asks us to beg to be made “one body, one spirit in Christ.” Knowing how hard-headed we can be, Christ also commanded us to “take and eat” his body: how could the fact that meaning comes from outside and penetrates us (and not the other way around) be any more concrete?
Salvation, then, is other people. These others give me my meaning and show me the truth of myself.
Suzanne M. Lewis Morality: Memory and Desire (1. Salvation) (March 8, 2019) Convivium Salon @ Patheos Catholic

The Cordial Catholic by Albert Little

First Post:  12/14-Current
Cordial Catholic Podcast

I was going through a rough patch in my life and I said a very silly prayer.
I prayed that God would give me a sign.
 And God delivered.
Years later I was recounting this miracle to a friend. I prefaced it, much like I did here, as being something kind of silly. A cliche request met by a silly little answer that seemed meaningful but also pretty goofy.
“But it was meant for you,” he said. “It was a miracle—it was important and powerful and meaningful—just for you.”
Think about this with me. The amazing aspect of this miracle is not like Jesus feeding the five thousand or casting out demons in front of crowds of onlookers or even raising Lazarus from the dead to go out and evangelize. The incredible part of this miracle was that it was tailor-made for me. That the God of the universe condescended to bend down and demonstrate just to me that He cared.
It was the smallness of this miracle that made it that much more profound.
God of all Heaven and earth cared so much about me in particular—my life, His plans for me, His purposes—that He would reach down through all space and time and everything to send me a message. To let me know it’s all going to be OK. To answer my desperate cry. And, sure, the retelling of these silly little miracles—and I’m sure you may have some too—sound goofy sometimes. They are personal and profound and that’s exactly the point. God cares about us that much to reach out just to us. To you and me, on such an individual level. Isn’t that the most amazing miracle ever?
K. Albert Little The Most Incredible Miracle Ever (is a Surprising One!) (March 21, 2019) The Cordial Catholic @ Patheos Catholic

One of the ever-bearing gifts of the Catholic Church is incredible depth of her teaching. Spanning over two thousand years the Church boasts incredible thinkers from Augustine to Aquinas; from Henri Nouwen to Cardinal Newman; from St. Francis of Assisi to, one of my personal favourites, St. Francis de Sales.

By praying, working in service, loving others, worshiping, and striving to find God in everything we do we can avoid becoming idle to the point of opening ourselves up to temptation.
Keep busy, St. Francis says, by doing God’s will.
Be busy for the Lord. In prayer, fasting, good works, and worship.
This is a sure fire formula for minimizing temptation.
K. Albert Little St. Francis de Sales’ Advice for Lent: Prepare to be Tempted (March 5, 2019) The Cordial Catholic @ Patheos Catholic


We could lament, criticize, or make excuses all day long for those genuinely baptized Catholics who just aren’t living a sacramental life—but what would be the point? The reasons why, I said, are complicated, nuanced, and different in every case even if we can make some generalizations. Instead, we should move forward in hope, and faith.
Focus on how we can bring those unevangelized, non-practicing Catholics back into a life of discipleship. Back into a relationship with Christ.
As a Catholic, I speak earnestly to Jesus in my personal prayers but also pray the Divine Office, an ancient Christian liturgical prayer which unites me with the entire, global Catholic Church through all space and time. I have the app on my phone.
As a Catholic, I worship God by getting on my knees and repeating words right out of Scripture which talk about how holy and good He is; how unworthy I am. We sing the songs of the angels right from the words of Revelation (always off-key because that is the Catholic way).
As a Catholic I believe that I literally consume Jesus Christ—body, blood, and divinity—every single time I go to Mass. A belief that’s been held by Catholic Christians for two thousand years (a belief that all Christians held until 500 years ago). And, if I wanted to, I could go to Mass every single day.
What kind of closer relationship could there be than that?
K. Albert Little Why Are There so Many Bad Catholics (And What Should We Do)?  (February 21, 2019) The Cordial Catholic @ Patheos Catholic

Cosmos The In Lost by Artur Rosman

First Post: 5/13 Last Post: July 12, 2017
Writer @  Church Life Journal

It is a time specifically designated for giving up on ourselves and our efforts, so that we can throw ourselves onto the heartbreaking mercy of God, so in the end we regain all that we have lost in the proper perspective, before God’s face, not in the deceiving reflections of our own willpower. If there was one thing that the Early Christians taught us, it’s that seeking the face of God should be our sole concern.
Artur Rosman Don’t Give Up For Lent (March 1, 2017) Cosmos The In Lost @ Patheos Catholic

Plenty of mystics and ordinary believers (there’s usually nothing ordinary about them) have already discovered and harnessed, or rather, have been harnessed, by this fire. It’s called the Holy Spirit.
Artur Rosman Every Human Life Begins with a (Little) Bang! (May 2, 2016) Cosmos The In Lost @ Patheos Catholic

The calendar year for daily working life is the same for all of us, but there is a second calendar: the church calendar that refers to the birth, murder, and resurrection of Jesus, which is an absolutely archetypal story, a poetic rendition of any human life. The Mass, with its readings from the Gospel stories, and the the Eucharistic rite, repeated for centuries, is an account of the cooperation of transcendence with the ordinary. Liturgy, Fanny Howe, and the
Artur Rosman Horrors of Reality (March 27, 2014) Cosmos The In Lost @ Patheos Catholic

The first Sunday before Lent has an exotic name “Quinquagesima Sunday,” which only means it’s fifty days before Easter. As far as I know, correct me if I’m wrong, the first Sunday of Lent does not have a special name other than, maybe, “Quadragesima Sunday.”

This is strange, since all the readings on the first Sunday of Lent hone in on the mystery of Original Sin. The Gospel reading takes the dramatic crown by recounting Christ’s temptation in the desert (breathlessly retold in one of the most famous modern literary episodes in The Brothers Karamazov–something I’d like to return to later).
So, I’m surprised, and a little bit disappointed, that my crack research doesn’t indicate that the first Sunday of Lent is officially called “Original Sin Sunday.”
Can I claim copyright on that?
Artur Rosman True Lent Humility Starts with the Realization That You’re Divine (March 6, 2017) Cosmos The In Lost @ Patheos Catholic

Cracks in Postmodernity by Stephen G. Adubato

First Post: 10/17-Current

A Church that is more concerned with moral “righteousness,” pointing fingers, and slapping bandaids onto spiritual diseases is much less attractive than One that is constantly seeking to draw nearer to the heart of Christ. He must feel lonely…why don’t you try paying more attention to Him? (This is what He wast trying to tell you today in the Gospel lesson).
The “answer” to any problem will never be one that humans themselves generate…it will only come from us growing in awareness of His presence…of He who is the answer to the “problem” of the human heart.
So before pointing the finger at anyone, remember: You are the problem. You are not holy enough. And the pope has been trying to tell you this for 5 months now. Will you open your heart, eyes, and ears, and start listening?
Stephen G. Adubato YOU are the reason the Church has problems (but you’re also the answer) (September 2, 2018)   Cracks in Postmodernity @ Patheos Catholic

St. Sebastian, or “the Christian Adonis pierced by arrows” as Camille Paglia refers to him, was the the 3rd century Roman martyr who was tied to a tree and shot with arrows, then managed to escape alive, only to be ordered to be beaten to death with cudgels by none other than Emperor Diocletian, and then thrown in a sewer. Throughout history, he’s been depicted in art as the embodiment of the juxtaposition between youthful beauty and the tragedy of death. His lean and attractive body, pierced with arrows and blood trickling down, his face crying out in agony and at the same time praising God for allowing him the grace to be crowned a martyr, represents the triumph of Christian virtue over pagan aesthetic beauty, which is embodied by Sebastian’s counterpart, the Greek god Adonis. His youthful, attractive beauty, free of wounds and ugliness of any sort, diverges dramatically from the Christian notion of beauty and glory. For it is through the wounds and the ugliness of humanity that Christ manifests his goodness. It is the poor, the meek, and the humble who are blessed, rather than the rich, famous, and glamorous, because they are by their condition made more aware of their need for God’s grace and love than those who fool themselves into thinking they are self-sufficient

But if entertainment becomes our replacement for a moral education to truth and goodness, and the entertainment we consume glorifies violence and acts of evil, then can we really be surprised by the proliferation of terrorism? Can we be really be surprised by the blatantly ignorant and inhumane views that people have against others? If meaning in life is really relative to a subjective “feeling”, what happens to the people for whom that feeling has been lost, and seems impossible to recover? Then can we be surprised when those people lash out in senseless acts of terror against others?
Stephen G. Adubato The Mundanity of Terror: My take on the NZ shooting livestream (March 24, 2019) Cracks in Postmodernity   @ Patheos Catholic

Daffey Thoughts by Dave Griffey

First Post: 7/10 Last Post: August 26, 2017
Author at the-american-catholic.com

We’re all sinners, but we’re all called to confess our sins and so we do.  It’s not that I’m suddenly immaculately conceived and deserve communion more than everyone else.  But if I’m openly living in sin, if I’m flagrantly indulging in that which the Church teaches against (or, FWIW, not indulging in what the Church teaches we should do), then I ought not take communion.
Dave Griffey Welcoming Gay Catholics with Open Arms (June 15, 2017) Daffey Thoughts @ Patheos Catholic

Matthew 25.31-46.  We all know it.  Parable of the sheep and the goats.  In it, Jesus speaks nothing about confessing the Son of Man or believing or sinning no more or who comes through what gate.

He says we will be judged based on what we do to the ‘least of these.’  Did you feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the prisoner?   If so, off to Heaven you go. If not?  Off to Hell.  And when you ask when you did or didn’t do these things, Jesus says that whether you did or didn’t do them, you did or didn’t do them to Him.
A powerful rebuttal to anyone who thinks religion is just an intellectual exercise, or mere confession of doctrine, or simply following a laundry list of ‘thou shalt nots.’
But – here’s the big part – Matthew 25 is not the sum total of Sacred Tradition.  It is not the whole Bible.  it is not the entire Gospel. There are other chapters in Scripture.  It finds itself in good company, of course. There is much, from the Old Testament to the New, insisting we care for the widow and orphan, feed the hungry, give to our brethren and wayfarers who are in want.

Yet there is more than good deeds.  Nonetheless, somehow it’s becoming about good deeds and nothing else.  Whatever you do wrong or believe doesn’t matter.  Jesus showed mercy to sinners, so fugetaboutit.  Assuming any of it is still sin, it’s forgiveness and mercy all around.  No condemnation, and barely an admonition to sin no more.
Dave Griffey When did the Catholic Left decide salvation is only about works?  (May 10, 2017) Daffey Thoughts @ Patheos Catholic

In a nutshell.  It proved that if you just slap gratuitous violence and lots of sex on something, it will be popular.  Most of the HBO series are simply old ideas repackaged with the above additions to one extent or another.

I once read something to the effect that George R. R. Martin was a Conscientious Objector during Vietnam who never saw combat, who wrote a series filled with soft core torture porn and lowest denominators and base entertainment.  J.R.R. Tolkien survived the hell-pit of the Somme and penned a work of soaring beauty and profound insight.

Not that you have to survive the Somme to create something beautiful.  It’s just interesting that a generation that has never known anything close to such horrors has made Game of Thrones the biggest thing on cable television.
Dave Griffey Why I don’t do Game of Thrones (July 13, 2017) Daffey Thoughts @ Patheos Catholic

The Deacon's Bench by Deacon Greg Kandra

First Post: 12/10 Last Post: December 29, 2019
Former Patheos Column: All Things New
Books: The Living Gospel: Advent Reflections for 2018” (Ave Maria Press)
“The Busy Person’s Guide to Prayer” (Word Among Us Press)
Writer @ aleteia.org

For all the trials and hardships that the world has known, through the centuries ordinary people have stepped forward to live out those ideals.  God has given us examples.  He has given us saints.
They often come from unexpected places.  Consider the four people depicted here, on the reredos, the decorated wall, behind our altar. I was reading some parish history recently and learned more about them. These four figures were not people who would seem to be destined for holiness.
There’s an arrogant Italian playboy who scandalized and embarrassed his family —and then gave up everything for God. We know him today as St. Francis of Assisi.
There’s the son of a deacon who was kidnapped and held as a slave for years before he escaped, and found his way home, and found his way to God: St. Patrick.
There’s the spoiled, rich Spaniard who attended the finest schools.  But, when famine struck Spain, and he saw human suffering, he was so moved with pity that he sold all he had and joined a monastery. That man became St. Dominic.
And there’s that young man from a prosperous and prominent family in Germany who did everything his father didn’t want him to do – including, finally, becoming a priest.  That was St. Boniface.
They are all here, behind our altar – some of the greatest saints of the Church, and the greatest saints in THIS church, given a place of prominence.

On the one hand, they represent the immigrants who built this city and this parish – the Irish, the Spanish, the Italians, the Germans.
Deacon Greg Kandra Homily for November 1, 2012: All Saints Day (October 31, 2012) The Deacon's Bench @ Patheos Catholic

Without question, it is the most infamous public execution of all time.
No death has been more depicted in art, in drama, in literature and, as we’ve just heard, in music.
On top of this, the one being put to death is the most quoted, cited, studied, revered person in human history—a solitary figure who literally changed the world. Jesus the Christ—Son of God and Son of Man. The Messiah.
Yet these, his last words, may strike us as shocking—shocking, because they are so simple.
In fact, they are so painfully human.
They are the words of an anguished man crying to his God.
They are the plea of a prisoner whose throat is parched.
They show the effort of a son trying to comfort his mother.
These are the words of a dying, broken, exhausted man, as his organs shut down and his body fails and his heart gives out.
At times this most extraordinary death is almost shockingly ordinary.
Deacon Greg Kandra Behold, the wood of the cross: Homily on the Seven Last Words (March 30, 2018) The Deacon's Bench @ Patheos Catholic

Let’s face it: in a world where soccer practice, work, the gym, PTA meetings, school projects, Twitter, and Netflix dominate our lives, it can be challenging and seemingly impossible to find time to pray. There are deadlines to meet, bills to pay, babies to diaper, reports to file, gardens to weed, emails to answer, groceries to buy. And praying? Talking to God? Amid the stresses and strains of daily life, many of us take God’s name in vain, if we mention him at all.
We want to pray, but who has the time?

Well . . . you. You do. Yes, you. The busy person who can’t find your keys or this week’s grocery list can, in fact, find time to pray. It is not impossible.
I don’t intend to ladle out heavy theology or philosophy; I’m not going to be quoting exhaustively from encyclicals or treatises; I won’t be dissecting the mind of Aquinas. That’s not me. I’m just a writer, journalist, blogger, storyteller, preacher, husband, and deacon.
Deacon Greg Kandra It’s Here: ‘The Busy Person’s Guide to Prayer’ (March 20, 2019) The Deacon's Bench @ Patheos Catholic

The Divine Wedgie by Matt Tan

First Post: 8/07 Last Post:  March 4, 2019
First Patheos: Post? 
REDEEMING FLESH: THE WAY OF THE CROSS WITH ZOMBIE JESUS (CASCADE, 2016)
JUSTICE, UNITY & THE HIDDEN CHRIST (PICKWICK, 2015)

Put another way, Jesus has entered history only insofar as Jesus becomes an event in his story and hers, insofar as he is woven into the fibres of circumstances and experiences. The incarnation, is not merely about a single historical event in the past, but in every node of history going right up to the present. This of course, includes his being deeply immersed in the circumstances that together make up our history.
Matt Tan How a Train Ride Taught Me the Presence of God (December 17, 2018) The Divine Wedgie @ Patheos Catholic

We can take comfort in the thought that the metaphysics of the universe are also at play in the minutiae of our personal experience. We can see the threads of our history that have come to an abrupt end – through disappointments, setbacks and tragedy – not to have a tragic finality, but to be highly revelatory moments.  While we viscerally experience the coming end, we can remember that the operations of divine love are at work behind the veil. Moreover, if we take the Book of Revelation seriously, we should be assured that where we are is at the point of beginning, not an end.
We thus have reason pray, as my priest friend Colin Parrish once wrote, that God give us hope that lies beyond the veil of our vision, and for God to run ahead and wait for us.
Matthew Tan Love at the End of the World (April 12, 2018) The Divine Wedgie @ Patheos Catholic
 
Zombies have great anthropological, social, cultural and theological relevance to us.
I’m basically saying that zombies are theologically potent because they show us how much Jesus loves us (laughs). When Jesus loves us, he saves us not just at the level of ‘soul’ but at the level of ‘flesh’, by redeeming our dead flesh with his own living flesh, to borrow the image from Paul’s epistles.
Matthew Tan In the Public Square with: Matthew Tan (June 7, 2016) @ The Catholic Weekly  

On this Feast of All Saints, the Church declares in the Communion of Saints the manifestation of that Eucharistic Body. It is a body that stretches with Christ across all times, spaces and ages. Thus, the Communion of Saints comes with borders of a different kind, one that is open to both the past and the future and acts on it in the now. One sees an earthly manifestation of this in the Levitical law pertaining to the treatment of resident aliens (Lev 19:34), mandating the opening of borders to such aliens as part of the Mosaic program of training in holiness. The resident alien, in the Mosaic code is not a complete outsider, but a reminder to natives that even they were once aliens in a foreign land. In a similar way, the Body of Christ, who fulfils the Mosaic law, acts as a moment of judgement on the jealousy with which we in the civic body guard our borders, assert our presence, and demarcate outsiders. Matthew Tan   The Politics of All Saints Day (November 1, 2017) The Divine Wedgie @ Patheos Catholic

The Dorothy Option by Elias Crim

First Post: 1/16- Current
Dorthy Option Books

Last Sunday, at the conclusion of a food inequality simulation at my parish, the microphone was passed to a visiting priest. He described an experience years ago when, walking out of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, he was accosted by “bums” and “lowlifes” begging for change. According to the priest, they flocked to him precisely because he was wearing the Roman collar that signifies his identity as an “alter Christi,” another Christ. But when he ran out of change, said the priest, those same panhandlers insulted him. In return, he solemnly vowed that, “I would never return to New York City as a priest,” and, concluding, “I never did.”

How different is this attitude from the kenotic love of Jesus, who sought out the “bums” and “lowlifes” of the world; indeed, who was gladly counted as one among them. Jesus, who was “crushed for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities,” who, “though he was in the form of God did not consider equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant … and becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.” What a betrayal of the poor. What a betrayal of Christ! How soon we forget that “God demonstrates his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” That forgetfulness is the ground of our betrayal of the poor, who still languish on the cross while bearing the face of Christ.
Mark Gordon’’The Passion of the Poor (March 23, 2016) The Dorothy Option @ Patheos Catholic

We all know the Mass-hopper: that restless type who constantly whines that he can’t take one more of Fr. Ted’s vanilla homilies at St. X’s. Nor can he abide the horrible teen “praise” band ruining Fr. Jim’s services at St. Y’s. So that leaves Fr. Bob at St. Z’s but have you ever seen an uglier sanctuary in your life? I mean, really.
I don’t wish to be That Guy and yet my own recent Mass-hopping in my area doesn’t seem to be driven by any liturgical nitpicking. It’s really Pope Francis’ influence.
We want a church which goes forth, as he puts it in Evangelii Gaudium, adding that “all of us are asked to obey his call to go forth from our own comfort zone in order to reach all the ‘peripheries’ in need of the light of the Gospel” (paragraph 20).
Elias Crim Mass at the Peripheries (May 17, 2018) The Dorothy Option @ Patheos Catholic

First, we’ll have to agree on what good citizenship is not. It is not defined merely by the rote performance of patriotic gestures like standing with hand over heart during the national anthem. Good citizenship is not about social media, endlessly posting, sharing, liking, tweeting, and otherwise launching our opinionated pixels into the often-foul air of cyberspace. Good citizenship doesn’t mean blindly aligning with this or that political tribe and repeating uncritically the tropes and slogans proffered by tribal leaders, as if ball caps and bumper stickers are all we owe each other and future generations. And good citizenship is not defined by the consumption of corporate media, which unfortunately is where 70% of us get our “news” these days.  Watching Rachel Maddow or Sean Hannity doesn’t make us good citizens. I think we have to recover a sense of what authentic American citizenship looks like. We have to remember that good citizenship is rooted in affection … for principle, for community, and for neighbor. We are good citizens when we act out of love.
Mark Gordon Love and Citizenship (June 8, 2018) The Dorothy Option @ Patheos Catholic

Eating Peaches by Marina Olson

First Post:  5/16 Last Post: December 31, 2018
Author at aleteia .and mtncatholic.com

I think because of sin which confused us as to the specifics of what we want, and because we have bodies and want immediate things like a seventh helping of chocolate cake instead of to practice the less immediate and more immaterial virtue of moderating our desires, most of us have made the wrong decision a time or two. And after recovering from the food coma of seven helpings of chocolate cake, we know that messing up on what is actually the right thing to do can be painful. For those of you who are over 21, maybe try reading “helpings of chocolate cake” as “margaritas,” if you don’t believe me on this.
We make mistakes, and we know, at least in some way that those mistakes can have painful consequences in our life. So, with many, if not all, of the choices we make seek to minimize messing up our lives. A wrong turn could make you a few minutes late, and while annoying, is not the end of the world. However, other decisions, like drinking and driving, might end your world, or that of someone else.
Marina Olson So You’re Anxious About God’s Will: Three Thoughts on Figuring It Out (January 19, 2017) Eating Peaches @ Patheos Catholic

It’s hard not to ask ourselves: what does it really mean to say God became Man?
The problem with asking that question is that, as the holiest, most intelligent, and most contemplative of the saints know far too well, after we have said all we might possibly say on the subject, the Incarnation has far too much of reality about it for us to even begin to comprehend what God did when the Logos united a human nature to His Divine Person.
So what is faith supposed to be in this realm where words themselves fall silent in the overwhelming presence of the Word Himself?

It seems wrong to fall back on emotion—the stirring up within ourselves in the face of this piercing truth—because this truth is more solid than our ability to grasp it can ever be. It seems an even greater travesty to turn to sentimentality—if only because sentimentality is perhaps best characterized as a “degraded feeling—emotional schmaltz and artistic schlock,” to borrow the philosopher Eva Brann’s description.
Marina Olson Advent and the Incarnation When Words Fail (December 6, 2018) Eating Peaches @ Patheos Catholic

Eastern Catholic Person by Justin Tse

First Post: 1/12 Last Post: July 23, 2019

I am not a faith leader of any sort. I am a secular academic — strictly speaking, a geographer of religion whose arena of study is trans-Pacific and whose political convictions are Asian American — who also happens to be Eastern Catholic and has a blog. Lord, have mercy sounds cheap, unless I can clarify that we like our Muslim sisters and brothers know in our bones that Allah is merciful and all-compassionate and cry out to him, with others who died as victims of systemic and structural injustice, ‘How long?’ And what if I have no words, because I do not know enough, or do not know what to say, or simply want to grieve in silence? How is silence interpreted?

I wanted to say nothing, especially because I am an academic. Tthe worst thing in moments like this are for the experts to weigh in. Expertise and grief are like baking soda and vinegar. The only time they should be combined is in a fourth grade science fair exhibition. ‘
Justin Tse They are us’: on having no words on Christchurch, Ethiopian Airlines, and the ecological crisis (March 18, 2019) Eastern Catholic Person @ Patheos Catholic


For those who are among the cheeky in the Latin Church, Ash Wednesday is what they call a ‘Catholic coming out’ day, as the ashes on the foreheads of those who walk our streets, work in our campuses, and go about their everyday lives mark those who have attended mass that day, unless they are very traditional and have the ashes poured on top of their heads. I hear that term less this year, perhaps because I am Eastern Catholic, and not only are we on a different calendar that is a week apart this year, but our Great Fast begins with Forgiveness Vespers on the evening of Cheesefare Sunday.
Justin Tse The morality of the closet: for Cheesefare Week after the Latins’ Ash Wednesday (March 6, 2019) Eastern Catholic Person @ Patheos Catholic

I associate Hitchcock with Catholic intellectuals, although the ones I first saw were with evangelical, which is also to say that I thought of Catholics as smart. I think a number of us probably are, but the more time I spend in the Catholic family, I have gone back and forth and back again on something that Catholics claim to have and even see in Hitchcock. Some, like my brother Artur Rosman, have called it the Catholic imagination, but I prefer to call it the Catholic gaze, a uniquely Catholic way of looking out on the world and seeing something that approximates the supernatural in everything. My sense is that most of my intellectual sisters and brothers in the Latin Church would prefer that I say that their gaze can be equated with the supernatural, but I prefer to leave that an open question.
Justin Tse North by Northwest at Northwestern: on the Catholic gaze (January 24, 2019) Eastern Catholic Person @ Patheos Catholic

El Puente by Victor Carmona

First Post: 4/16 Last Post: January 2, 2017

The kingdom entails a struggle that took Jesus, as St. Paul’s Letter to the Philippians reminds us, to the point of death on a cross (Phil 2:6-11). While some read Paul’s beautiful hymn as an instruction on doctrine, I join those who read it instead as an instruction on Christian living. Paul’s hymn professes that in the kingdom of God humility leads to exaltation for Christ and all who live like him. In the years immediately after the Galilean’s death, Paul’s claim must have been senseless to Jews who prized a legalistic understanding of their faith and morals. It must have been foolish to Greeks and Romans who valued the attainment of knowledge above all else.
Victor Carmona Virgilio Elizondo, a man of the marginalized (April 18, 2016) El Puente @ Patheos Catholic

Embodied Faith by Colleen C. Mitchell

First Post: 6/18 Last Post: (June 30, 2018)
Embodied Faith/ Books

Author @ catholicmom

We are incarnate beings living inside bodies in a world with other incarnate beings living inside bodies called into existence by a God who chose to live inside a body then established a community for us to live in that he called His Body. I am part of a church that feeds me with the Body of my Savior and calls me to feed the hungry in my midst.
From everything I can see, my God and my Church are telling me that faith is a tangible existence lived inside the flesh and experienced corporally and corporately. We live and breathe and have our being inside our bodies. We form one Body with our fellow humans. And we worship as a body of believers. If my faith is to be strong enough to bring the Kingdom of heaven down to meet us where we are, I’ve got to build up the bones of that body with spiritual strength and put muscle to that body with active work.
Colleen C. Mitchell So This Is the Place Where I Say the Things (June 17, 2018) Embodied Faith @ Patheos Catholic

European Communion by Cameron Doody

First Post: 10/17 Last Post: September 24, 2018
On the one hand, the option of (re-)evangelization supposes, according to the CCEE, “find[ing] the paths for the voice of the Lord Jesus to return to the ears of European men and women in culture and society”. What makes it necessary? That “the Gospel of Jesus is the perennial source of European history, of its humanist civilization, democracy, human rights and responsibilities. And therefore the most secure guarantee!”
Cameron Doody Evangelization or Service? The Vocation of the Church in Europe (October 12, 2017) European Communion @ Patheos Catholic

120 young people from 57 universities on five continents around the world will come together at the Vatican from today for the Holy See’s first ever hackathon: a competition in which multi-disciplinary teams made up of software developers, graphic designers, program managers and the like square off against each other in a race to develop technological solutions to common problems. In this case, the 36-hour VHacks event “seeks to use technological innovation to overcome social barriers and embrace common values”, according to its website.
Cameron Doody Vatican Turns to Young People to “Hack” Social Problems (March 8, 2018) European Communion @ Patheos Catholic

Eve Tushnet by Eve Tushnet

First Post: 2/02/ 5/24/12 -Current
Eve Tushnet Books


Back in 1998 or 1999, when I was a very recent convert to Catholicism and full of boisterous, somewhat obnoxious delight in the Church, I told my best friend that as a Catholic, “It’s just that my worldview is so unified!”
I have many friends who love Eastern liturgies, spiritualities, and styles of worship—some Orthodox, some in Byzantine or Melkite churches (which are in communion with Rome). I’ve loved learning from them about the diversity of Christian worship, the diversity of the beauty available to us, and the diversity of the languages we can use to articulate our faith. It turns out that I am desperately Western: gory Spanish crucifixes, St. Anselm on the Cross as payment of our debts, statues and holy cards and the Corpus Christi procession. One of my favorite memories of church music is of “Amazing Grace” played on a Casio keyboard—it should be so chintzy, and yet it was so haunting! And there’s probably no document from the Vatican explaining why that was so good.
The Faith is more complex and strange than any precision-tooled theology can express.
The kinds of Catholicism you were raised with aren’t the only kinds; the vocations of the people who brought you into the Church aren’t the only paths of love.

When I became Catholic, all the other Catholics I knew were straight. I didn’t know any other gay people who were willing to accept the Church’s sexual ethic. I didn’t even know of anybody like that. For all my talk of having a unified worldview, there seemed to be no place for me—and especially for my longing to love and serve other women—in the Church. I acted like being Catholic gave me all the answers, when in fact I wasn’t even sure how to ask the questions.
As a gay woman I have had to rediscover forgotten ways of love: Scriptural practices of lifelong same-sex love, for example, like the covenant between David and Jonathan or the promises made by Ruth to Naomi.
Both Scripture and Christian history offer examples of people whose love of another man or another woman was intense, devoted, and chaste; self-giving, life-shaping; passionate, sacrificial, and beautiful.
Eve Tushnet Your Weirdness is Welcome Here: Letter from Eve Tushnet (April 24, 2019) thecatholicwoman.co


Alongside the Crucifixion, the Eucharist–and specifically the Real Presence, the literal transformation of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ–was one of the aspects of Catholicism which first drew me to the faith. I could tell you that it was because the Catholic doctrine seemed most responsive to the Gospels; I wrote a paper, back when I was the only atheist in my History of Christian Doctrine section, arguing that Jesus’ words at the Last Supper, when you consider His insistence in the face of horrified disbelief in John 6:52 – 57, wasn’t simply a metaphor like “I am the vine.” But I have to admit that I loved (and love!) the doctrine of the Real Presence largely because it’s visceral, bizarre, bloody-minded. It seems like the kind of overturning, catastrophic, violent thing the God of Exodus and Good Friday would do–the kind of awful thing our world and our actions would require of Love. It is hardcore.
Eve Tushnet Breaking of the Bread (March 26, 2019 by Eve Tushnet @ Patheos Catholic

Faith on the Couch by Gregory K. Popcak

First Post 2/13 -Current
Faith on the Couch Books

(When I lived in Steubenville,  My friend had a cleaning company and I used to clean his house)

People of faith often feel guilty for being anxious.  They wonder if perhaps they are not praying hard enough or not trusting God enough.  The truth is, Christians get anxiety disorders at roughly the same rate as everyone else.  This should not be a surprise.  After all, Christians catch cold as often as everyone else and get cancer or heart disease or high blood pressure at the same rate as everyone else.  No one thinks of these things as spiritual failings.   Anxiety disorders are what happen to a person when the brain’s fire-alarm center—the amygdala—gets a “chemical burn” from bathing too long in stress chemicals, making it hypersensitive and over-reactive to new problems.  Anxiety Disorders are not a failure of character or spiritual maturity.  They are what happen when the brain’s stress-warning systems become overwhelmed and hyper-activated... 
Rachael Popcak and Dr. Gregory Popcak Be Not Afraid: A Christian Response to Anxiety (May 22, 2013) Faith on the Couch @ Patheos Catholic

Praying with small children can be difficult. They tend to be wiggly and have short attention spans. When little ones are involved, it’s easy for family prayer time to seem more like…Wrestlemania. But you can have a meaningful prayer time with small children if you remember that little people need different spiritual food than bigger people.
Faith develops in different stages from early childhood, to middle childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood. 
By understanding the spiritual food that a small child’s faith requires, you can help fill their hunger for God.
Rachael Popcak and Dr. Gregory Popcak Praying With Small Children (May 8, 2019) Faith on the Couch @ Patheos Catholic

The Church’s teachings on sex and love are among most provocative and the least understood things in Catholicism.  What difference does it make what we do in the bedroom?  Does God really care about our sex lives that much?
St John Paul’s Theology of the Body reminds us that the Church’s teachings on love and sex aren’t just about sex, they are ultimately the way that lay people can give their whole selves–soul, mind, and body–to Christ.  Because of the incarnation, Christianity is an embodied spirituality that has to be expressed not just spiritually or mentally, but concretely and physically.  Just like clergy and religious practice celibacy as a way of giving themselves totally and completely to God, living the Catholic vision of love and sex is the way lay Christians can make a total loving response to Jesus giving himself to us body, blood, soul, and divinity. God holds nothing back from us, even taking on a body so that we could feel his love more concretely. How can we hold anything back from Him. God doesn’t just deserve our minds and hearts. He deserves for us to dedicate our bodies to his service. Living the Catholic vision of love isn’t always easy, but it is a privilege that lets us make an embodied response to Christ’s gift of his body to us.
Rachael Popcak and Dr. Gregory Popcak When Sex Isn’t About Sex: 3 Things You Need to Know (August 22, 2017) Faith on the Couch @ Patheos Catholic

Femina Ferox by Emily Claire Schmitt

First Post 1/16 -Current
Emily Claire Schmitt.com

I’ve been drawn to religion my whole life. Some small children are drawn to soccer or science. I remember staying up late, because I had insomnia even then, developing elaborate rituals of song and rosary in prayer. My parents told me to pray until I fell asleep, but I would simply pray all night.
I don’t know if my stubborn attachment to the faith of my youth is intrinsic to me or if it’s simply a pattern I cemented in my own mind from hours of repetition. I’m also not sure it matters. The ability to pray, to reach out to something mystical beyond myself, was the only thing capable of pulling me out of my head during my worst times. And the healthier I become, the more I do it, not the other way around.
Emily Claire Schmitt 40 Days in the Desert: A Reflection on Lent Without Mass (March 16, 2020) Femina Ferox @ Patheos Catholic

Because Catholics are obligated to live their faith fully in every aspect of their lives, Catholics are obligated to make Catholic art. Even when the artist has not set out explicitly to make art about The Church or about Jesus, their faith must influence their work on the deepest level possible. We are not obligated to do so alone, because that would be impossible. Only by inviting the Holy Spirit into our creative process can we hope to successfully accomplish what God is calling us to do. So, in that spirit, I am ending by offering a prayer for artists, as they set out to create in Christ’s name.

Oh Holy Spirit, guide me in my work.

Grant me permission to participate,

in some small way,

in your creative powers.

Let me not fall away from the path,

even as I wander.

And when I wrestle,

let me wrestle with angels,

so it is always You I encounter

on the other side of the journey.

Amen.

Emily Claire Schmitt Are Catholic Artists Obligated to Make Catholic Art? (March 9, 2020) Femina Ferox @ Patheos Catholic

Fr. Dwight Longenecker (Standing on My Head) by Dwight Longenecker

First Post: 9/2006 - Last Post: October 30, 2019
Dwight Longenecker.com/
GoodReads Profile

The imagination is arguably the most powerful and important aspect of our minds. All the great art comes from the imagination. All great inventions begin with the imagination.  All great literatures is bred in the imagination. All prayer, religion, spirituality and inspiration springs from the imagination.
The imagination is our portal to eternity. It is the creatively human aspect of our mind which is most like God the Creator because God’s imagination is always working, always creating, always making unexpected connections and bringing about unexpected encounters.
This is also what it means to have an abundant and faith filled spirituality. The imagination should be alive and active in our prayer lives. The imagination is a great gift which opens us to understand more fully the creatively abundant mind of God.
Fr. Dwight Longenecker Mont St Michel, Angels and the Imagination (September 16th, 2019) dwightlongenecker.com

Like many, I’m critical of the abuses of the new Mass–the dreadful architecture, banal art, saccharine and heterodox music, poor preaching etc etc that too often has gone along with the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, but my point has always been that these are abuses and when you take the Ordinary Form of the Mass–simply what’s in the book–just the words and rubrics–there’s not much wrong with it.-
 Fr. Dwight Longenecker Twelve Things I Like About the Novus Ordo Mass (January 11th, 2019) dwightlongenecker.com

But there is a deeper level to God’s interference. The cross teaches us that God does not avoid human suffering nor does he always deliver us from it. Instead he plunges into the suffering. He does not take us out of suffering, but he goes with us through it. When the three Hebrew boys were thrown into the fiery furnace the king said there was a fourth one there with them. That was an epiphany of Christ the Lord and a lesson on the depth of the suffering of God himself. He feels our pain. He bears our iniquities. He is a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

Fr. Dwight Longenecker Is Coronavirus God’s Judgment? (March 24th, 2020) dwightlongenecker.com

Franciscan activist by Patrick Carolan

First Post: 9/17 Last Post: January 5, 2018

Writer @ National Catholic Reporter

Heaven is usually identified with absolute joy and happiness, the ultimate paradise. A place where you will be at peace for all eternity. If this is true, how come we spend so much time and energy trying to avoid going there? I mean we hook people up to machines just to keep them alive, keeping them from experiencing eternal joy. I remember when my mom was getting older and was starting to fade. My siblings and I were with her one day. She looked at us and said: “I know you are all praying for me to get better, but I want you to stop. I am praying for God to take me home and I do not want him to get mixed messages.”
Patrick Carolan Building Heaven on Earth, Part 2 (October 9, 2017) Franciscan activist @ Patheos Catholic

Isn’t it time to break out of the endless loop of “Express outrage, offer prayers, do nothing, repeat”? The message of Jesus is a message of love and peace, not fear, hatred and war. The marginalized, the poor, the refugees, all of us are the Body of Christ. Will we welcome the Body or reject the Christ. If we truly believe the message of Jesus than everything must change.
Patrick Carolan The Disease of Apathy (October 17, 2017) Franciscan activist @ Patheos Catholic

Fumbling Toward Grace by Sarah Babbs

First Post: 11/08 Last Post: December 16, 2018

Author @U.S. Catholic magazine, Catholic Exchange, IGNITUM TODAY

But what I’ve been chewing on a lot these last few days is this: the relationship between responsible parenthood and generosity.
What I’ve come away with: It’s complicated. Just like every other way in which we seek to live the Christian life, there are no easy answers here. No checklist, no bullet points of what “counts” as a good reason to limit family size. There’s no power point presentation with slides of what generosity looks like, everywhere, all the time. There’s no rubric for what responsible parenthood entails.

What there is, is grace. Is prayer. Is conscience. Is that still small voice that speaks in our hearts. Is the tender love of husband and wife, rightly ordered, that God uses to lead us gently toward more generosity. However, sometimes generosity is not another child.

Sometimes generosity is continuing to try, month after month, letting small springs of hope seep into a cracked and weary soul. Sometimes there is no visible proof of this generosity, this hope.
Sarah Babbs When Generosity Looks Like Selfishness (January 22, 2015) Fumbling Toward Grace @ Patheos Catholic

Sometimes prayer is all we can do. Sometimes prayer is all there is. And it is something mighty.

When a thirsty man comes to your door, you give him water. When we meet the suffering in our midst, we are called to comfort them. When the thirsty and suffering are thousands of miles away, and we are not free to leave and minister to them, then we go to war against violence and hatred and racism and greed with the weapons of our God. With our lips and hearts, with our penance and praise, with the weapons we are permitted and able to use.

Prayer in our homes – our domestic churches – for the healing of a broken and brutal world, is one of the most powerful gifts we as families can give. Our witness of trying and failing, and trying again, to build the culture of life and civilization of love, is strengthened by our prayers within the walls of our home. After going to Mass, prayer with our families at home is of utmost importance. Praying with the Church from our homes brings the liturgy out of the walls of church and onto ordinary streets where other people are living, and working, and dreaming. Maybe it gives us the strength and courage to make difficult choices for the sake of our family, or to stand up for justice even when it may cost us dearly.
Sarah Babbs When Prayer At Home Seems Lacking (August 13, 2014) Fumbling Toward Grace @ Patheos Catholic

The Global Catholic Review by Andrew Chesnut

First Post: 3/18 -Current

While the first Latin American pope references Satan on an almost weekly basis, today he went further, endorsing exorcism, which is accessed through the sacrament of baptism, as a potent weapon for doing battle against the Enemy and his legions. As an Argentine Catholic, Pope Francis subscribes to the widespread Latin American Christian belief in a literal Devil who sows discord and destruction in the world.  Furthermore the octogenarian pope’s savvy alignment of the Church’s goods and services with our high-tech zeitgeist is a brilliant strategy that features the use of new technologies, such as mobile phones, to deliver demons from a distance

As shocking as it may be to some observers and Catholics in the Global North, Pope Francis’s endorsement of exorcism and even performance of an informal one neatly captures the rise of the Christian Global South, where prayers for deliverance from evil are common Catholic and Pentecostal currency. It would appear that the first pope from the Global South has not only opted for the poor but also has adopted a preferential option for the Spirit.
Dr. Kate Kingsbury/ Andrew Chesnut Pope Francis Endorses Exorcism as Tool for Combating the Devil (April 27, 2018) The Global Catholic Review @ Patheos Catholic

Mexicans will tell you that they are 90 percent Catholic but 100 percent Guadalupan. While the numbers aren’t entirely accurate anymore, it is definitely the case that the Virgin of Guadalupe has been a constituent part of Mexican national identity, reflected in the fact that millions of both women and men are named Guadalupe, many going by the nickname “Lupe,”.
Dr. Kate Kingsbury/Andrew Chesnut 15 Fascinating Facts About the Virgin of Guadalupe (December 8, 2018) The Global Catholic Review @ Patheos Catholic

Good Letters

First Post: 2/08 Last Post: October 17, 2018

Image Magazine

Online Discussion Forum: ArtsandFaith.com,

Pablo Neruda wrote odes on everything from socks to tomatoes to sadness, and Sharon Olds, in her newest collection (um, Odes) praises the likes of tampons, condoms, trilobites, and the San Francisco Bay. Yes, the possibilities truly are endless.

So, having submerged myself in Celtic music over the past few years, I’ve decided to write a series of odes celebrating Irish musicians, many of whom dedicate themselves to instruments we don’t find in most elementary school bands, such as bodhrans, bouzoukis, and uilleann pipes.

I wanted to celebrate them by attempting to understand their language. While I am a musician, I have literally never touched a number of these instruments. Without enough time or money available to learn them, I’ve had to find fresh ways to encounter their essence.

Writing about music requires ekphrasis, or engaging a work of art through poetry. Without a visual form to hang onto, music writing almost always requires some sort of synesthesia, or mixing of senses, in order to tap into the spirit of a sound. Such an approach leads to figurative language, of course, a common feature of odes.

When writing a poem of celebration, you must know how you’re praising the subject and why, holding it to the light to inspect if from different angles. What results is a rich collection of colors and light, metaphor with “ripeness to the core.”

Tania Runyan On Writing Odes: Taking Time to Celebrate (October 8, 2018) Good Letters @ Patheos Catholic

Humans love heroes. They excite. They inspire.

The righteous assurance of the Right and Left has long kept me from embracing either side. I’ve had enough heroes fall. I’ve seen enough ends-justify-the-means thinking from people who claim to value character.

That’s one reason I enjoy comic books more than politics. Superman can save the day because he has all the powers; Barack Obama had executive orders and the veto.

When the disciples saw their hero being led to his death, they cowered in fear. But then their hero returned and said it isn’t about heroes, it’s about fishermen and tentmakers, sinners and tax collectors, widows, orphans, and immigrants.
More mysteriously still, it’s about “principalities” and “powers”, spiritual forces invisible except by their effects. Saruman is a problem, yes, but he’s only an instrument of Sauron.
Brad Fruhauff Humans Love Heroes (October 10, 2018) Good Letters @ Patheos Catholic

Il Naufrago by Aurelio Porfiri
First Post: 4/16 - Last Post: March 8, 2019

The book of Psalms can be read in many dimensions. The historical exegesis is most commonly applied. It often results in very boring results. There is also a powerful symbolic exegesis which can also be called allegorical or theological. This exegesis can only be practiced by high minds, like Saint Augustine.
In his commentary on Psalm 150, the great Saint Augustine says about the book of the Psalms:

“It is not random to me that the 50th psalm speaks of penance, the 100th of mercy and judgment, and the 150th of the praise of God in his saints. In fact, this is the order according to which we tend towards eternal and blessed life: first we detest our sins, then we live righteously so that, disapproving of bad life and practicing good life, we deserve eternal life “.

Augustine’s remark is very powerful because it shows us that Ps 150 cannot be considered separately from the other psalms. The 150 psalms constitute the movement of a great symphony: We cannot praise (Ps 150) if we have not been able to shed tears for our sins before (Ps 50).
This is why the joy expressed in Gregorian chant is contained and austere, a joy with gravitas. It has nothing to do with the superficial, silly joy which we encounter in so many modern Church songs.
M° Aurelio Porfiri The superficial joy contained in Many Modern Church Songs (October 9, 2018) Il Naufrago @ Patheos Catholic

I do not think there is no choir worthy of the name that can avoid facing to sing choral pieces in Latin. It’s like loving art and not visiting Italy. In some countries, however, it is more difficult to sing in Latin as their language is very far away from Latin itself. There are some strategies that I adopted in my work in China and judging by the outcomes, they worked well. There are various ways of pronouncing Latin. Mine is Roman Ecclesiastical.

You begin teaching the pronunciation of vowels and diphthongs well. The vowels, as said by Robert Shaw, are the backbone. This work on vowels should be a prerequisite to everything else.

After that the pronunciation of the vowels is assured: with the inclusion of the consonants the choir members can begin to understand the dynamics of the accents, the centrality of the tonic accent and its relationship with accents that precede and follow it.
At this point it will not be a bad idea to make people understand how many words in modern languages ​​that they may be familiar with, are derived from Latin. This will let them understand that Latin isn’t a dead exotic language, but a familiar living one.
M° Aurelio Porfiri Proven Strategies to teach your Choir to Sing in Latin (April 13, 2016) Il Naufrago @ Patheos Catholic

The Inner Room by Kevin Johnson

First Post: 12/15 Last Post:  February 10, 2017

Author @ National Catholic Reporter

It starts in a room of silence.  A room where disciples are gathered together in fear, in worry and in prayer.  An Inner Room where disciples behold the Christ in secret (Matthew 6:6).  It is fitting – this silence of the disciples – listening to and beholding this wounded yet risen Christ.  Silence mirroring the very heart of Christianity.
A silence that births a Spiritual Wisdom that cannot remain in a room.
A silence that speaks: “Behold, I make all things new.” (Rev.21:5)
Kevin M. Johnson Revelation 21: 5 (May 14, 2016) The Inner Room @ Patheos Catholic

The bells began to ring just outside my window for Vigils, 3:15 am prayer, and I couldn’t help but roll over to doze off again until the next round of bells would awaken me a few hours later. I’m not sure how I was so lucky to receive a room with a view of the Abbey’s bell-tower and the monastery’s resting place for monks who have since left the world. I awoke each day overlooking the burial grounds of those who have prayed for decades before me, including Thomas Merton. In some way I felt all those monks overlooking me – showering my awake and resting moments in their lifetimes of prayer.

On this, my third visit to Gethsemani Abbey, I was not only awoken by bells but also to the sacredness of the “smallest” moments in my life. My times at monasteries have been encounters that continually strip away the layers of facade that the world covers me with. And as these false covers are peeled back – I am left raw, vulnerable, and opened to the sacredness before me. This inner stance then permits me to ease into a necessary detachment from the world – an exploration where I can once again see that the simplest of moments are filled with awe and full of the sacredness that they’ve always hosted.

Sometimes it’s difficult to see how this stripping away of layers could lead to such striking awareness and joy in the moment, especially at a monastery. Some find the daily tasks and routines of these monks to be an imprisonment that hinders their own self-discovery, but Gethsemani Abbey and other monasteries have long since proven otherwise. It may be precisely the paradox that provides the freedom – that daring step away from the world in order to deepen one’s relationship with the world; that deep exploration of our rough edges which leads us to greater unity with one another.

Culturally – any external that is a limitation is perceived as bad. But when you choose these self limits, do they open you to a reality that is only accessible because you’ve chosen those limitations? A Trappist Monk
Cassidy Hall The Sacredness of Now (July 14, 2016) The Inner Room @ Patheos Catholic


Jonah’s stubbornness at the end of the book is precisely what addiction to adversity looks like. The idea that no one will listen to him and that they can therefore expect the punishment of God is so ingrained in him that he doesn’t know what to do when the people do in fact repent. Returning to Nineveh, he had perhaps expected persecution, maybe even death. And that presumably he could deal with. But he met something far worse – the mercy of God – and in the face of that mercy he, like so many of us, had no idea what to do.

And this is what is revealed to Jonah, his own pathetic bathos – except God’s point is that pathetic bathos or not, it has worth. Jonah’s petulant concerns have worth in all their stupidity and fragility. And if this is so, how much more worth does Nineveh have, where people don’t even know their left hand from their right hand? Upon discovery of this bodied, creaturely fragility, Jonah’s choice is also mine: between pity and hate. Like Jonah sitting and awaiting the destruction of Nineveh, I can sit waiting for God to smite me, my human fragility, the thing I despise. Or I can have pity, somehow seeing worth in the petty wants and needs of my small transient life, even as there is worth in Jonah’s bathetic and selfish love for the little plant, even as there is worth in the fragile creatures living in the heathen city of Nineveh. But like Jonah, I tend to problematically prefer apocalypse and destruction – an adversarial context – over peace and growing things.
Karl Persson Rescuing Small and Huddling Things from Adversarial Protectiveness (November 19, 2016) The Inner Room @ Patheos Catholic

For the record, I have become more or less resigned to the constant misunderstandings, the doctors who would explain away my prayer life and those Christians who would explain away everything else. I have become resigned to the kind of people who think that maybe one should work on getting better first and then worry about prayer later – yes, I want to say, and when will that be? – Godot is more likely to arrive before that happens. And they don’t understand the crushing need for prayer. Not the comfort (how is it comfortable?) – not the attraction (unless like a moth to a flame?) – but the thirst, the necessity. Teach us to pray – for we are crushed by it. Teach us to pray – for we are swallowed by the hollowness of it. Teach us to pray – but could you sometimes be gentle with us and listen to our stories?
I may have a bad memory (because hey – madness in my head!), but so far as I can recall, I haven’t read anything that “gets it” quite the way Anne does in her post. Prayer is hard, awful, and confusing for those of us who are mentally ill. But it is also what we need. So yes, teach us to pray, but be gentle. Our prayers may be nothing. But for many of us, their very poverty is all we have left.
Karl Persson Teach Us To Pray…But Be Gentle: Prayer and Mental Illness (April 14, 2016) The Inner Room @ Patheos Catholic


Part of prayer is learning to pray with all other Christians – where two or three are gathered together – and so among other things this means learning to pray and contemplate alongside Christians from the past. One of the ways we do this is by engaging traditional texts on spirituality and mysticism.

St. Francis will catch our eye when he is telling us to preach the gospel and, if necessary, use words; St. Augustine and his heart ever restless till it finds rest in God will always find a place in our hearts; Irenaeus will not go unnoticed for talking about the glory of God as a human being fully alive. However, I suspect that anyone who digs just a little deeper into old works and authors valued merely for such apothegemic spirituality will be disappointed. At places, the texts will alienate; at other places they will challenge; but I think what modern readers will find more disappointing than either of these are the places where the texts seems altogether too naively pious – perhaps more like the mild elderly lady down the pew saying her prayers like clockwork than the wonderful premodern site of protest against modernity we want these texts to be.

We so desperately want these old texts to serve as an Orientalist “other” – the golden age before the modern theological/philosophical fall – that we are fairly disappointed when we find them telling us to do much the same as what our modern priests and pastors (at their best) tell us to do: pray, engage Scripture, follow Christ in our actions, worship etc. If you’re looking in these texts for some exotic “lost key” to your faith and prayer life, you are bound to be disappointed, and frankly bored. There is no other key to faith than Christ – O Clavis! – and if you cannot appreciate Him in the words of your modern brother or sister whom you have seen, it will be doubtful that you can appreciate Him in the words of those from the past, whom you have not seen.
Karl Persson Why Do Old Spiritual Texts Seem Boring? (February 1, 2016) The Inner Room @ Patheos Catholic

But whether soon or late, whether we are reluctant or eager, the Spirit eventually leads us here. Whether exhausted and compliant or kicking and screaming – just as I am, I come. And I find that here – where I am most vulnerable – where heat scathes and spirits torment – here in the desert of my heart is Christ. Here is where He speaks on my behalf the “No” I have no breath to breathe. Here is where the New Adam can begin anew.

“Will it take long?” you ask.
Yes, a thousand years – that is to say, a day.
“Does it hurt?” you ask.
Yes, it’s death.
“Is it worth it?”
We are not given an answer, but an invitation:
“Taste and see…”
Karl Persson Our Hearts Are Deadly Until They Find Rest In You (January 26, 2016) The Inner Room @ Patheos Catholic

Jane the Actuary by Elizabeth Bauer

First Post: 7/13- Current

There are lots of cool things about Catholic liturgy, especially when done by people who care about liturgy.  Chant.  Incense.  The darkness and candlelight of Easter Vigil.  Ooooh . . . the Easter Proclamation, and the Vigil readings.  The stripping of the altar on Holy Thursday.  The first time I was at a Catholic Good Friday service was actually at the University of Notre Dame:  the readings are chanted, the music include the Reproaches and the Trisagion — and then you get to the Veneration of the Cross, which is, well, to a Lutheran-at-the-time, a bit creepy.

People get up one at a time, and kiss the cross.

Is that not basically in line with all of the accusations levied at Catholics by Protestants:  “they’re idolaters, who worship relics and pray to saints”?
But it kind of grew on me, to the point that when I’d be a church where there was no individual Veneration, just a communal kneeling and hymn singing, I missed it.

Catholics, after all, have multiple stations for communion to get everyone in and out quickly.  Short homilies instead of long sermons.  Cut a few verses out of the songs if they’re taking too long.  And even that isn’t enough for individual Catholics who dash out as they personally feel they can without missing the Sunday Obligation.  But the Veneration of the Cross — well, I really started feeling bad for my 10 year old squirming next to me, and suddenly Notre Dame’s approach of mini-crosses for additional stations seemed very practical.
And that’s all I have to say.  Go get some Easter inspiration!
Elizabeth Bauer Good Friday: The Most (and Least) Catholic Liturgy (April 1, 2018) Jane the Actuary @ Patheos Catholic

Jappers and Janglers by Chase Padusniak

First Post:  2/16 -Current

Christianity told me that I had to be responsible for my actions, that I had to love in the face of hate and forgive in the face of accusation. No earthly evil could be justified, though all could be forgiven.

This was a religion that could illuminate a seemingly senseless world, a religion for the confused, the lost, and the melancholic. This was a religion for the sinner. Christianity demands holy foolishness of us.
 Chase Padusniak How I Came to be Christian (Full Essay) (July 23, 2019) Jappers and Janglers @ Patheos Catholic

Kate O'Hare's Pax Culturati by Kate O'Hare

First Post: 2/15 -Current
she writes for and edits for Family Theater’s Faith & Family Media Blog

In 2009, Pope Benedict affirmed that Catholicism comes without an escape clause: Once a person is baptized or received into the Church, there is no getting out.

Baptism imparts sacramental graces and has a permanent impact on the soul. Then, if the person receives instruction in the Faith, and is raised in a Catholic context, that will have a further effect, regardless of how observant, or not, he or she is later in life.

The Catholic sacramental worldview informs everything we do. We don’t just work in words; we also work in symbol and metaphor. For us, things like water, smoke, candles, bells, chant, icons, images of saints, crucifixes — even ordinary objects, like a cup or keys, or nature itself — hold deep spiritual meaning and resonance.
The Catholic imagination has a whole language of images to draw upon. Our literature, art and movies don’t need to be sermons. We can make movies about Christ that depict Him and His followers, or we can make movies about Christ that never mention Him at all.
As in “The Lord of the Rings,” by Catholic writer J.R.R. Tolkien, we can read the symbolism behind the story, interpreting it back into Catholicism, like translating from one language to another.
Kate O'Hare Alfred Hitchcock: Cradle Catholic, Catholic Revert or Just Simply Catholic? (August 13, 2016) Kate O'Hare's Pax Culturati @ Patheos Catholic

Labyrinthine Mind by Pablo Migone

First Post:  8/08 – Last Post: Dec 7 2019

 “Does the priest ever run out of hosts?”
She gave me a quick and hushed response, “No, Pablo, he never does.”
My seven year old mind registered her answer with utter amazement.  The priest never runs out of hosts!  God must miraculously keep putting hosts in there!  In my little mind, I imagined angels dropping hosts into the ciborium to make sure there were plenty of them.
Though this would be an amazing thing, and technically nothing could keep God from multiplying hosts if He so desired, even more amazing, is what ordinarily happens every time Mass is celebrated.

The Eucharist allows husbands to love their wives unconditionally, and vice versa; parents to love their children unconditionally, and vice versa.  It allows us to love coworkers, acquaintances, friends, relatives, and strangers.  It allows us to love those who annoy us, those who hurt us or frighten us.  Those most unlike us, and those we disagree with. It allows us to see each person as God sees them.
Holy Thursday Homily
Father Pablo Migone Does the priest ever run out of hosts? (April 18, 2019)  Labyrinthine Mind @ Patheos Catholic

The Gospel message has inspired countless men and women to create works of art that speak directly to the human heart in unique ways that are impossible to replicate through other mediums.  An encounter with what is beautiful whether it is painting, literature, poetry or sculpture, moves the individual to seek the source of that beauty.  Rather than first explaining what we believe, we can lead others to experience the beauty that has its roots in the Gospel.  Just as a child is inspired to play a sport by first watching it played rather than by first learning the rules, we must allow people to experience Christianity in its totality before learning its intricacies.  Witnessing the beauty of a person loving selflessly is more effective evangelization than distributing one hundred catechisms.  The details of the faith make no sense unless one has experienced the beauty and goodness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Christian art fuels so much tourism throughout the world because people are attracted to its beauty.  The Sistine Chapel and Saint Peter Basilica may be the most prominent, but churches and museums throughout the world attract millions of visitors, both believers and nonbelievers.  We must find effective ways so that our rich and beautiful artistic heritage, which is inspired by the Gospel, continues to lead souls to encounter Christ.
Father Pablo Migone Beauty to evangelize, (April 25, 2019) Labyrinthine Mind @ Patheos Catholic

Letters from the Edge of Elfland by David Mosley

First Post: 7/12 Last Post: December 7, 2019
@ David Russell Mosley
Book: On the Edges of Elfland: A Fairy-Tale for Grown Ups (Feb 28, 2017) by David Russell Mosley

We cannot endure Bliss, Joy, and Endless Delight, not in our current state. We must be thickened up, made more real. The Cosmos over which Christ is King, may be bound up in us, but the Cosmos is no bigger than a hazel nut, is no thing in comparison to the Creator. This is why Moses could not see God’s face and live. He did not have the benefit of the incarnation, but it was the incarnation that likely made his vision possible at all. And yet he would not survive that vision. We might survive longer, but it would kill us in the end. We are dust, however cosmos, and this dust must be made new before it can be ready to dwell in eternity.
David Russell Mosley Time and Eternity: Reflections before the Mass of Christ the King of the Universe (November 26, 2018) Letters from the Edge of Elfland @ Patheos Catholic

Life Transparent by Mallory Severson

First Post: 3/16 Last Post: June 14, 2017

There is a lot I still want to say, and I want to still find my voice among the Patheos channel. When first given this opportunity, I gave myself the idea that my old blogging ways weren’t the way to go, and that instead I needed to be constantly clever, funny, and apologetically authoritative.
But the truth is that I’m only clever sometimes, and funny on occasion. It’s not in my nature to be combative, and I certainly won’t bring my arguments online. So, why did I think I needed to be a copycat blog, and join the ranks of commentary?
I really don’t know.
So I’m not going to attempt to do that anymore.
Instead, I’m returning to what I know I can do, and what I did for 10 years with a lot of fun readers; write about our life, and share when I mess up.
 Mallory Severson When Nearly A Year Goes By (May 23, 2017)  Life Transparent @ Patheos Catholic

Lisa Duffy: A Million Unheard Souls

First Post: 9/15 Last Post: May 17, 2018

Lisa Duffy.com

Through the suffering of my divorce, I learned to die to myself in different ways. First, through accepting the truth of my situation. Then, through finding forgiveness for all those who had betrayed me. Learning to pray for my ex-spouse instead of cursing him brought great healing. Taking these steps opened my heart and find love instead of hatred and bitterness.

Divorce is a horrible experience and a real sort of death. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. If you’ve been through a divorce, you understand what I’m talking about. But I pray that through this devastating event, you will experience the positive changes this sort of death will bring. There will be a resurrection, there will be new life. The best way to let this happen is in embracing your cross instead of cursing it.
Lisa Duffy 4 Words That Can Change Your Life: “Come Die With Me” (December 31, 2016) @ Patheos Catholic

The Literary Papist by Tim Duffy

First Post: 6/18 Last Post: May 16, 2019

The Pantheon is a place of grand seriousness. It was first established as a cathedral, meant to match the scale of St Paul’s in London and St Peter’s in Rome. It succeeded in this aim, it’s massive. It celebrates the legacy of Saint Genevieve, the Patron Saint of Paris whose works in the fifth and early sixth centuries helped bring comfort to a city upset by plagues, famine, and war. The large painted frescoes of her life are stunning.
Yet, on top of these religious roots a more secular tree has been forced. The Pantheon is a national necropolis, a resting place for France’s most celebrated residents as well as a tangible celebration of the French Republic. But, despite the large statue celebrating the National Convention where an altar should be, there are ghosts everywhere.
As Catholics, we too must listen more often to the dead. The dead who have never really left. The dead who like us, hope and look to the resurrection to come. Even in secularized, national spaces, these voices are never really silenced.
Tim Duffy Sharing Space with the Dead (July 30, 2018) @ Patheos Catholic

So often in prayer, we hope for yes. A yes to our wishes. A yes to ourselves. A yes to tell us that, yes, indeed we are on the right path. We are deserving. We are fundamentally good. Yes, we are talented. Yes, everything will be ok. Yes, despite our failings, we will still find happiness. Yes, the kids will be ok. Yes, the future will bring good things. Yes yes yes. It can be done. It will be done. We will get there in the end. We shall overcome. We shall win.
Yet, it is in our “no” that the prayer life begins. A no to distractions. A no to despair. A no to cheaper, easier fixes. A no to ourselves. A no to our desires. A no to the world around us. It is also in this no that the rebellious and radical nature of the gospel can come to fruition.
We spend much of our lives waiting for a yes, but we can do so much by starting with a prayerful no of our own.
Tim Duffy Praying toward No (Anne Boyer, “No”) (July 11, 2018) @ Patheos Catholic

A Little Bit of Nothing by Henry Karlson

First Post: 2/16 -Current
Book: The Eschatological Judgment of Christ
The Hope of Universal Salvation and the Fear of Eternal Perdition in the Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
By Henry C. Anthony Karlson, III

Sometimes people say that because God became man, and not some other animal like a dog or a cat, that God cares only for the salvation of humanity.
There are many things which can be said about this. First and foremost, this argument presumes that there are no other incarnations, that God only became man. Theologically, it is possible to consider whether or not God could and would have incarnated himself by assuming other natures.
Nonetheless, it is not necessary for God to become something other than man for him to incorporate the whole cosmos in him. By becoming human, God bridges the gap between the Creator with creation, and so through that incarnation, all of creation is capable of sharing in the kingdom of God. 
Henry Karlson Jesus and the Beasts (November 18, 2019) A Little Bit of Nothing @ Patheos Catholic

 “Love cannot bear that. We must pray for all,” St. Silouan of Mount Athos once told a hermit who asked him why he was known to pray for those presumed to be damned.[1]  Instead of thinking everyone deserved to be damned so that we should not be concerned if anyone should perish in hell, St. Silouan believed that the Christian response was the response of love, the response of Christ. Love does what it can for the salvation of all. Because Christ died for all (cf. 2 Cor. 5:15), we should desire that all should be saved. While it might seem highly unlikely, we must pray for and hope for the salvation of all, for that is the hope of love. It is because God is love that Christ came to the world to save sinners; he came, not just for a few, but for all, and so we are to pray for all:

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all men, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life, godly and respectful in every way.  This is good, and it is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (1Tim. 2:1-4 RSV).
Henry Karlson Love All, Pray For All, and Hope For All, Because Grace Is Available To All (May 10, 2016) A Little Bit of Nothing @ Patheos Catholic

Lost in a One-Acre Wood by Jack Hartjes

First Post: 5/18 -Current
Book: Read The Way You Talk: A Guide for Lectors (January 1, 2004)

The first thing our visitor notices about the Creed is that it’s another story. It’s not an essay detailing things I believe.  One little word changes everything. It’s what, or rather Who, I believe IN. When I say “I believe in you,” I’m not saying “I believe you exist.” This is not stating a fact, it’s putting myself into your story and on your side. With the first sentence of the Creed, I declare my loyalty to and trust in God, whose story includes some amazing deeds. I put myself in that story, which is not finished yet.
The next thing to notice is that this Creed is a poor summary of the stories we learn (or rather celebrate) in the Liturgy of the Word. When you summarize a story or a lesson, you can put the original aside. You have what you need with just the summary, especially if the whole point is to get on with living. The Christian Creed is no substitute for the Bible. It’s a guide to reading the Bible. And, the Liturgy of the Word isn’t just preparation. It’s living the story.
Jack Hartjes The Creed, a Story Not an Essay (November 13, 2019) Lost in a One-Acre Wood @ Patheos Catholic

Mackerel Snapper by Matthew Tyson

First Post:  3/13 Last Post: August 20, 2019

Author at Catholic Exchange IGNITUM TODAY

And of course, we should never forget that Jesus was put to death by the moral leaders of his own faith, by those who chose legalism over the spirit. It was the pharisees and the sadducees, not the prostitutes and tax collectors, who were the enemy of Christ and the antagonists to the Gospel.
Matthew Tyson There Are Serpents In The Church (January 19, 2019) @ Patheos Catholic
 
I found the mass to be the most fulfilling way of worshiping and communicating with God. It implores all of our bodily senses. Holy water, incense, prayers, the sign of peace, the Eucharist, genuflecting, crossing ourselves and so forth, are all used so that we praise God with all of our body, heart, soul, and mind. Not to mention that we believe that the body and blood of our Savior are literally right in our presence. All these things bring us together in full communion with God.
But as I said before, this connection extends past this life and reaches to those who have already entered into Heaven and allows us to communicate with them. I’m talking, of course, about the Saints.
Matthew Tyson Saintly Communion (April 27, 2013) Mackerel Snapper @ Patheos Catholic

McNamara's Blog by Pat McNamara

First Post 12/08 – Current

Former Patheos Blog:  In Ages Past

While prelates lived it up, laymen were founding hospitals and starting groups like the Oratory of Divine Love, where laity and clergy discussed reform, cared for the poor, and visited the sick and imprisoned. Two oratory members became leading reformers: St. Gaetano da Thiene, founder of the Theatines, and Gian Pietro Carafa, later Pope Paul IV.
Reform was basically grassroots and lay-initiated. Even several of the key religious orders that became involved in reform were initially lay endeavors, such as Angela Merici’s Ursulines, the first teaching order of women religious. The Jesuit order had its roots in Ignatius Loyola’s lay ministry. Before his own ordination, Philip Neri lived as a layman in Rome for over a decade, founding a confraternity that served Rome’s poor. His Oratorians later followed up on this earlier work.
Eventually, reform proceeded upward, to the clergy and the hierarchy. Reform-minded young priests, influenced by reform movements, became reform-minded bishops. And in time, the most unlikely of reformers was elected pope: Paul III (1534-1549).

Born Alessandro Farnese, he had worked his way up the ecclesiastical ladder, helped no doubt by the fact that his sister was Alexander VI’s mistress. A practiced nepotist and father of several children, somewhere along the way, Farnese experienced a conversion. As pontiff, he appointed a reform commission. He also tried to open dialogue between Catholic and Protestant leaders, albeit unsuccessfully. Most importantly, he opened the Council of Trent.

Reform preceded upward from below, not from above. It was the laity who got the ball rolling. And it was through their influence that clergy, bishops and popes embraced reform and institutionalized it at Trent. That’s a good lesson for us today– if things are going to change in today’s Church (and they clearly need to), lay people have to make a difference where they are. It’s time for all of us to live out our baptismal vocation.
(The drawing of St. Ignatius Loyola is by Pat McNamara.)
Pat McNamara The Council of Trent– And Church Reform Today (February 28, 2019) McNamara's Blog @ Patheos Catholic

Messy Inspirations by Fellow Dying Inmate

First Post: 8/19 -Current
youtube.com

God’s a jazz player, folks. God improvises, creatively adjusting things instantaneously without needing any time. God works with us in our present—that’s providence. History unfolds and our free undetermined choices play out in consequences. We co-author the music of our lives with God in our irreducible yeses and no’s. God takes up the notes, sour and sweet, and plays out God’s Jazz and Blues, improvising creatively. It’s all God’s work and being, but it happens in our yes or no.
Fellow Dying Inmate Omniscience: Does God Destroy Freedom by Seeing our Futures? (November 23, 2019) Messy Inspirations @ Patheos Catholic
 

The Millennial Crusader by John Paul Gaston

First Post:  1/18 Last Post: August 10, 2018

St. Paul was right, when we spend time to sanctify every part of our day, even the fun ones, we have an incredible disposition towards Grace. This is what I would like to remind you, that there are powerful intercessory saints of God who are more than happy to help us out. It is just our choice whether or not we seek their help. I seriously recommend turning toward St. JPII when you’re outdoors because the dude was an awesome outdoorsmen. Let us also not forget to pray for those Souls in Purgatory as when we do and by the mercy of God they are released, we gain more saints to pray for us. All in all, I just wanted to remind us of the Church Triumphant and how it is so vastly important that we seek their aid in all that we do.
~John Paul
John Paul Gaston Skiing with a Saint (January 29, 2018) The Millennial Crusader @ Patheos Catholic

Mudblood Catholic by Gabriel Blanchard

First Post: 7/19 - Current
Amazon Page

 Even for those of us who believe in God, making him affectively real to ourselves—interacting with him as a concrete person that we relate to—is incredibly difficult, because he is rarely if ever present to our senses (save in the Blessed Sacrament, and there he is concealed). Mystical experiences are rare. But our neighbor, whom we are told in no uncertain terms is God’s ikon and representative, is right there for us to practice on. How we love our neighbor reveals how we love God. We must come back and back and back to this; it is the incarnation of charity; it is the check on our potentially bottomless introspection, scrupulosity, and legalism. If we would be united in love to God, who is immeasurably other, we must begin by opening our hearts to those who are measurably other.
Gabriel Blanchard The Mark of the Pharisee (October 28, 2019) Mudblood Catholic @ Patheos Catholic

On the Catholic Beat by Brian Fraga

First Post: -11/19 - Current

Looking up at St. Mary’s arches and its high-vaulted ceiling, I had the insight that this magnificent Gothic Revival structure was specifically built for the drama of the Latin Mass. The Irish immigrants who built St. Mary’s in 1869 did so with the Latin Mass in mind — a Mass that serves as a reminder of God’s majesty and the glories that await the faithful in heaven.
I still find Mass in the ordinary form to be edifying and more in line with my own spirituality, which I would describe as being rooted firmly in the Second Vatican Council. But the Catholic Church is a big tent, and there is plenty of room for different spiritualities, including for our brothers and sisters who own a Latin missal.
Brian Fraga is a contributing editor for Our Sunday Visitor.
Brian Fraga Experiencing the beauty of the Latin Mass firsthand (November 13, 2019) On the Catholic Beat @ Patheos Catholic

On the Upside Adam Paterno

First Post: 10/19 - Current

As a mental health advocate and a Catholic christian who suffers from General Anxiety Disorder (GAD), I believe that this example can be a very powerful tool for understanding that there is no room for worry nor negative self talk and low self esteem when it comes to the unconditional love God has for us in the hear and now.
God wants us to have compassion for ourselves as he has compassion and mercy for us; I believe he wants us to apply the Good Samaritan model to our lives and those exact moments our inner critics try to sneak in some very hurtful low blows to our morale.
Adam Paterno The Importance of Self Compassion; Making the Good Samaritan Story Work for Your life (November 23, 2019) On the Upside @ Patheos Catholic

The Orant by Billy Kangas

First Post: 11/07 - Current
Book: How the First Christians Changed Dying– (November 1, 2012)  by William E Kangas

This is one of the reasons that early Christians began to celebrate Advent. They wanted to connect the daily work of their lives to a much larger hope. By taking time to reflect on the big story of God’s redemptive work, it helped the small stories in their own lives find greater meaning.
Think about your own life and share with others how what you are doing might be building something bigger than you regularly imagine.
Billy Kangas What are you building? (December 6, 2019) The Orant @ Patheos Catholic

Jesus is the music of eternity, and the liturgy is the place where the Church comes together to dance to the rhythms of his grace. The liturgy is a participation in the life of heaven for it is a participation in Christ.

If one were to accept my thesis that the liturgy is the place where the church dances to the melody of Jesus Christ himself, then it opens up a whole new set of lenses through which the history of the liturgy can be seen. Each development is a natural evolution of the dance as it encounters new cultures, places, and times, which bring with them their own dance steps. The melody is deepened, the dance becomes a improvisatory promenade of peculiar people from poles apart. In the liturgy we join hands with Christians from fourth century Jerusalem, ninth century Rome, thirteenth century Bavaria, and twenty-first century Colombia, each place and time helping to form, and reform, the dance with their own particular genius and style. The music is a form of call and response. God calls us in the person of Christ, and the Church responds my embodying Christ in their own time and culture throughout history. No matter who you were, within the life of the church, one could find people who danced with Jesus in your language and culture.
Billy Kangas In the liturgy, the the music of heaven has already begun (November 20, 2013) The Orant @ Patheos Catholic

Orthodoxy in Communion With Rome by Pete Vere

First Post: 3/18 -Last post: November 11, 2019

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Within the Byzantine Christian tradition, the term “tree of life” usually refers to Our Lord’s cross. Yet here it refers to the Blessed Mother. I should not be surprised by this given that “Mary, Tree of Life” is a very popular and traditional icon among Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Catholics.
I am blessed by this connection given its reminder that it is from the Blessed Theokos that Our Lord Jesus Christ received His humanity. Not just His human flesh but His whole human person. Without Mary as the Tree of Life, there would have been no hypostatic union between God and man at the Incarnation. It is through Mary, the Tree of Life, that Our Lord Jesus Christ made salvation possible.
Pete Vere “Rejoice, O Wood and Tree of Life, the Fount of Immortality”  (November 11, 2019)  Orthodoxy in Communion With Rome @ Patheos Catholic

Peace and Pekoe by Kate Cousino

First Post: 4/09 Last Post: September 11, 2018

St. Paul Miki and companions are rightly remembered for their bravery during their forced march of 600 miles to crucifixion in Nagasaki. This is exactly the same length St. Josephine Bakhita was forced to travel, barefoot, when kidnapped by slave traders at the age of nine.

I’m not sure why the detail of the 600 miles struck me, except that it reminds me that while we are bound by time and chronology, Christ isn’t. Unlike the Japanese martyrs, Sr. Bakhita’s sufferings predated her conversion–she wasn’t suffering for the sake of a faith she didn’t yet know. And yet somehow her Christianity gave her a way to understand and make sense of her earlier trials.

The same hope, the hope of a life destined for the love of Christ, both gave St. Paul Miki the courage to face martyrdom and gave Bakhita the courage to claim a life free from slavery and abuse.

The same hope makes it possible to embrace both present persecution and past abuse as paths leading to eternity with Christ, a hope that tells us not only what we are destined for, but who we are.

And what we are is free.

Not only free to, like St. Paul Miki and companions, “resist the overbearing power of ideology and its political organs and, by their death, renew the world,” but also free to renew the world through living witness to this innate worthiness and freedom, as did St. Josephine Bakhita.

The same hope that taught the martyrs that no torment or suffering could injure their interior freedom or “separate [them] from the love of God,” also freed Bakhita to reject the lie that she, a child of God, could be claimed as mere property.

The Japanese martyrs walked 600 miles in witness to that freedom. The little girl we know as Bakhita walked 600 miles and lived as a slave before she could claim that freedom.

How far would I walk?

What would change in my  life if I truly lived in that hope?
Kate Cousino Would I walk 600 miles? (August 9, 2018) Peace and Pekoe @ Patheos Catholic

Perchance Perpetuity by Yvonne Meadows

First Post: 6/16 - Last Post: September 13, 2017


The next time you read a tragic story about a natural disaster, stop and ask God to bless those in harm’s way and ask yourself if you can spare a luxury for that day such as takeout for dinner to give to a cause that is helping the victims. I’m not saying do this every single time, as most of us are not endless supplies of funds, but the habit connects you back to humanity and helps to eliminate the tailspin of hopelessness. It is also an Act of Mercy!

While being physically in the presence of the Body of Christ is preferred, there are many livestreams available online. I recommend opening a window or tab any time you are online. To me, this is a great blessing of our connectivity. It requires a reverence and respect which will carry over to your time on the web.

From the birth of Jesus, Mary has had a contemplative heart (Luke 2), and I would venture to assume before His birth as well. She kept within her heart more to ponder than many of us could ever really imagine. Because of this I believe when we are in a state of information overload we would do ourselves a great service to ask her to help us learn what is good and what should be avoided in all things, but especially news we receive from the world.
Yvonne Meadows 5 Ways to Practice the Catholic Faith to Calm Information Overload  (September 13, 2017) Perchance Perpetuity @ Patheos Catholic

Pia de Solenni by Pia de Solenni

First Post: 10/08  Last Post: August 2, 2016

Book: Towards an Understanding of Woman as Imago Dei  by Pia Francesca DeSolenni

 I started to wonder, if mothers have sort of a primary relationship with children on account of biology (they do spend 9+ months in a woman’s body…), perhaps the special role of men is to be the primary caretaker of the marriage. Perhaps.

I’ve noticed anecdotally that where men are committed to the marriage, not just being passively carried along in family life, that the marriages are different and better. The wife is happier. So are the children, if the couple is blessed to have children. And the husband is happier.
There’s a statistic – I don’t have it handy but you have the mighty interweb at your finger tips – that children are about 20% likely to follow the family’s practice of religion if it’s led by the mother. If led by the father, that number jumps to something like 80%. 

In some ways, I think women have a role that’s more natural in a biological consideration. 
Pia de Solenni #1 Thing That Men Can Do For Marriage (May 21, 2015) Pia de Solenni @ Patheos Catholic

Pop Feminist by Emily C. A. Snyder

First Post: 3/18 Last Post:  December 22, 2019
Website: Emily Casnyder
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Why haven’t I been writing here?  Because too many of those who give feedback only want to destroy.  Only want themselves to be correct, their opinion to be known, their “truth” to be Truth.
“If I speak with the tongues of Angels, and comprehend all mysteries, but do not have Love, I am a clanging gong.”
I doubt I can change the hearts of some of the avaricious trolls who have bred so well in the wild west of the interwebs.   It’s usually the quiet ones who listen and at least question whether they should have picked up the stone – and wonder what Christ wrote in the sand – and stay to hear what He said to the woman they’d condemn.
“Neither do I condemn you.  Go forth, and do this thing no more.”
Emily C. A. Snyder Catholics, Avarice and Internet Trolls: Or, Why I’m Blogging Less ( March 18, 2019) Pop Feminist @ Patheos Catholic

So, are there Steubenville grads blogging at Patheos Catholic?  Yes.
In fact, one of the things that I value from my education at FUS is that it has a better alumni network than my fancy grad school, which grad school I attended in the hopes that it would yield me professional connections.  Who would have supposed that FUS grads would be more generous out in the real world?  I’ve founded theatre companies with FUS grads, collaborated on audio books with FUS grads, been interviewed by FUS grads, done consulting work for FUS grads…
In short, the people I met at Steubenville are some of the best and brightest I’ve had the pleasure to work with.  I’m pleased to be blogging among other FUS graduates, here and across the blogosphere.  If this sounds like an endorsement for my alma mater, it probably is.
Emily C. A. Snyder Neo-Nazis at Steubenville! Liberals with Blogs! Responding to Church Militant (January 16, 2019) Pop Feminist @ Patheos Catholic

I know Christ best.  Met Him several times throughout elementary and middle school, including viscerally once when He seemed to appear in my mind’s eye saying, “Emily, Emily, how long I have waited for you.”  To which I hung back, weeping, maybe eleven years old, and saying: “I’ve done so much wrong.”  To which He just gathered me in His arms and held me there.  I’ve seen Him dancing with His saints.  (He’s goofy.)  I’ve heard Him snap at me when I was going to miss a Good Friday service in college for no better reason than apathy – one of the only times He’s yelled at me – when He snarled: “Emily: It‘s My Death.”  Needless to say, I bolted out of bed immediately.

I’ve tasted Him a few times, usually the Blood.  For an extended time a few years ago during a period of utter devastation.  When I needed desperately to be touched, reassured, reminded that the world was not crumbling into ash.  I can no more disbelieve the Eucharist than I can disbelieve the ice cream at my elbow, or the touch of my lover’s lips against my own.  And the Church is the only place where my Lover lives.  Truly lives in Flesh and Blood – and I need His Flesh, His Blood.  As surely as I need a hug from a friend: the bone-crushing, breathless exorcism of false emotion and harmful thoughts. 
Emily C. A. Snyder How Can You Stay Catholic? Or, Yelling At God (August 31, 2018) Pop Feminist @ Patheos Catholic

There’s something about growing up Irish American that settles deep in your bones.  I don’t know when I first heard the bodhrán , but there was something in hearing that instrument that thrummed inside me.  It was primal.  It meant I had to tap my toes

There weren’t peat fires in my soul, but there were forests, and hills, and grass, and stones.  There were skirts and tea and wildflowers in my hair.

To be Irish was also to be Catholic.  No matter how you covered up your Irishness, how much you hummed “Rule Brittania” – you were also Catholic.  Defiantly Catholic.  Rebelliously Catholic.  You Can Take Our Country, and Starve Us Out, and Kill Our Tongue, and Make Us Flee – but you cannot Take Our Faith Catholic.  To be Irish, to be Catholic, was to suffer and endure and sing sad love songs and mad, hopeful songs of war and failure and the glorious Long Defeat. And to beat up your enemies by still being there tomorrow, having reproduced like hell in the meantime.  To be Irish, to be Catholic, to be American was to long for a home you’d never seen: in Heaven and on earth.  It was to talk as fondly of St. Paddy as it was to talk of your uncle Paddy; and as natural to speak and know the story and shortcomings of both.

So, to all my Irish brothers and sisters, to all my ancestors and those cousins I’ve yet to meet, to those who crossed the ships, and to those who stayed for home, and to those who will come, and those still looking for a way into the fair and Faerie, I say:
Éirinn go Brách
Emily C. A. Snyder LONGING FOR HOME: Being Irish in America (March 17, 2018) Pop Feminist @ Patheos Catholic

Proper Nomenclature by Keith Michael Estrada

First Post: 12/15 - Last Post:  July 28, 2019

Our brothers and sisters are hungry, tired, overworked, commodified, drugged, abused, exploited, thirsty, naked, unwelcome, homeless, violated, killed. To evangelize requires that we honor and exalt the dignity of our neighbor. Let us come to satisfy every need – spiritual and material.
Keith Michael Estrada Our Lady of Guadalupe (December 11, 2017) Proper Nomenclature @ Patheos Catholic

 What’s the greater work: to teach a child the Sign of the Cross or to build the most magnificent edifice?

For Saint John Eudes, the answer is clear: “To teach even a child to make the sign of the cross or instruct one of God’s little ones, is a nobler work in the eyes of God than all human and natural undertakings.”

In basic catechesis for children and all those who are new to the faith, the Sign of the Cross is foundational.

It is the first external action we should perform when we wake up, and the last we should perform prior to falling asleep, and it should be done with the greatest reverence.
Keith Michael Estrada Saint John Eudes on the Sign of the Cross and the Primacy of Salvation (December 29, 2015) Proper Nomenclature @ Patheos Catholic

Public Catholic by Rebecca Hamilton

First Post: 1/12 - Current

I pray a Rosary every Sunday for people in Purgatory. It takes quite a while, since I name every single person I know who has died, and I mean died, ever. I include great-great-grandparents I never met and friends of friends.
It’s the least I can do for them. I only hope that when I die, someone will take the time to pray for me.

There are many theories about Purgatory, all of them far more authoritative than mine. But my belief is that in Purgatory we face what we have done from the viewpoint of those we did it to. If, say, you hit someone, in Purgatory you would experience the blow you gave in this life. If you gossiped about someone, in Purgatory you will feel the humiliation and hurt your words inflicted.

It would be terrible enough to experience this in this life. But in Purgatory, I think our souls will be so tender and so pure that the pain will be even more exquisite.

The souls in Purgatory are not being tortured. They are being educated about their real selves. They are seeing themselves as they are, and this insight hurts. It is the deepest grief imaginable to confront the full reality of your own sins. But from this grief comes conversion of a thorough and unalterable kind.
 Rebecca Hamilton Divine Mercy Novena, Praying for Those in Purgatory, Where We are Made Fit for a King (April 10, 2015) Public Catholic @ Patheos Catholic

The Pursuit of Holiness by William Hemsworth

First Post:  1/20 – Current

Lent reminds us that spiritual warfare is real.  It is a call to arms in which we latch on to Jesus and head into battle.  We are not alone in this fight.  We have the communion of saints and our Lord Jesus Christ by our side.
Lent is not a time to give up something in an attempt to be fashionable.  Many give up a favorite food or desert and call it a day.  The whole point of giving up something is to replace it with a spiritual practice.  What spiritual practice you take up is totally up to you. 
Maybe you find yourself too busy to pray.  As a result, you may wake up 10 minutes early to pray to replace the 10 minutes you take eating your favorite candy bar.  Last year my wife gave up Starbucks, and she chose to take the money she would normally spend and give it to the St. Vincent De Paul Society at our parish. 
You may choose to take time throughout the day and pray the Liturgy of the Hours.  As previously stated, that is up to you and what you feel called to do.  However, fasting without prayer is merely dieting.  If you are obstaining or fasting, but not praying you are dieting.
William Hemsworth The Link Between Lent And Confession (February 22, 2020) The Pursuit of Holiness @ Patheos Catholic

The Rule and the Raven Anne Carpenter

First Post:  2/16 Last Post: June 29, 2018
The Rule and the Raven  Books

I have a ridiculously hard time praying. I probably feel like most people, who, “Instead of fluent conversation…can only manage a few, halting, scraps of the heavenly idiom” (Hans Urs’ von Balthasar, Prayer). The broken phrases are probably a little bit different and a little bit the same for everyone: snatches of the liturgy, mangled Scripture passages, and plenty of incoherent mumbling. Throw in some saint references and you have a Catholic.

Teresa of Avila says in her Interior Castle, “through our own fault, we do not understand ourselves, or know who we are. … [Y]ou must understand that there are many ways of ‘being’ in a place. Many souls remain in the outer court of the castle [of their own soul], which is the place occupied by the guards; they are not interested in entering it, and have no idea what there is in that wonderful place, or who dwells in it, or even how many rooms it has.” Teresa gives us an image of a person who doesn’t really know how to dwell within themselves, or how to search themselves. They’re sitting there like normal, having lunch or something, but they’re also stuck “outside” of themselves.

 Catherine of Siena says, our emphasis should be on virtue, and on penance only with attention to virtue. In her Dialogue, God the Father puts it like this: “Penance should be but the means to increase virtue according to the needs of the individual, and according to what the soul sees she can do in the measure of her own possibility. Otherwise, if the soul place her foundation on penance she will contaminate her own perfection, because her penance will not be done in the light of knowledge of herself and of My goodness, with discretion, and she will not seize hold of My truth; neither loving that which I love, nor hating that which I hate.”

There we go with self-knowledge again. These people with their interior castles and inner mirrors and whatever. So annoyingly, wonderfully consistent. (And inconsistent, but I don’t really want to talk about the different conceptions of the self over the centuries.) The point is that wanting is hard for us, but we can’t beat ourselves into submission. We have to know who we are to better learn what we want, and we have to draw nearer to God to learn even better what He wants. The whole dynamic assumes that God is there to help, since we’re devastatingly mediocre at this.
Anne Carpenter A Meditation on Prayer. Plus the Virgin Mary Appears at Some Point. (August 15, 2017)  The Rule and the Raven @ Patheos Catholic

 When I was a kid, I used to think forgiveness takes an instant. But the truth is that forgiveness is something like instant for God – transcending all time means all mercy is already given – and something like every instant for me. We offer mercy imperfectly and repeatedly, a new mercy in each new moment. Peter has to repeat his love for Christ all over again even though he’s already answered the question, “Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me?” (Jn 21:15-19).  As mercy is available to receive in every moment, so also we offer it. We must forgive not seven, but seventy-seven times (Mt 18:21). I’m assuming that number is Bible for “forgive as often as God, which means always.”

I wonder what it will be like at the end of all things, when we face the altar of God with the ruptures we could not overcome. Ruptures beyond our power, or beyond our narrowness, or beyond the tiny cosmos of an individual life. I am sure that Christ, the great reconciler, will gather each broken thread together. I am not so sure what that will look like for me. Will we look at it together? Will he judge me then? “Nor does the Father judge, but he has given all judgment to his Son” (Jn 5:22), who only judges according to the will of the the one who sent him (Jn 5:30). And yet, “I do not judge anyone” (Jn 8:15). Is the judgment left to me? Will the scales drop from my eyes, and will I be the judge of the real self that I finally see?

I do not imagine that good deeds make up for bad ones. They repair the echo of the deed, the reverberation that continues into the present, in a way, but the deed is still done in the dead past. (Yes, there is memory, I know, but even that is the life of a ghost.)  There is only one for whom that past is alive, and that one is the God who sees all time from beginning to end, the the Trinity for whom every moment in time is always also now. All of me, every action of mine, already stands before the Trinity’s eternal present. And there is nothing that the Triune God will not forgive (except the sin against the Spirit, whatever that is).
Anne Carpenter And I, when I am lifted up, will draw all things to myself (March 12, 2018) )  The Rule and the Raven @ Patheos Catholic

Sam Rocha by Sam Rocha

First Post: 5/12 Last Post: June 19, 2017
Now at  Sam Rocha.

Tell Them Something Beautiful by Sam Rocha

The incarnational wit of Christianity is most present in two places: Bethlehem and Calvary. The swaddling clothes prefigure the cloth that wrapped Christ in the tomb. (The cave as a birthplace is preferable to me for the same reason.) Myrrh is an embalming oil. The point seems to be that God so loved the world that he chose to become human and showed his humanity if the two most graphic moments of weakness: birth and death, womb to tomb.

We adore an infant in a manger and a young man on a Cross. A baby in a feeding trough and Jewish dissident being brutally tortured to death. This is our incarnate God and therein we find our salvation.
Sam Rocha Was Baby Jesus a Refugee? (December 26, 2016)  Sam Rocha@ Patheos Catholic

The Shoeless Banshee: Meanderings Beyond the Pale by Marie Kopp

First Post: 3/18 - Current
Pyle of Books

I didn’t use to love the Eucharist. I’ve already written on my near-suicidal childhood scrupulosity. During that time I’d beat myself up because, while I wished to believe all that the Church teaches about the True Presence, and I never actively doubted it—I simply couldn’t wrap my head around this teaching. I’m pretty imaginative normally, but I couldn’t imagine this one, and I would make myself sick trying to imagine that this odd-tasting white wafer and over-sweet wine are flesh and blood, the flesh and blood of a living God-man who loves me.

My friends ask me why I love the Eucharist so much, and I struggle to find an answer. It’s not intellectual, I try to explain. It’s a pull, an ache in my gut.

That ability to sense His presence hasn’t left since that retreat five years ago. I mostly take it for granted these days, but I still feel Him there when I walk into a Church. And sometimes it takes the emptiness to remind me, when the fullness is missing, that I do know Him now, that my heart still aches with that pull to Him.

And on Holy Saturday this ache intensifies. The church, usually a temple housing my Holy of Holies, becomes a hall—a mere structure, an empty shell of brick and paint and shards of grotesquely-colored glass. His presence, thick and permeating as incense, is gone. My God is dead, and I mourn.
Marie Kopp Holy Saturday Ponderings: Eucharistic Absence (April 1, 2018)  The Shoeless Banshee: Meanderings Beyond the Pale @ Patheos Catholic

I think of him loving Mary so utterly, so fully, that he showed his Son the truly divine way of how to treat and love women. His Son learned that from Joseph–He learned of their dignity and worth firsthand as He was raised from a child into adulthood. And He carried His father’s tender love for women for the rest of His life, not even spurning the hysterical and dramatic exclamations of grief and repentance from prostitutes and peasants. He took their hands, dried their tears, embraced them, forgave them.
Jenn Riley St. Joseph: One of the Good Ones (March 19, 2019)  The Shoeless Banshee: Meanderings Beyond the Pale @ Patheos Catholic

Sick Pilgrim

First Post: 12/15 - Current
Sick Pilgrim Books

The good shepherd is the one who leaves ninety nine sheep in search of the one that has been lost.
In this interpretation, you and I are the pearl of great price, the treasure in the field, and the lost coin.
Lately I’ve been imagining myself to be very, very small when I pray. Sometimes I imagine that I am an acorn because I’m hoping for new life out of my struggling faith. Sometimes I imagine that I am a hedgehog because, goodness knows, I can become prickly when I think about religion. Imagining that God can find me even if I have a hard shell or prickles is helpful. It’s a sort of personal parable. Thinking about the Good Shepherd makes me think that I’m on the right track. Maybe, for all my doubts, I will turn out to be a pearl of great price after all.
Maren Grossman Dark Devotional: What the Good Shepherd Teaches Us about Parables (May 10, 2019) Sick Pilgrim @ Patheos Catholic

 “Slain in the spirit”… “lay on hands”… “my toddler has a heart for missions”… the Bible as a “sword” or just “The Word”… “loving on *enter unfortunate person/people*”… ‘anointed’”… “calling you out in love”… “Let’s unpack this”… and especially among my Protestant friends, “saved” and “sovereignty.”

When among the like-minded, we Christians tend to revert to our own made-up language.
In under 2000 years, Christians have switched from being divinely inclusive to ridiculously exclusive with their language.

Connecting with others outside of my own echo chamber may mean sounding different from the echoes inside of it. And it’s not about sounding like others so that they’ll eventually agree with me. It’s about connecting with others, because others–even those with opposite thoughts and beliefs–matter.

Maybe that’s what loving our neighbor looks like.
Matt Lafleur Dark Devotional: Speak My Language (June 2, 2017) Sick Pilgrim @ Patheos Catholic

When the email circulated that there would be a traditional Latin Mass at our parish for the Feast of the Assumption on August 15, I immediately and foolishly wrote back that I wanted to be in the Schola Cantorum, the chant choir.

I’d read somewhere that chant comes so naturally, anyone can do it. But the Mass of the Assumption is a High Mass, with propers and antiphons trotted out only on the Marian feast days, some of them so complicated on the first listen that I laughed out loud. I was in way over my head.

When I showed up for the first practice, I did not find monks or choir nuns with years of experience. I found two other women, a Sony Megabass jambox, and a CD from the monks of Solesmes, one of the best chant choirs in the world. This is actually how it’s been done for centuries—not by CD, but viva voce, following the example of another’s voice, chants acquired by immersion, by many years of experience in a Schola Cantorum. We had exactly three weeks.

We practiced as often as we could, working around my infant’s erratic schedule, the other ladies driving well out of their way to accommodate me. I’d rush through dinner, hurriedly nurse the baby down, grab my rumpled and coffee-stained music and drive to the church, listening to the CD in the car.
Jessica Mesman Griffith I took a crash course in Gregorian chant. Literally. (September 21, 2016)  Sick Pilgrim @ Patheos Catholic

Steel Magnificat by Mary Pezzulo

First Post: 3/16   Current

Our life begins with the closed-eyed dark of the womb and the cliff’s edge of that ordeal we call birth. Maybe we all cry for our Father to come and save us, then. Next thing you know we’re tumbling with no control, plummeting to a sudden stop we know is coming but can’t say when. We can’t direct what happens next, not really; we can’t control whether we land on our head or our feet. Our only choice is whether we will cry “My Lord and my God” and leave the whole matter up to Him before it’s too late.

Next thing we know, it’s over, and we wake up before the Throne of Mercy.
My Lord and my God.
- Mary Pezzulo A Plummeting Ghost (October 16, 2017) Steel Magnificat @ Patheos Catholic

The most compelling thing to me, about Our Lady, is the way she exemplified perfect love in any situation. And she found herself in a lot of situations. Tradition tells us that she grew up in the temple, did her duty there and was perfectly loving, in the temple. Then she left and was perfectly loving, as the wife of Joseph. She loved perfectly, as a temporarily homeless person forced to give birth in a cave in overcrowded Bethlehem. Then they fled for their lives, fugitives and refugees headed for the border under cover of darkness, and Our Lady loved perfectly as a fugitive and a refugee. She loved perfectly as a disciple, a bereaved mother and the mother of the risen Christ. She does so now as the Queen of Heaven.
Mary Pezzulo Notes on Our Lady While Sick in Bed (January 4, 2018) Steel Magnificat @ Patheos Catholic

Sticking the Corners by Jennifer Fitz

First Post: 2/14 - Current
Jennifer Fitz Books

But hey, you belong to a religion that believes exploiting the poor is wrong, having a mother and father is right, and the Resurrection is real.  Catholics are crazy that way.
***
Is sticking to the Church’s teaching on usury that hard?  Based on my present understanding of what the Church actually teaches, I don’t think it really is.
Is sticking to the Church’s teaching on contraception that hard?  Eh.  Your mileage will vary.   The part people usually complain about is the “not having sex” part.  Well, lots of people manage to not have sex all the time, and lots more of us manage to not have sex some of the time.  If your spouse doesn’t wish to follow Church teaching, that can make it really difficult — same as it’s difficult to get to Mass on Sundays if your spouse is opposed.
As with all moral teachings, some of us are more tempted than others to give in to this or that sin.  Some of us might succeed at not contracepting but easily fall into other serious sins, related or not.
But none of that changes Church teaching.
Jennifer Fitz Usury vs. Contraception: Do Doctrines Die by Difficulty? (March 26, 2018) Sticking the Corners @ Patheos Catholic

There’s a trend among Catholics today — enthusiastic, church-going, Gospel-spreading Catholics — to want to be sophisticated.  To want, like a desperate gaggle of tweenage schoolgirls, to show that we aren’t backwards Bible-thumpers getting our bonnets in a ruffle over the scruples that plague our provincial cousins.  We’re Catholic. We’re in the world, being the leaven.
A desire to engage the culture is fine as far as it goes, but it’s a relative (albeit vocal) minority who’s erring on the scrupulous side.  The bulk of us are so terrified of being found fools for Christ, or so unwilling to bend our necks, that, like the 4th Century Christians in Barcelona, we’d rather run around dressed like wild animals than be caught too pious at home.
Jennifer Fitz A Patron Saint for Rabble Rousers and their Bishops (March 10, 2015) Sticking the Corners @ Patheos Catholic

suspended in her jar by Rebecca Bratten Weiss

Website: Rebecca Bratten Weiss
GoodReads Profile

First Post: 2/16  - Current


To make peace with death is to make peace not with purity and emptiness, but with the disgusting. There are forms of piety that turn away from all things dirty or disgusting, emphasizing purity and emptiness, but these pieties are foreign to the Christian worship of Christ incarnate, Christ born of woman, Christ with a human body all organs and fluids, Christ bleeding on the cross. And thus, it is not permitted that we should turn away from another human because he is disgusting, or because she is dirty. Religious art of the middle ages, the grotesques on illuminations and the gargoyles on cathedrals teach us to find love amidst the lineaments of ugliness, not to seek only for the pure or perfect beauty. This is what happens in human love, as well, as we see in the blotches and deformities and imperfections of another body the unique being who is irreplaceable for us, and we don’t cease to love this body because it shits and farts and sweats and oozes and grows old and dies and is eaten. Is there in creation’s feeding on itself, in this constant dying and giving of life, a sacramental hint of the Eucharist? Christ consents again to become one of us, to go a progress through the intimate and disgusting recesses of our bodies. In death we are in life; the vile is the glorious.

Rebecca Bratten Weiss in praise of the disgusting March 11, 2016 suspended in her jar @ Patheos Catholic



Because the saints were not actually remote and ethereal, separate from the pains of life. They suffered illness, physical and mental. Many of them were well-adjusted and happy, yes – but many others were just plain weird (Christina the Astonishing, anyone?).



They were often persecuted, not only by oppressive governments, but by their own religious communities. They were beaten, raped, stoned, flayed, hanged, beheaded, and burned alive. Frequently the respectable people around them shunned them. Look at Dorothy Day, as a modern example: she was loathed by the bourgeois Catholics of her time, and only now that she’s respectably remote can the bourgeoisie begin to pretty her up (while shunning anyone in their own community who carries on her ministry). In five hundred years will that tough, temperamental Servant of God be presented to us as a pastel figure on a holy card?



Thanks God, for giving us saints who walked through the valley of the shadow, saints who know what it’s like to suffer – saints who sometimes were weird, depressed, angry, and discontented. I can’t celebrate the patron saint of plastic hearts, but the lives of the saints, the real ones, behind their holy-card depictions, help me to find that thread of longing for the infinite, in the midst of darkness and discontent.

Rebecca Bratten Weiss the feast of st valentine for the morbid and melancholy (February 14, 2017) suspended in her jar @ Patheos Catholic

We don’t see all that much of Mary in the Gospels. But when we do see her, she is not acting especially meekly or submissively. When she hears that Elizabeth is pregnant she “rushes off” to visit her, not waiting on permission to leave her home, or requiring a male protector. When she arrives and Elizabeth feels the miraculous quickening of the baby within her, Mary’s response is to sing a song of praise that could have gotten her arrested as a revolutionary:

Later, we see that she and the other women stay by the side of Jesus during his condemnation, torture, and death. Most of the men run away, but the women defy Roman authority and religious leadership. They stay.

Mary in the Gospels is acting in accordance with a long line of women who bring about divine will through unruly behavior. Yes, even Eve. If we are to say, as Christians, “o happy fault” – we need to give the woman credit for it. The disobedience of Eve may be deplored by male religious leaders, but it is repeated and reiterated through the Hebrew scriptures in the stories of Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, and Esther, all of whom disobeyed and defied the men in their lives. Then we have Ruth, who crept into her boss’s bed at night – and Jael who drove a tent-stake into a general’s head – and Judith, who cut the head off of another general, entirely.

The history of women advancing salvation history in both the Old and the New Testaments is a history of unruliness, not submission. The model with which Mary of Nazareth presents us is one of daring autonomy, a woman claiming a direct line to God instead of deferring to a man as God’s representative.

I can see how unnerving this must have been for men at the time, even those who followed Jesus. His male disciples appear often to have been nonplussed by the presence of women in the retinue, trying to shoo them away and keep their teacher all to themselves. But Jesus was not having it.
 Rebecca Bratten Weiss Obsession With Feminine Submissiveness Serves Men – Not God (December 6, 2019) suspended in her jar @ Patheos Catholic

Synapses of the Soul by Sofia Carozza

First Post: 8/18 – Current
Writing a Book

Do you lack focus in class? Are you besieged by distractions at church, or procrastination at your job? In one way or another, most of us struggle to pay attention. The ability to be present is a crucial factor in a flourishing life. We need to pay attention to work and learn effectively, to care for others, and to deepen our relationship with God. But it’s hard to stay present.

Whatever your source of distraction is, make it more difficult. 

Don’t try to change one area of your life in isolation. It’s not effective. How can you expect to learn to pay attention in prayer, if you are distracted from when you get out of bed to the time you fall asleep? Practice paying attention in all things. 

Detect the variables that increase your distraction. Lack of sleep? No coffee, or too much coffee? Being alone, or being with friends?
Then, detect the variables that increase your attention. 

 Be persistent! Neurological changes happen slowly, through repetitive (and sometimes tedious) actions. But don’t give up and get discouraged; because of neuroplasticity, change is possible.
Sofia Carozza How to Pay Attention at Work and in Prayer (March 17, 2019)  Synapses of the Soul @ Patheos Catholic

The Nativity is astonishing. Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world, was born of a woman. The King of the Universe entered the world as a fragile infant, a bundle of needs who was utterly dependent on his mother. What a terrifying fact. The vulnerability of Our Savior’s gestation and early life is enough to take your breath away.

The human person develops through relationships with others, just as Christ did through the love of his mother Mary. The Virgin’s touch and voice helped Christ learn, think and speak; the coordination of their heartbeats helped him develop emotional and physiological regulation; her stress response supported his own; the synchrony of her brain waves with his shaped his attention and memory. Through the love of his young mother, this child grew into the man who died on the Cross for our salvation.
 Sofia Carozza The Advent Corrective to Locke's Lonely Liberalism (December 03, 2018) Synapses of the Soul @ Patheos Catholic

 Thin Places by Monsignor Eric Barr, STL

First Post: 5/19 – Current

Website: THE TALES OF CONOR ARCHER

Let’s get holy.  On this Feast of St. Mary Magdalene, a look at this extraordinary woman is going to deepen our friendship with Christ. Cast away your images of her in Jesus Christ Superstar, or The Last Temptation of Christ, or the myriad of other films and books about this woman our spiritually bankrupt age describes in no apparent order as a prostitute, the wife of Jesus, the founder of the Merovingian French dynasty of kings, a feminist icon, etc.  She is none of these things.  But she is an enigma, a hero and an apostle.

 Luke is not satisfied just to describe a Luke Skywalker vs. Darth Vader kind of fight between good and evil.  He wants to show the results Christ brings with his advent upon the world.  I’m reminded of C. S. Lewis, who in his Space Trilogy, described Earth as “enemy-occupied territory.”  In other words, the world belongs to Satan, and Christ has come to take it back. In the series of battles against Satan and his power, which Luke’s miracles describe, the evangelist tallies up victories of Christ against the devil that gradually lead up to the decisive victory of Christ on the Cross.  If this view is correct, then Mary Magdalene becomes a testimony to Christ’s power to deliver humanity from evil.  The exorcism of her demons aren’t important; what she becomes afterward is.  In her cooperation with Jesus, she throws off the power of Satan, embraces a new vision of her human existence, decides to follow the Lord Jesus, and becomes one of his greatest supporters.  Heroically, she defies any backsliding into her previous life and courageously testifies to the victory Christ wins over Satan and Death, even though she at first proclaims this only by herself.
Monsignor Eric Barr, STL ST. MARY MAGDALENE–ENIGMA, HERO, APOSTLE (July 22, 2019) Thin Places @ Patheos Catholic

Through Broken Roses by Leticia Adams

First Post: 5/11  Last Post: 12/18

Now at Leticia Ochoa Adams

Books Leticia Adams Books

Fluffy Christianity gives me the creeps. I sometimes wonder how people can just pretend that everything is ok and not really stand in the reality of horror. Like when these kinds of Christians look at pictures of the Holocaust or the Rwanda genocide or some other tragedy do they say “well, God has a plan” and then go on with their lives? Part of the Christian faith is taking time to stand in the horror of sin.

Advent is one of those times. It is not horrible that God became man but dude, GOD BECAME MAN and was born and put in a feeding bin for animals. Fr. J gave a homily one year where he explained that putting the baby Jesus, who is God, in that trough was like placing him in the dog’s water bowl. That is pretty awful. The suffering of Our Lady and Joseph on that trip was not the kind of suffering that Christmas songs are made of. But fluffy Christianity has made that a thing. “Mary did you know”, Um, yes, she knew and it all sucked. That is what makes her faith so amazing, she knew and it sucked and she said yes to it all anyway, even the parts she later figured out. Even at the foot of the Cross.
 Leticia Adams First Day of Advent: Suffering Sucks (December 2, 2018) Through Broken Roses @ Patheos Catholic


I was taught that only God can bring good out of evil. Not that he creates evil, evil is the deterioration of the good, but God can bring good out of evil choices we each make.
The biggest example of this is the Crucifixion. Jesus was beaten, battered, flogged, tortured and murdered for no good reason. He was executed in a brutal way as if He was the most dangerous of criminals even though He was sinless. Even if you believe the charges made against Him by those who called for His death, it did not warrant the evilness and brutality of His death. And yet, it was through that death on the Cross that we are saved.

I will always suffer from grief after losing my son to suicide, but the good that has come from it is that I have grown closer to God even in all my anger at Him. Also, my family has become so much closer and we rely on each other in ways that we never did before. I have also been blessed by so many people who don’t even know me but who have prayed for me and my family and Anthony. I have been loved through it which I needed because I don’t know if I have ever been loved through anything else in my life.
I do not know what good will come from the chaos in the Church right now, but God is not gone. We will find Him in the Truth of it all. And regardless of everything else, people on every side are unified in demanding the truth to be found.
 Leticia Adams Salvation through Judas (August 29, 2018) Through Broken Roses @ Patheos Catholic


Through Catholic Lenses by Fr Matthew P. Schneider, LC
First Post: 5/18 - Current

Ven. Carlo Acutis is the ideal candidate for the patron saint of the internet. He created a database of Eucharistic miracles on a website so people could find out about them all while he was still a teenager. If you’ve seen a traveling exhibit with displays on different Eucharistic miracles, this is based right off his site.

Pope Francis approved a miracle in his case and this allows beatification to be scheduled. As he is the first saint to have extensively used the internet and the first saint who is most known for something he did online, I want to propose him as the patron saint of the Internet
Fr. Matthew P. Schneider, LC Patron Saint of the Internet? Carlo Acutis to Be Beatified (February 22, 2020) Through Catholic Lenses @ Patheos Catholic

As Christians, we read in Genesis 1:26, “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.’” If each of us is the image and likeness of God, we have to look at the good and bad in different traits. I’m 6’ 3” which makes reaching high places easy but also means I bump my head more often than many and I have to bend down to shower. I hope we can all agree that defining tallness just by bumping our head and the awkwardness of showers is inadequate. God made me autistic, or at the very least, he allowed it. In some ways, this is my cross to bear, in other ways, it makes certain things others struggle with easy. Embracing an autistic as the image and likeness of God includes embracing both the positive and negative aspects of being autistic.
Fr. Matthew P. Schneider, LC Christians Should Embrace Neurodiversity (December 2, 2019) Through Catholic Lenses @ Patheos Catholic

The Early Church had people converted by preachers but it also had those who were converted by the witness of Christians. The Romans would say, “See how they love each other.” At different times, these two have worked together in different ways to bring others to the faith. If we look at the modern world, so many who leave the faith claim a poor witness of Christians, not necessarily the dislike of Christian doctrine. Many have left after the sex abuse crisis because of the anti-example it provides. Many are moved by the example of people like Mother Theresa. We also have to realize that even those convince partially with arguments or preaching are also dependent on the one giving the argument or piquing their interest to be consistently Christian.

In recent years, the Church has emphasized evangelization by drawing people to the beauty of Christian life, by example, by charity. This goes back to at least Paul VI.
Paul VI said, “Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses.”
Fr. Matthew P. Schneider, LC  Francis: Evangelize by Example, not Pushing Your Faith on Others (December 23, 2019) Through Catholic Lenses @ Patheos Catholic

Time Off Purgatory with Steve the Missionary by Steven Lewis

First Post: 7/13  Last Post: November 3, 2017
On Youtube

Lent is hard. You’ve probably failed. We come to the end of Lent all raged and tired. But this doesn’t mean that we have wasted our Lent! In fact, it probably means that your Lent is going exceptionally well.
Steven Lewis 6 Ways to Know You are Having a Good Lent (March 31, 2017)  Time Off Purgatory with Steve the Missionary @ Patheos Catholic

How is your prayer life? Is it easy or difficult? Is it full of consolation, desolation, or just silence? Do you have someone to talk to about your prayer life? This is the most important question here. We all need a person or a group of people with whom we can be candid about our prayer life. It’s the reason God gave us a family of faith. Make sure to build this community based on prayer and the sharing of prayer around you
Steven Lewis How’s Your Prayer Life? (June 23, 2017)  Time Off Purgatory with Steve the Missionary @ Patheos Catholic

To Give a Defense by Scott Eric Alt   

First Post 1/13  Last Post:August 20. 2019
Website: Scott Eric Alt     Last Post:  September 29, 2019

God has a remarkable proclivity for accomplishing his work through the material things of this earth–but foremost among them, possibly, is water.
 If human beings cannot survive without water, it would seem that God cannot do some of his greatest acts except through water. Or, he could, but he doesn’t, which suggests to me that these acts are best achieved through water.

 God creates the Earth by separating the waters, and God creates the nation of Israel by separating the waters. Later, God creates the Church through another separation of water, after Christ has died but before he has been removed from the Cross: “But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water” (John 19:34). The world, the nation of Israel, and the Church are all created through a separation of water. Something important–a great mystery–would seem to be involved in all that.
Through the waters of birth, we are born into life. Through the waters of baptism, we are born into the Kingdom of God. Baptism now saves you.
Scott Eric Alt Remember Your Baptism (January 13, 2013) To Give a Defense @ Patheos Catholic

It should not be a controversy for Catholics. I know that Calvinists say Christ died only for the Elect. (Though they also say we can’t know the identity of the Elect, and would amend my title to read, “Jesus May Have Died for Castro, But We Don’t Know.”). Whereas, for Catholics (those who are rightly catechized) if we can’t know whether Castro is saved, we do know that Christ died for him. Christ died for him just as surely as he died for Mother Teresa.
At this point, it is always necessary to clarify what all of this does not mean.
It does not mean that Fidel Castro is saved. (Perhaps he’s not.)
It does not mean we can know the eternal destiny of Castro. (We can’t.)
It does not mean there is no Hell. (There most certainly is.)
It does not mean Castro did not do wicked things that merit Hell and that we ought to condemn. (He most certainly did.)
It does not mean Castro lived a virtuous life. (He most certainly did not.)
It does not mean those who suffered under Castro should not feel joy at his death. (Their joy is perfectly understandable and even just.)
It means that Christ died for all human beings, without exception, and that means that he died for Fidel Castro. End stop.
I can understand that this would be an issue of apologetic debate between Catholics and Calvinists. It should not be an issue of debate among Catholics.
Scott Eric Alt This Should Not Be a Controversy. Jesus Died for Fidel Castro. (November 28, 2016) To Give a Defense @ Patheos Catholic

 “Prudential judgment” does not free us from the moral law, or the duty to reflect it in our civil law. Prudential judgment is a question of how to do that, not whether to do that.-
Scott Eric Alt Yes, Virginia, Catholics Can Say Abortion Should Be Legal (September 7, 2016) To Give a Defense  @ Patheos Catholic

Turn. Love. Repeat. by Fr. Stephanos Pedrano, O.S.B.

First Post: 12/19 - Current

Herod had FAITH, he believed; but his HOPE was a jealous lust for power; and he had no LOVE.
And so his was a dead and deadly faith.
What if Herod’s faith in signs and Biblical prophecy had moved him to conversion rather than mass murder?
What would that faith and conversion look like?

The words repentance and conversion both translate adequately the Greek word metanoia.

However, the two Greek roots of metanoia are meta and nous; and when combined as metanoia their meaning is more literally change of mind.
Change your minds and believe in the Gospel!
Herod believed in a “gospel” of signs and prophecy, but he would not change his mind.
Such a change would have had to touch his thoughts, choices and feelings, in short, his whole interior life.
Accordingly, Herod would have had to:
recognize his own jealous lust for power, and work to temper it;
accept humbly and justly the newborn king whom God chose, anointed and sent;
offer himself as the child’s servant, and be ready to step aside.
Fr. Stephanos Pedrano, O.S.B.Herod’s Dead and Deadly Faith (December 27, 2019) Turn. Love. Repeat @ Patheos Catholic

The angel of the Lord appeared to them
and the glory of the Lord shone around them,
and they were struck with great fear.
Rightly so, because sometimes angels brought fearsome, angry messages from God.
Furthermore, angels came now and then to kill people.
Therefore, the shepherds had strong, Biblical reasons to be afraid, to be very afraid.
However, tonight was to be different.
The angel said to them,
“Do not be afraid”
“Do not be afraid!”
By now, the angel has said this four times.
Firstly, Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, met an angel who told him of the things to come.
“Do not be afraid!”
Secondly, Mary met an angel who greatly disturbed her with the greeting, “Hail to you, With-Grace-All-Filled!”
“Do not be afraid!”
Thirdly, Joseph met an angel who told him what was happening with Mary.
“Do not be afraid!”
Lastly, the shepherds met an angel telling them good news.
The angel said to them,
“Do not be afraid;
for behold, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.”
And so, great fear is to give way to great joy.
Fr. Stephanos Pedrano, O.S.B.Do Not Be Afraid” Instead of “Merry Christmas” (December 24, 2019) Turn. Love. Repeat @ Patheos Catholic

In the Gospel for Epiphany Sunday, we see pagan starwatchers, “magi,” arrive in Bethlehem from some far country east of Israel.
These “wise men” throw themselves on the ground to worship the Child.
They offer him gifts that suggest what future has now been born in this Child who sleeps in a manger.
Bitter and intoxicating myrrh-spice of prophetic ecstasy.
Sweet frankincense of priestly sacrifice.
Gleaming gold of kingly wealth and glory.
With these three gifts, the Magi are paying homage to Him who is a prophet, a priest and a king.
Fr. Stephanos Pedrano, O.S.B. Christ’s Epiphany as the Greatest Show Anywhere and Anytime (January 5, 2020) Turn. Love. Repeat @ Patheos Catholic

Unequally Yoked by Leah Libresco

 First Post: 6/10 Last Post: April 28, 2017
 Website: Leah Libresco Last Post: May 19, 2019

GoodReads Page

Lent is a time to make more space for God. We give things up (including good things) to weaken our own attachment to them and to give us a little more time, energy, and attention to give to God. For almost everyone, a fast that leaves you thinking constantly about the act of fasting (whether the difficulty or the logistics) is a counterproductive fast. We give things up so we can take on more of what God wants to give us.
Leah Libresco Lenten disciplines draw on our weakness, not our strength (March 1, 2017) Unequally Yoked @ Patheos Catholic

The problem of evil has always seemed to me to be the price we pay for having an intelligible world, one that we can investigate, understand, and love. If miracles were to be possible, they would have to stay below some threshold level of frequency so that they remained clear exceptions to the general course of causality instead of undoing the rule entirely.
Leah Libresco, Arriving at Amen: Seven Catholic Prayers That Even I Can Offer (2015) Ave Maria Press

Storge is the kind of fondness you have for a crossing guard you see every day, even if you’ve never had a deep conversation. It’s a love that comes from feeling that someone else is knit into our life—which, as it happens, everyone is meant to be. There’s a tiny foretaste of Heaven and the Beatific Vision in this humble kind of communion.

Inviting someone into my home sets me on the road to storge because it guarantees we share something, even if it winds up being the experience of watching me accidentally break my own garbage disposal (turns out you shouldn’t put too many eggshells down those things). We wind up with shared experiences, the kind you can refer to with a “Do you remember that time when…”
Leah Libresco Sargeant   The lazy way to fall in love with others (Nov 19, 2016) Aleteia

The Vatican II Lutheran by Russell E. Saltzman

First Post:  1/ 19 Current
 
We’ve been through this before, you know, thanks to all the apocalyptic literature. A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959) has the Catholic Church again collecting books, copying texts, and preserving knowledge for thousands of years following a full world nuclear exchange. One Second After (2009) reduces U.S. population in successive 90-day die-offs from 300 hundred million to 30 million following an electromagnetic pulse assault. 
Being an insulin-dependent diabetic my own survival beyond the first 90-day die-off is unlikely, but I know how to make “survivalist insulin.” All I need is a pig and its pancreas, five c.c. of concentrated sulfuric acid and, oh, an anatomy book to show me exactly what a pancreas might in fact look like. But a centrifuge, electricity to run it, a gun to protect it, and a supply of pigs and I am good to go.
Russell E. Saltzman Let ’em find doomsday on their own (February 7, 2020) The Vatican II Lutheran @ Patheos Catholic

Vox Nova by various

First Post: 5/07 - Current

I’ve just returned home from a screening of They Shall Not Grow Old, a World War I documentary by Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings trilogy) that uses never-before-seen archival footage from the British Imperial War Museum. Jackson has taken the footage, sharpened and colorized it, overlain it with archival audio from British veterans of the Great War, and created a deeply moving film.

Sitting there in the darkened theater, seeing for the first time the Tommies and Fritzes in the full flower of youth, I couldn’t help but reflect that nearly everyone on the screen – both German and British – was a baptized Christian, as were the princes and politicians that created such hellscapes. This was brought home in what for me is the most sickening footage, a scene where bodies are being lowered into improvised graves while an Anglican priest commits them to the ground, “in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” No doubt the same prayers of committal were being offered on the other side of No Man’s Land, just past the wire and the mines. I was struck by the obscenity of it all: putative disciples of Christ killing their baptized brothers, and being killed by them. “This is no place for Christians,” I said again and again in my mind. But sadly, in Leonard Cohen’s words, “the blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold and has overcome the order of the soul.” That is truer nowhere than on the battlefield, where the ontological mark of Christian baptism is the first casualty.
Mark Gordon Peter Jackson’s Reminder That War is Blasphemy (December 27, 2018) Vox Nova @ Patheos Catholic
Book: Forty Days, Forty Graces: Essays by a Grateful Pilgrim

In a similar way, not all holy families are alike. Some of the holiest families I’ve seen do not look like the traditional model on the Christmas card. And indeed, Mary was no 1950’s housewife. She was a vulnerable young woman who chose to place all her trust in God and become the mother of Jesus – not knowing what awful consequences she might face, but choosing to place all her trust in God. While many fathers take pleasure in noting their children’s physical resemblance to themselves, this was not a pleasure experienced by Joseph, who chose to marry a pregnant woman and love a child not biologically related to him. And Jesus, we believe, is the Divine Word incarnate – God who chose to come into the world at a particular time and place, born to a particular family. The Holy Family is a chosen family.
Jeannine Pitas There are many kinds of holy families (December 29, 2019) Vox Nova @ Patheos Catholic

It isn’t always easy to tell Christian and pagan holidays apart.  The Bible doesn’t tell us when Jesus was born, but we chose to celebrate his birth in late December in part because that is when the surrounding culture celebrated the rebirth of the sun after the winter solstice.  In English, the word we use for our most important holiday, Resurrection Day, is Easter, a word of Germanic origin likely related to a pagan goddess of the dawn (hence “east”).  Languages like French and Italian use more Christian – in fact, Jewish – language.  Pâques or Pasqua are from the Hebrew term for Passover (Pesach).
Brett Salkeld Halloween and All Saint’s Day (November 1, 2011) Vox Nova@ Patheos Catholic
Brett-Salkeld Books @ Amaon

Even after experiencing a graduate-level mystagogy in which I encountered all kinds of heavy-duty Eucharistic theology from Karl Rahner to Thomas Aquinas to the earliest liturgies of the ancient Church, I am all the more amazed by the well-developed and well-rounded sacramentality I still see in those Haitian communion hymns that first introduced me to Christ in the Eucharist.  Maybe because I find certain things easier to believe when sung, these songs that were substantial enough to speak to my rational mind also proved to be an accessible in-road to a sacramental theology that was new to me.  I couldn’t have found a better catechesis if I’d tried.
Julia Smucker Singing Is Believing (June 22, 2014)  Vox Nova @ Patheos Catholic

I asked my mother (aged 83) once about what she remembered about the pre-Vatican II Church, and she said, “I remember going up to Father before Mass and saying, ‘Father, I swallowed some toothpaste when I was brushing my teeth this morning – may I still receive communion?’
“Father said something like, ‘yes, child, but you should be careful about that.'”
I told that story to a friend who is a Carmelite priest in his early seventies, and he chuckled and said, “I had that exact conversation with my priest when I was that age.”
I suspect that if you talk to virtually anyone older than their early sixties who was a practicing Catholic back in those days, they could tell very similar stories.
The “voice” of the Church hierarchy – that is, what it sounded like when it talked, as experienced by huge numbers of ordinary people before the early 1960s – was authoritarian, rule-bound, excessively rigorist, and resulted in a sometimes crippling scrupulosity in the everyday pew-sitter.
Matt Talbot Some Thoughts on Vatican II, Part 1  (May 21, 2017)  Vox Nova @ Patheos Catholic

the widow who threw two small coins in the Temple collection heard and responded to the demand of God for all she had.  She was, perhaps, strengthened in faith because she knew that long ago God, through Elijah, had fed the widow of Zarephath and her son.  She had faith that God would “give food to the hungry” and “sustain the widow”—faith that was stronger than her own bitter experience, which probably told her that the poor and marginalized often went hungry while their “betters” ate their fill.   And in faith she said yes to God.
David Cruz-Uribe Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time: The Widow’s Mite (November 8, 2015) Vox Nova @ Patheos Catholic

After Israel makes the golden calf, Moses asks God that his own name be blotted from the book of life so that the nation may be spared. In his letter to the Romans, St. Paul wishes that he might be cut off from Christ if it would mean that Israel could be saved. Perhaps this way of thinking about suffering does not quite get at my original line of questioning, but neither is it wholly unrelated, since Paul and Moses are seeking to take on the burdens of others.  They are willing to make the potential sufferings of others their own, and in this sense, they stand in solidarity with those whose burdens they seek to accept.

To what extent can I truly enter into solidarity with the sufferings of others, even when the suffering persists? I can imagine a few ways of approaching this question, but one could be to consider the acts of religion: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. I am struck by the fact that each of these practices weakens the practitioner in some way. The person who prays, fasts, and gives alms suffers, even if the suffering is mild. Certainly, one performs these acts, in the first place, to draw closer to God. But it seems appropriate that by drawing closer to the God who suffered (by virtue of Jesus’ human nature, of course) on the cross, one should also draw closer to women and men who suffer. In this sense, perhaps solidarity with those who suffer begins with prayer.
Aaron Matthew Weldon Far as the curse is found (January 4, 2013) Vox Nova @ Patheos Catholic

The Way of the Wildflowers by Tina Mayeux

First Post:  3/19 – Last Post:  2/20
I drove by a run-down, grey cemetery today while running an errand. Sadly, many graves were in disrepair and seemingly forgotten, like so many of those who have gone before us. The dreary scene was in stark contrast to the bright and sunny spring day and would have been easy to ignore or miss. The thought occurred, “How often do we pass by a cemetery without a second thought, when we should turn off the radio and say a prayer for the hundreds of souls buried there?” I stopped and offered a quick prayer and resolved to remember to do so again next time I encountered a graveyard or memorial park.

Praying for the living and the dead is one of the spiritual works of mercy. We are to show kindness through our prayers and good works to those around us and to those who have gone before us. When we pray for our deceased loved ones, they can also offer us their assistance since we remain in unity with them even after they have died. We should nurture and maintain our friendship with both the saints in heaven and the souls suffering in Purgatory, as we are in communion with them in the Body of Christ.
Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them.
Tina Mayeux Remembering Those Who Went Before (November 2, 2019)  The Way of the Wildflowers @ Patheos Catholic

The Church uses candles in many ways to represent Jesus, the Light of the World. Our scripture study group begins with lighting a blessed candle and placing it in the center of the room for all to see. It helps us to become centered and focused on the scripture passage, which is read aloud and discussed. It seems only appropriate that when the Word of God is read aloud, there should be the light of a candle present to accompany it. Catholics visit churches to light a candle and offer a prayer of petition for a sick friend or relative or to receive financial blessings, employment, or some other favor. We light the Paschal candle at Easter, Advent candles, and the all-important red tabernacle lamp, which is present indicating that Christ is truly present within the church.
Tina Mayeux Being Salt and Light for the Kingdom (February 4, 2020) The Way of the Wildflowers @ Patheos Catholic

Way Station in the Wilderness by Kristy Burmeister

First Post:  7/18 -Current
Book: Act Normal: Memoir of a Stumbling Block,

Postpartum bodies don’t just snap back immediately after giving birth. Pregnancy changes our bodies in some dramatic ways. It takes time to heal from the intense, and painful, experience of giving birth.
For a mother, giving birth isn’t the end of the pregnancy. The recovery time takes at least 6 weeks, while many women require much more time for their bodies to fully heal, especially if they’ve experienced complications. Pregnancy isn’t just a nine-month commitment like we think. A mother spends almost an entire year either growing a human being inside of her or healing from that experience.
Kristy Burmeister Sacred Forms: The Postpartum Body (December 13, 2019) Way Station in the Wilderness @ Patheos Catholic

Sometimes I need God to be human-sized. I need to know that he became one of us and suffered as we suffer. I need that connection with Jesus so I know God gets it. He isn’t distant and observing human suffering from above. He got right down into it alongside us.

But sometimes I need God to be big. Bigger than big. When I start praying my nightly prayer and stating one prayer request leads me to thinking of another dozen people with urgent and unmet needs, I need God to be big. When I see how so many people revel in dehumanizing one another and exploiting the vulnerable and enabling abuse, I need God to be big.

I need to know God is bigger than us. I need to know this evil won’t endure forever. It’ll outlive me, but it will end.
Kristy Burmeister The World’s Largest Crucifix: When We Need God to be Big (August 20, 2018) Way Station in the Wilderness @ Patheos Catholic

With the Atheists in the Foxholes by Angry Staff Officer

First Post:  11/18 Last Post: September 2, 2019
 War Stories Podcast,

This is the great trap of suffering: that we can focus too much on it rather than the real end state. Sacrifice in Lent is supposed to bring us into a state where we are mindful of the suffering of Christ. To do that, we cannot turn inward, but instead we must turn outward. We must look to the body of Christ that is here on this earth – our fellow humans – and minister to them. That is the real sacrifice: putting aside self for the other.

The point of suffering in the military is to either build endurance or replicate combat operations. If you are suffering for the sake of suffering, it’s probably a sign that you have a bad leader – or that you yourself are a bad leader.
Angry Staff Officer Lent: Don’t Make Suffering a Competition (March 18, 2019) With the Atheists in the Foxholes @ Patheos Catholic

It is not enough to sit back and say “Antisemitism is wrong.” We cannot merely be passive bystanders. It is incumbent upon Christians – and Catholics, especially – to fight it where it appears. The priests and clergy who opposed the Nazis and then died in the death camps demand this of us. We must fight the dog whistles, the slurs, and the other small acts that lead towards reshaping the narrative.

The Holocaust did not just suddenly “happen.” It occurred through small acts of hate and discrimination over many years before it actually exploded into violence. Society allowed it to happen and turned a blind eye from the atrocities. It occurred in a nominally Christian culture. The Holocaust is a dark stain on the soul of Christianity and must never be allowed to happen again.

Someday, soon, we will live in a world without living witnesses to one of the greatest atrocities in history.
How we go forward in that world will be a measure of our humanity.
Angry Staff Officer How Will We Remember the Holocaust after those who Lived it are Gone? (September 2, 2019) With the Atheists in the Foxholes @ Patheos Catholic

End of Current Patheos

Patheos Past

A Catholic Thinker by Tod Worner Exploring the True, the Good & the Beautiful

Now at Word on Fire
7/12 -3/17

Just think of what they had seen.
Withered hands stretched back to wholeness. Sightless eyes granted vision. Leprous skin made clean. Food multiplied. Storms calmed. Graves surrendering their dead. Forgiveness granted. Pride laid low. Dignity restored. And the stories – the parables – were so approachable, yet so profound.
These men had seen the face of God revealed through the unlined face of a carpenter’s son.
Only now, they slept.
Tod Worner The Unheroic Heroism of the Disciples (September 28, 2016) A Catholic Thinker @ Patheos Catholic

 Does Science like Mystery? I mean, really and truly embrace it. Because if you think about it, the entire reason for Science’s existence is to answer questions, solve riddles…demystify. So what happens when Science can’t answer certain questions? How does Science grapple with enduring Mystery?
Our everyday lives are suffused with Mystery. Will that car approaching the opposing red light stop or run through and T-bone me? Can this bridge support the weight of my car and the rest of these cars?
There will always be Mystery and the need to live life in the midst of uncertainty. The end of Mystery, the end of uncertainty means the end of Science. And it appears that Science is not going anywhere anytime soon.
Tod Worner What Pope Benedict XVI & G.K. Chesterton Understood (But Science Misses) About Mystery  (June 8, 2016) A Catholic Thinker @ Patheos Catholic

Acts of the Apostasy by Larry D. Humorous. Serious. Satirical. Faithful.

Now at Catholic Conspiracy as A Catholic Misfit
2/15 -1/16

Belief in Hell scares the hell out of me. For those Christians who no longer believe in it…well, I sincerely hope they have a change of heart before discovering too late that, yep, it’s a damned thing.
Larry D A Good Way To End Up In Hell Is To Deny It Exists (July 20, 2015) Acts of the Apostasy @ Patheos Catholic

Acts 2:1-12
“When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them. And they were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.
“Now there were dwelling across the Internet Catholics, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in their own language. And they were amazed and wondered, saying, ‘Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? Patheosi and Aleteians and Cruxians, and residents of EWTN, Ignitum Today and Commonweal, Big Pulpit and America, Pewsitter and Spirit Daily, Catholic Answers and the parts of ChurchMilitantTV belonging to the Vortex, and visitors from National Catholic Register, both online readers and home-delivery subscribers, Remnantoids and Grunerites, we hear them telling in our tongues the mighty works of God.’ And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, ‘What does this mean?'”
Larry D An Update Of The Pentecost Narrative (May 25, 2015) Acts of the Apostasy @ Patheos Catholic

and these Thy gifts by Stef Patag  now at and these thy gifts

mysteriously absent in Patheos archives
 3/15 -1/16
Yesterday after supper, the 6-year-old squeezed himself into the space between me and the back of the couch while I tried to catch up on reading. He does this often, using me alternately as pillow, footrest, jungle gym or whatever else suits his mood and restless muscles. It’s like having a cat except mine’s heavier, not furry, and talks. And doesn’t cause fits of sneezing.
I’m sure my son doesn’t realize it, but as I’m shepherding his heart and soul, he shepherds mine. He has such a simple and profound way of looking at the world and the bottom line of things. It’s almost heartbreaking to see him grapple with these thoughts and concerns at such a young age, but I am also deeply, infinitely blessed by his musings. What a privilege and a responsibility to tend to the little ones in His flock. I am awed at the wonder of it, and humbled and grateful that God saw it fit to make me his mother. Thank You, Lord.
Stef Patag  The Gentle and Arduous Task of Shepherding Little Souls (Oct 18, 2015) and these Thy gifts  @ Patheos Catholic

Why am I still Catholic? First and foremost reason before any other is the Eucharist, where my Savior is fully present: body, blood, soul, and divinity. No other Church can offer me what my Savior, the One who died for ME (and FOR YOU!!) gives me at every Mass. This is where the invisible is made visible, through the physical… through the Sacraments.
I’m still Catholic because Catholicism is where the answers are, and they’re not platitudes or “feel good” answers… which means I get to suffer. (Wahoo!!) Catholicism is the only place where suffering — my own, my neighbor’s, the world’s — make sense. Pain becomes bearable because it’s purposeful.
It’s where self sacrifice hurts for the time being, but we do it anyway because it leads to someone else’s ultimate happiness, which leads to our own. Catholicism calls me to real love, where even the person who has hurt me most is someone I could and should pray for.
I’m Catholic because I love being part of the Mystical Body of Christ. I love not only that I can attend Mass anywhere I go in the world because it’s the same Mass. I get to unite in spirit and pray with all the Catholics around the world, day in and day out. I not only praise my Lord with the Church Militant, but with the Saints and the Angels too.
Stef Patag  My Selfish Reasons for Staying Catholic (Jun 4, 2015) and these Thy gifts @ Patheos Catholic
 

Bad Catholic by Marc Barnes Now at Bad Catholic

Author at Strange Notions, Crisis, and These Catholic Men
8/10 – 1/17
Book: A Bad Catholic's Essays on What's Wrong with the World Paperback – (2017)

So just to see what happens, let’s stop hating on the most beautiful thing in the world — the human body — and instead see it as it is: The image and likeness of God, here on earth. Let’s love our bodies. Let’s not be scared of them. Let’s have awesome, mind-blowing, sacramental sex with them. Let’s see ourselves not as a soul in competition with the body, but as a soul and a body, inseparably intertwined. Let’s avoid the Puritanism that represses as well as the Puritanism that fears. In a word, let’s be Catholic. If nothing else, it’d be the polar opposite of this depressing, modern culture.
Marc Barnes Our Culture Sucks (February 6, 2012) Bad Catholic @ Patheos Catholic

  I hold that this is the image of Santa Claus we need to reclaim. Because when you think about it, this was the original campaign to Put the Christ Back in Christmas. Arius would have made the nativity a non-event (woop-de-freakin-doo everyone, God made something else). He, majestically prefiguring the various sects of Happy-Holiday-ers, Winter Solstice-ers, and it’s-actually-a-pagan-holiday-ers (that’s the point, you muppets!) denied that Christmas need be a celebration of substance at all. So when the modern world promotes the consumerist image of Santa Claus over the image of Christ, it is not so much the wrath of Christ they should fear as it is the wrath of Santa Claus. He may very well climb down the chimney and wup yo ass.
Christmas is about this singular, terrible reality: That the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. In the spirit of St. Nick; accept no substitute.
Marc Barnes On the St. Nick Punch (December 6, 2011) Bad Catholic @ Patheos Catholic

Okay, just squidding, the Church didn’t invent music, it’s a supernatural human creation. I’d argue that we invented the most beautiful form of music, but whatever…
The point here is that the Church is largely responsible for the development of musical notation, the music we read today. Obviously, this was very nice of them, because it meant that fantastic music can be spread and learnt, far and wide, and that pieces don’t die with their composers. The man responsible? Guido of Arezzo (heehee, Guido,) a Benedictine monk regarded as the inventor of modern musical notation. He gave us do, re, mi, deriving the pitches from a hymn to John the Baptist:
Ut queant laxis resonāre fibris
Mira gestorum famuli tuorum,
Solve polluti labii reatum,
Sancte Iohannes.
Marc Barnes 5 More Things No One Knows Are Ridiculously Catholic, But Should (December 28, 2011) Bad Catholic @ Patheos Catholic

Crossing Your Fingers
Unsurprisingly, it’s just a quick sign of the cross. Originally, it had nothing to do with luck and everything to do with casting out evil from your presence — Catholics believe that the symbol of the cross is a powerful weapon against Satan and all his works. We’re just old school that way. Of course, if you’re a real old-school Catholic you cross your forefinger and your thumb, but the beauty of the thing is this — what has devolved into superstition for the world can be restored to spiritual reality by the believer. Why not cross your fingers as a quick prayer in times of temptation?
Marc Barnes 5 More Things No One Knows Are Ridiculously Catholic, But Should (December 28, 2011) Bad Catholic @ Patheos Catholic

Barefoot and Pregnant by Calah Alexander

Author at Aeteia. and several other places
7/10 -9/16

The Catholic blogosphere (or at least the part of it that I read) has been abuzz this week over pants.
Pants.
This is not a joke. Apparently there are those among us who believe it is immoral to wear pants.
Pants.
I keep hoping if I repeat the word, somehow this will begin to make sense.
Pants.
Nope.
For the record, I love skirts. I think they’re pretty and feminine. I, however, wear pants because I am awkward and clumsy, and skirts don’t look that great with flip flops. And I only wear flip flops because they’re freaking awesome. (Also, I’m awkward and clumsy and I trip in anything besides flip flops and tennis shoes. And let’s face it, tying those laces is a lot of work.)
Silly as this debate is, one of the commenters has nevertheless coined a most amazing phrase to sum it all up. I give you…sola skirtura.
Calah Alexander Brilliant. 7 Quick Takes Friday: What the what? Edition (September 17, 2010) Barefoot and Pregnant @ Patheos Catholic

I  miss writing and interacting with all my far-flung internet friends. It sucks to be on these long, drawn-out creativity hiatuses because I feel like I’m bereft not only of a necessary outlet, but also of necessary social interaction.
I am, however, determined to get back to writing. Not because I feel like I miraculously have something interesting to say again, but because I’m beginning to suspect that the reason I think I have nothing to say is because I’m not writing. Sounds backward, right? But I’m wondering if, contrary to what I’ve always believed, it’s the habit of writing that sparks my creativity and gets me thinking, instead of the other way around.
Calah Alexander Accepting Time and Repetition (December 15, 2015) Barefoot and Pregnant @ Patheos Catholic

God gave us the gift of language. Language is a beautiful, even sacred, thing. The universe began with language. “In the beginning was the Word.” The Word. That’s Christ. Our Savior. God’s only Son. The Word.  That is how important language is. So when people take the use and abuse of language seriously, I get it. I’m there, man. I like slang as much as the next person, but ignore the Oxford comma or text me with single-letter “words” that resemble nothing so much as an illiterate Egyptian’s hieroglyphs, and I will not be a happy English major.
Calah Alexander Those Damn Four-Letter Words (January 22, 2013) Barefoot and Pregnant @ Patheos Catholic

I hate my conscience. Being snarky is fun! I love snark. I love to write snark. A wise editor once told me never to be snarky. That is advice I hold fast to sometimes and try my best to ignore other times. It’s just that snark is so much fun. And people eat it up. They love it. Just like I love it.
Until it’s turned on me. I’ve been the target of some pretty snarky blog posts, comments, and entire forum threads. It’s not fun to be snarked at. But it’s even worse when they’re right. It’s worse because it takes twice as much time to get yourself to admit that yes, you’ve been a total asshat, because you’re so hurt and angry about the asshats who are laughing snarkily at you.
Calah Alexander Mea Culpa: Michael Voris, Leah Libresco, and Giving Scandal in Social Media (January 30, 2013) Barefoot and Pregnant @ Patheos Catholic
 

Cry 'Woof' by Will Duquette And let slip the dogs of whimsy!

10/13 – 9/16
Author at Catholic Conspiracy  GoodReads Page (Fantasy Books) and another GoodReads Page

…while some saints live their lives in the spotlight, God blesses others with lives of perfect anonymity, so that the fruits of their holiness become known only when their lives are complete.
Pier Giorgio was one of the latter. Blessed Pier Giorgio, pray for us!
Will Duquette Pier Giorgio Frassati, Man of the Beatitudes (June 19, 2016) Cry 'Woof' @ Patheos Catholic

 As the sacrament proceeded we got to listen to their confirmation names, which is always interesting. 
The choices this year surprised me. There was only one Therese and only one Teresa, which is down from last time. Usually there are two or three of each. There was the usual crowd of Francises, although this time a couple of them were young ladies. Possibly those were actually Frances of Rome or Mother Cabrini rather than Francis of Assisi, but there were a number of young ladies who definitely took male saints as their patrons, something I’ve not personally run into before. Dominican saints were down this year: there were two Roses, about par, a Martin, and a Thomas; but the Martin could just as easily be Martin of Tours as Martin de Porres, and I expect the Thomas was Thomas the Apostle. There were no Dominics or Benedicts, but there was a Maximilian, an Augustine, and a Perpetua! The biggest surprise was that we had not one but two Sharbels.
Will Duquette What’s in a Confirmation Name (May 23, 2016) Cry 'Woof' @ Patheos Catholic

For me, listening to God means sitting and pondering about things: my problems, a scripture reading, a book I’m studying, the weather, or what have you. And as I ponder, I need to pay attention to the ideas that occur to me, and follow the threads to see where they go. It’s about testing the conclusions I come to, to see if they are consistent with what I know about God’s word, and God’s character, and that involves more pondering. And the essential thing is that when I sit down to ponder, I invite God to come along and I make Him welcome.
The thing I don’t do is simply sit there and try to be quiet. For me, at least, that means shutting out exactly the words I’m listening for.
Will Duquette UPDATED: Listening to God (November 21, 2013) Cry 'Woof' @ Patheos Catholic

David Mills by David Mills 

5/14 – 1/15
GoodReads Page The Lapidary Craft

All the pope can do is pass along what the Church knows and not a word more. He speaks as the Supreme Pontiff and the Vicar of Christ, the Pontifex Maximus, but even as those things, he speaks as a steward, not as an inventor. That’s all Pope Pius IX was doing on December 8, 1854, when he proclaimed the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.
David Mills Mary and the modest Church (Dec 11, 2019) Aleteia @ Patheos Catholic

 Anglicans have written some of the greatest Christmas hymns, the ones Catholics sing at Christmas Masses, like “Hark, the herald angels sing” (John Wesley), “O little town of Bethlehem” (Philips Brooks), “In the bleak midwinter” (Christina Rossetti), and “Good Christian Men, rejoice” (John Mason Neale, who also wrote “O come, O come, Emmanuel” for Advent and “Good King Wenseslas” for Boxing Day).
“What would Christmas be like without Anglicans?” asks an Episcopal minster, Timothy Matkin, in A Christmas Without Anglicans?. I take his point. But the better question would be: “What would Christmas be like if those people had been Catholics?” Think how much deeper would have been their hymns had they been able to draw upon and express the fullness of the Catholic faith.
David Mills Anglicanless Christmas (December 28, 2014) David Mills @ Patheos Catholic
 
 “I wouldn’t go to church with my plumber.” The speaker, dressed in a dark two-piece suit, with the aggressive pin-stripes favored by some businessmen, went to a traditionalist Episcopal parish out on Long Island where the average income sails far over the average American’s. I laughed, because I’d heard that line said as part of a joke, and then saw that he was serious. It was an awkward moment.
I understand snobbery. Everyone does, because almost everyone is a snob about something. I don’t understand saying this out loud. A Christian might feel this way, being formed by a social world that thinks skilled laborers inferior to bankers and investors, but those who feel that way should know how they sound when they say so.
Jesus died for the plumber, and if Jesus died for him, you can sit next to him. And like it. Annoyingly, the same thing applies for some of us to sitting next to the man in the pin-striped suit.
David Mills Christianity Is For Losers (November 12, 2014) David Mills @ Patheos Catholic

Denise Bossert by Denise Bossert GoodReads Page

10/13 -10/15
I will never again think of the holy sites here without thinking of the living, breathing fellow Christians who struggle to make ends meet because they live in a place where they make up two percent of the population. If I told you that their family was comprised of a lawyer, a head accountant, a cosmetologist a manicurist, and a childcare provider, you would think that they lived in a three-story mansion in a place like Frontenac, Missouri, and drove a BMW and Mercedes Benz.
But that is just not so. Here, a Catholic head accountant makes about nine thousand dollars. A Catholic lawyer makes somewhat more, but not a lot. And the Catholic women work hard and are paid far less than their spouses.
Denise Bossert The House of Bread has taken on new meaning for me tonight. (November 9, 2014) Denise Bossert @ Patheos Catholic

 What does it mean to run out of wine today? We see it in the proliferation of pornography, the commonplace use of artificial contraception, the growing number of babies conceived through in vitro fertilization—a process that claims the lives of five-to-ten embryos with every cycle of IVF.
The wine runs out as we see our young people sexualized at earlier and earlier ages, as young women are objectified, as the unborn are sacrificed on the altar of our agendas, our pre-conceived plans, our ideas about the future.
The wine runs out when couples stop working at marriage, stop dating each other, stop putting faith and family at the top of the list.
The wine runs out when men and women stop advocating for marriage and new life, when those advocating for marriage are advocating a completely different reality than the Church has ever held.
The wine runs out when society tells the Church what a Sacrament should be, which lives to protect, when a marriage is over.
My Son, they have no wine.
Catholic
Denise Bossert A crisis threatens marriage, and the Blessed Mother steps into their midst. “My Son, they have no wine.” (May 25, 2015) Denise Bossert @ Patheos Catholic

Black, White and Gray by Where Christianity and Sociology Meet

10/11 -4/17
Evengelical Blog
My observation about boycotts has important implications about our society. There is often talk about a culture war. It is a war fought not only about cultural political issues but also over lifestyles and theological presuppositions. It seems that both sides in this war are of roughly equal strength. Thus, both sides of the war are strong enough to protect businesses supporting their causes. Since cultural conservatives and cultural progressives are of equal strength, they view each other as threats that must be stopped. This helps to explain the degree of vitriol we often pick up between cultural conservatives and cultural progressives. Those of us who perceive ourselves in neither camp have to watch them attack each other and this type of hostile attitude is not going away in the near future. Lucky us.
. Neither cultural progressives nor cultural conservatives are terrorists, but both are desperate to win their social struggles and they are not only willing to avoid a Chick-Fil-A sandwich or a caffe latte but also will try to stigmatize those who do eat or drink those products. But, as I have pointed out, the energy on the other side of the struggle prevents those boycotts from succeeding.
George Yancey Let’s Boycott – Not (January 29, 2014)  Black, White and Gray by Where Christianity and Sociology Meet @ Patheos Catholic

Catholic to the Core by Marge Fenelon Albeit a bit rotten in spots…

Now at Marge Fenelon
12/14 -9/15
Again and again, I hear folks say, “Everybody’s Irish on St. Patrick’s Day!” I daresay that’s true in a very different way today – at least for me.
It’s great to celebrate the culture and heritage of the Irish people (that includes me – for real – I have Irish blood). I want to do that, also. I’ll even have corned beef and beer later today in honor of this amazing saint, But, I think on this St. Patrick’s Day, everybody should be Irish for a different reason.
Just as during St. Patrick’s time in Ireland, there are “bloody men who have steeped themselves in the blood of innocent Christians.” St. Patrick prayed for, suffered for, and grieved for, the Christians killed by those who are to be called “sons of the devil.”  I do want to rejoice in this holy day of St. Patrick, but I also want to offer my day, my suffering, my prayers, for the persecuted Christians throughout the world who have, or are about to shed their blood for Christ. And, if I could be so bold as to predict such a thing, I would say that St. Patrick is doing that today as well.
Today, I stand in solidarity with St. Patrick.
Marge Fenelon In solidarity with St. Patrick – but not for the green beer (March 17, 2015) Catholic to the Core @ Patheos Catholic

 So, what’s in a name?
In Biblical times – and still today – names had great meaning and Mary’s is no different. In the Hebrew language, Mary’s name would have been “Miryam,” which means “sovereign lady.”Although there are many other interpretations, the most commonly used translation of the name Mary is “Star of the Sea.”
For those of you who are not familiar with this beautiful Catholic tradition, let me explain. The word “litany” comes from a Greek word λιτή (litê) [lee-tay], meaning “prayer” or “supplication.” It’s an ancient Christian form of prayer that dates back to at least the third century and in which saints are invoked for the purpose of prayer on behalf of the one praying.
Marge Fenelon Why Venerate Mary’s Name? (September 12, 2015) Catholic to the Core @ Patheos Catholic

Christopher Closeup by Tony Rossi

1/12 -3/17
Now at The Christophers Blog

Tips for Reinventing Your Life
1. Focus on the positive and count your blessings. Even in the most trying circumstances, God’s blessings still surround you — and more are on their way.
2. Consider what you do want, rather than what you don’t want. People sometimes feel dissatisfied with circumstances in their lives, yet are often unsure of what to do about them. By focusing on your passions and talents, you increase feelings of fulfillment.
3. Get inspired. Pray, read a book, take up a new hobby, observe nature. Breaking up your routine may result in creativity, enthusiasm and wisdom.
4. Connect with others. We need to have others support us in our journeys. As Jesus says, “With God all things are possible.
Tony Rossi Reinvent Yourself to Find Success (June 21, 2016) Christopher Closeup @ Patheos Catholic

Tom Hooper’s Christopher Award-winning film “Les Miserables” [is] the greatest ending in movie history. Why? Because it’s the story-ending to which we all aspire.
When the movie ends and Valjean dies, his passing isn’t sad and depressing; it’s celebratory and glorious! He is led into heaven by the bishop who showed him mercy – and by Fantine to whom he showed compassion. The lyrics sung during this scene state, “Take my hand / And lead me to salvation / Take my love / For love is everlasting / And remember the truth that once was spoken: / To love another person is to see the face of God.”
I’ve never seen a better, more emotionally-satisfying depiction of heaven and the communion of saints on the big screen. 
The reason is that Valjean’s ending is the ending we all want for ourselves, the ending that’s actually a new beginning in communion with all the people we’ve ever loved a lot or a little, the ending made possible by Jesus’.
Tony Rossi Why “Les Miserables” Has the Greatest Ending in Movie History (March 20, 2013) Christopher Closeup @ Patheos Catholic

 Sister Nirmala, Mother Teresa’s immediate successor, is quoted as saying, “Her heart was big like the Heart of God Himself, filled with love, affection, compassion, and mercy. Rich and poor, young and old, strong and weak, learned and ignorant, saints and sinners of all nations, cultures and religions found a loving home in her heart, because in each of them she saw the face of her Beloved – Jesus.”
One of the reasons that Mother Teresa endeared herself to so many people was that she wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty when it came to getting work done.
Tony Rossi Mother Teresa’s “Heart Was Big Like the Heart of God Himself” (September 1, 2016) Christopher Closeup @ Patheos Catholic

  Jesus is the light apart from whom all other light is glaring and reflective. It is in His light that we see light itself. Whether decorating our houses with Christmas lights to signify His coming or proclaiming “lumen Christi” at the Vigil of Easter, we know that He is the greatest light; the light of all that begins and all that is renewed; the light that scatters darkness. He is the light at which we may look directly, without discomfort or glare or fear, because it is the very light with which we are created. Understanding this profound and heartening mystery should prompt us to let that light of Christ shine through us with the confidence that our Creator knows us and loves us and guides us toward our eventual reunion with Him.
“Let yourselves be taken over by the light of Christ, and spread that light wherever you are.”
– St. Pope John Paul II
Tony Rossi Jesus: The Light of the World (December 6, 2016) Christopher Closeup @ Patheos Catholic

 "It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness" -The Christophers

Coming Down to Earth by Michael Novak Reality and Christian Faith Coverage

1/15 – 8/15
https://www.michaelnovak.net/ RIP
One of the things I like best about the Catholic intellectual tradition is that, having passed through the storms of so many diverse cultures, it has picked up along the way a very rich vocabulary for discussing even humble matters. For instance, the Latin word (from a Greek root) caritas. What the word gives in the original is the name for the love proper only to God, white-hot and outward-going. It means the very energy that (as Dante put it) “moves the sun and other stars.” The primal energy of the universe. The energy that moves the world forward toward the good of each created thing in it. Especially human persons, the best images of God in all creation.
The poor translation for this term in English is “charity,” which in today’s connotations of almsgiving doesn’t at all get the richness of the tradition. Caritas means the love of God suffusing all creation, but also leaping heart to heart from one human to another – each of us touched by a little of God’s energy coursing through us. In other words, God wants humans to share in his caritas, if they so choose. There is even a classic, especially haunting hymn in Gregorian chant: Ubi Caritas et Amor, Deus Ibi Est. “Where there is caritas and love, there God is.”
 Michael Novak Millennia of Experience Matter (June 17, 2015) Coming Down to Earth @ Patheos Catholic

St. John learned from this experience in his own life. When he was a beginner in acquiring knowledge of God, God seemed to treat him as one treats a child – encourages the young striver with sweets, attention, affection. But when it is time for the child to become an adult, the mother begins to withdraw. As our faith becomes more mature, we need to learn that our God is not fully found in the sweet world of the senses. Rather, He dwells beyond sense experience.
Human experience itself suffices to teach us about this nothingness experienced by the voyager in pursuit of God. The literature of virtually every part of the world tells of the nothingness, the emptiness, the aridity. And the necessity of voyaging through it.
In addition, the New Testament teaches us that the Savior surprisingly, startlingly, comes not as the Powerful One but as the weak, abject, rejected, outcast one. Take up your cross. Go out into the desert. Pray. Fast! . . . Christian faith throws a deeper, more challenging light upon the darkness and aridity on this side of the human experience. It teaches us that in a certain emptiness is where alone the True God can be found. That is where our Savior bids us follow.
Michael Novak The Dark Night of the Soul (March 27, 2015) Coming Down to Earth @ Patheos Catholic

Diary of a Wimpy Catholic by Max Lindenman  A Hedonist Contemplates Heaven

5/11 -8/16
 Former Patheos Colum An Israelite Without Guile
Author at Aeteia and Busted Halo

Shortly after recovering from a nervous breakdown that culminated in a suicide attempt, William Cowper composed a hymn titled “Praise for the Fountain Opened,” which begins with the following verses:
There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel’s veins;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.
Running six stanzas, it proclaims essentially the same message as “Amazing Grace,” which it predates by several years. But its tone is more abject, its language closer to the raw. The speaker describes himself as “vile,” and apologizes for his “lisping, stuttering tongue.” In its own schmaltzy, fundie way, it is very powerful, and if Flannery O’Connor’s South really was Christ-haunted, hymns like this are the rattling chains.
Our faith is a living faith only because real blood flows through it. The shedding of Christ’s blood ransomed us, and continues to sustain us through the sacrifice in the Mass. It invests Christianity with a gravity beyond any thought system or do-right code. As Tertullian wrote, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church. Through the mysticism of depression, William Cowper knew this, but it’s awfully easy for most of us, living in peace and safety, to forget.
Max Lindenman A Little Blood Never Hurt Anyone (April 21, 2016) Diary of a Wimpy Catholic @ Patheos Catholic

George Orwell listed four reasons to write: sheer egoism, aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse, and political purpose. Sitting here in Turkey, a Middle Eastern country transitioning from an illiberal democracy to an even less liberal confessional state – a country that’s become the unofficial crash pad for IS recruits – I feel them all.
Max Lindenman Here We Go Again, Folks (January 24, 2015) Diary of a Wimpy Catholic @ Patheos Catholic

 My writing won’t be to everyone’s taste. No one will mistake it for the broadcasts of Mother Angelica. If you’re one of those people who gravitates toward red-hot culture warriors, I doubt I‘ll make your list of favorites. I make no bones about my ambivalence toward much of what I’ve seen and learned in the Church. Getting to work through that ambivalence is one of the perks of writing, and to my own ear, my voice is at its most authentic and convincing when I address it head-on.
One thing I will not do is misrepresent Church teaching — at least not on purpose. In Rome, Elizabeth told a gathering of colleagues that the Catholic blogosphere needs clarity. Indeed. If the Church teaches X, it does no good for a blogger to pretend she really teaches Y, just because he might prefer it that way. There are, I understand, certain questions about which teachings have been defined infallibly and which still afford the believer some wiggle room, but I freely admit to being out of my depth in most of those debates. If I ever blog on such an issue, I’ll probably present both sides (or all sides, if there are more than two) and let some of you theology whizzes hash it out for yourselves. Might be quite an education for me.
Max Lindenman Here I Blog; I Can Do No Other (May 31, 2011) Diary of a Wimpy Catholic @ Patheos Catholic

Egregious Twaddle by Joanne McPortland

12/10 -5/16
Writer at Aleteia

May we be reminded by the witness of Brigid, and of so many today, that women are not the “either/or” of virgin/whore, nun/mother, but the “all/and” of persons created in the image of God. May we celebrate the potential for fertility and creativity in every person, by God’s abundant grace. May we remember that this world can be a table of feasting as well as a vale of tears, and that Incarnation means we can make a prayer of every created gift. Brigid herself is said to have prayed
I should like a great lake of beer for the King of Kings, and every drop a prayer:
I should like the angels of Heaven to be drinking it through time eternal . . .
May we keep the fire of learning and poetry and music aflame in the Faith, and the door of Brigid’s unstinting hospitality open.
Joanne McPortland Bacon and Butter and Bathtub Beer: Why the Church Needs St Brigid, Bad (February 1, 2012) Egregious Twaddle @ Patheos Catholic

Talk about diversity. The Communion of Saints transcends time, space, every preconceived notion of holiness. Ain’t no party like a Catholic party.
I love knowing that for all my learning, there are things that can’t be ‘splained, and don’t have to be.
The rhythms of the hours, the hallowing of life’s stages through the sacraments, the order of the liturgical seasons, the continuity of the Mass—that’s my heartbeat.
Joanne McPortland Why I Am Catholic, Again (March 28, 2013) Egregious Twaddle @ Patheos Catholic

Father Where Art Thou? by Fr. Michael Duffy Where a newly-minted priest explores his Fatherhood

8/12 -2/16
Franciscan Friars Holy Name Provence

I strongly believe that the best thing the Catholic Church has is the Holy Eucharist.  That Jesus Christ would leave behind himself for each and everyone of us continues to amaze me.  It is was drew me to the priesthood.  It is what continues to nourish me as a priest.
Fr. Michael F. Duffy My Parish Started Offering THIS and What Happened Next Amazed Me! (April 15, 2015) Father Where Art Thou? @ Patheos Catholic

 I was struck by this picture of NYC Mayor Bill DeBlasio at St. Patricks Cathedral during Communion yesterday.  It is clear from this picture Hizzoner has done his homework and knows how to be respectful to the Church’s teachings.  While he was baptized a Catholic, Mayor DeBlasio does not practice the faith.
When we are not practicing our faith, or when we are not in Communion with the Church’s teachings we should not present ourselves for Holy Communion.  If we find ourselves in that situation, we can either remain in our pew, or if we feel compelled to, present ourselves to the priest with arms folded over our chests.  This posture is the signal to the priest that you are asking just for a blessing.
Fr. Michael F. Duffy Respecting the Blessed Sacrament: A Model for those that are not in Communion with the Church (December 22, 2014) Father Where Art Thou? @ Patheos Catholic

Jesus loves us so much that he gives to us His own Body and Blood so that we may be close to Him.  We can’t have the Eucharist without the priesthood.  We can’t have the Church without the Eucharist.  Jesus gives us His own Body and Blood not for us to hold on to and have and hide, but to share with the world – so that we could become like Him and take Him out there.  We’re called to be like Mary – Christ-bearers.  The Eucharist impels us towards one another – it makes us one, it makes us the Church!
Fr. Michael F. Duffy Why I am a Catholic in less than 200 words: Holy Thursday (April 2, 2013) Father Where Art Thou? @ Patheos Catholic

God and the Machine by Thomas L. McDonald

3/15 – 11/15
Author at National Catholic Register

I don’t want to brag or anything, but I had mass with the pope.
And not some big open air mass. Nope. This was a votive mass for Our Lady, Mother of the Church, in the glorious Basilica of Sts Peter and Paul in Philadelphia. I even got a plenary indulgence for participating. Take that, Martin Luther!
Thomas L. McDonald The Pope and I (October 1, 2015) God and the Machine @ Patheos Catholic

 The dumbest thing anti-religious people say is that religion is a crutch for the weak and feeble-minded. If I had to create a system of belief, this wouldn’t be it. I’d find something where I could sleep in on Sundays, ignore the needs of others, stick my genitals where-ever I want, lie a whole lot, treat my enemies without mercy, avoid contact with a lot of strangers I don’t like, and ignore this silly relationship with God thing.
Religion is hard.
Anything worth doing is hard.
The Church provides a shape and rhythm to life. It sanctifies time. The minutes, the hours, the days, the years, the life. From birth to death, the life of the believer is an hourglass, and each grain of sand that falls is blessed.
Time is the great mystery that’s vexed my mind since I was a child: its passing, its brutality, its inexorable quality. The pulse of the individual, the ebb and flow of life through all its majestic and tragic and ordinary moments, are all measured out, considered, and sacralized by the Church.
Thomas L. McDonald 14 Reasons I Stay Catholic #WhyRemainCatholic (June 4, 2015)   God and the Machine @ Patheos Catholic

Grace Pending by Tom Zampino VERSO L'ALTO

8/14 – 8/16
Now at The Catholic Conspiracy & aleteia.
We rightfully cherish our rugged individualism and our freedom, both.
Especially here, in America, where we have been forced, all too many times, to take up arms to preserve, protect, and defend them.
We have witnessed, and we have forcefully rejected, the brutal, soul-crushing destructiveness of the world’s most duplicitous “isms” – communism, fascism, and totalitarianism. We inherently sense that, imposed by fiat from above, any form of communitarianism tends to debase our freedoms, diminish our lives, and asphyxiate our spirits.
And yet . . .
And yet we are not alone. Nor were we created to be loners, as even Adam discovered quickly.
Our inter-connectedness is obvious, even if we deny its relevance in our lives.
We, each of us each day, dispense fragments – chunks, really – of our humanity to those around us, whether for good or ill, whether separated by inches or miles.
No, perhaps we are not one in the sense that we act as if a single organism.
But we each necessarily affect the other. And we each either build up or diminish the rest.
It is by first acknowledging our own lack that we can let go and finally grow – because it is only then that we can turn to those around us to help fill in the daunting gaps, and replace the missing pieces of our perfection.
Freedom and individualism, yes.
But free will and authentic freedom must first and foremost enable us to seek our better selves.
And we can only do so through others.
If freedom fails us, we may well come to discover that we are truly alone, left to our own imperfections and our individual failings – perhaps coming to know, all too late, that we could have found a better way, together.
Tom Zampino Thomas Merton: We Are Not All Weak In The Same Spots (April 11, 2016) Grace Pending @ Patheos Catholic

real joy – infinite joy – is a deep, abiding, and other-worldly confidence. It’s a knowing and a realization that we were loved into existence, and that we each have some purpose beyond our day-to-day existence.
Still, that irritates us doesn’t it?
Because it means, in the end, that we are not our own. And it means that God is not some vending machine into which we deposit the currency of petitioning prayer and receive back an equivalent value to satisfy our latest hunger.
And then we just turn and walk away. Free.
Until the next time we hunger.
But this continual contact has a way of connecting us to the infinite.
And it can change us.
Forever.
Whether we want that to happen or not.
Tom Zampino The Infinite Breakthrough Of Joy (April 7, 2016) Grace Pending @ Patheos Catholic

Happy Catholic's Bookshelf by Julie Davis

12/11 – 1/17
Former Patheos Colum A Free Mind
Now at Happy Catholic*  GoodReads

Also a Happy Catholic Bookshelf Author Jeffery Miller
Writes at The Curt Jester – Punditry, Prayer, Parody, Polemics, Puns

Now what options would a electonic Rosary have?
Vibrates when it detects you have fallen asleep while reciting the Rosary. Your Guardian Angel will thank you since he won’t have to pick up your slack.
Bead speed detection to remind you if you are praying it too fast to adequately meditate on the mysteries. Also being smart enough to detect if you are praying the Divine Mercy instead and make allowance.
Scriptural Rosary Mode. When you get to the large bead it narrates some scripture mathing the decade and the day of the week.
Set an audible clacking at a desired sound level to help future saints.
Jeffrey Miller Smart Beads – Now do the Rosary Curt Jester

Still I think there is a “Benedict Cumberbatch Option”, that is you admit and then repent of your flaws and work to overcome them as in the story arc of Doctor Strange. How we do this might take us to Nursia or for that matter the Himalayas. It might also just take us to deeper prayer in our homes, serving others, or all of the above.
We do live in a toxic culture where living the faith is not easy. It is almost as if Jesus telling us that we would have to pick up our crosses was not just rhetorical.
So I am putting the “The Benedict Cumberbatch Option” out there as my hopeful character arc of acknowledging my sins and repenting of them.
Jeffrey Miller The Benedict Cumberbatch Option Curt Jester

After my confirmation, though, I was given a Catholic book, and that began a reading frenzy. I began seeing a pattern of truth and beauty that I never knew existed. Soon, everywhere I looked, I recognized the pattern. Books I read, movies I watched, songs I heard were reflecting bits of the Truth that was God. I realized that this reality had been there all along. I just couldn’t see it before. It made everyday things glow. I couldn’t hold in my delight and began e- mailing friends with my discoveries.

We see echoes of heaven all around us, sometimes without ever knowing what we are seeing. I have a passion for quotes that point toward those truths. You’ll find everything here from movies to television to Scripture, from humor to seriousness to optimism and joy. In short, everything that draws back the veil and lets us connect with God. I hope it delights you as much as it does me. 
Julie Davis, Happy Catholic: Glimpses of God in Everyday Life( 2011)  Servant Books

I Have to Sit Down by Simcha Fisher: Simcha’s Fisher’s Blog

6/10 -11/15
Now at I have to sit down.
Author of The Sinner's Guide to Natural Family Planning (2013)

Death is an evil chapter, but it is by no means the final one. And so it makes good sense, while we are alive, still thinking, still choosing, still setting our course, to write the story of our lives like a good author: with some plan in mind. The details and the characters need to work themselves out, but the major plot points ought to be settled ahead of time. Happy new year! You’re going to die. 
Simcha Fisher Happy new year! You’re going to die. (January 1, 2019) I Have to Sit Down

When a child is born, we brush with eternity, as she is delivered into the light from the shadows of the womb, and becomes herself, shows who she has always been – and also simultaneously takes on the heavy burden of human potentiality, beginning the long journey of becoming who she was made to be.
Simcha Fisher, The womb of the world is a private place, full of secrets (January 2, 2019) I Have to Sit Down

We must be willing to suffer, but we’re not required to constantly ratchet up our own pain — especially when it’s the kind of pain that affects our ability to care for others. Like the saints, we may assign ourselves penances and disciplines to make amends for our sins and help detach ourselves from transient things; but this is something that should be done out of a love for Christ and a desire to console Him, and not out of some dark, wretched fear that our relationship with him is only authentic when it’s agonizing. Those who love God love life.
A Jewish Catholic woman told me, “Christ is our Sabbath.” He is our rest. Not our agony, not our terror, but our rest. He suffers when we suffer, but when it’s time to rest, He wants us to rest in Him.
Simcha Fisher: Must we seek out suffering to please God? (January 3, 2019) I Have to Sit Down

Inebriate Me by Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry

3/14 – 3/16
Author at several different online websites

What kept me hooked to the Church was not philosophy, or theology, or Biblical scholarship, or agreement with the doctrines of the Church (I remember a vigorous argument with a priest about justification by faith alone; and as a hormone-filled teenager, the less said about my views on Christian sexual ethics the better). What kept me hooked, like an elastic rope tied around my waist, dragging me back whenever I wandered past the borders of the Church, was the Eucharist. The Bread of Life.
To this day, I cannot explain it, but if there is one thing, as far as I can remember (and I was too young to remember First Communion), that I have always believed, it is the doctrine of the Real Presence. Believe is too weak a word. Even “know” seems like too weak a word. For me it is simply the most obvious thing in the world. I can’t tell you why, or how. But it is the thing I am more certain of than anything else—that the eucharistic bread and wine truly and really are the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
I wish I could tell you there was some moment, some mystical experience perhaps, that anchored that belief in me. I wish I could tell you “I believe in the Real Presence because…” But no, I just do.
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry Why I Remain Catholic (June 4, 2015) Inebriate Me @ Patheos Catholic

The Church has a doctrine. The Church exists (among other things) to proclaim the Gospel, and is being led by the Spirit into all truth, and in a sinful world, that entails not only saying what is the case, but also what is NOT the case. The way this is often done in authoritative Church documents (conciliar or papal) is through anathemas. An anathema is an official declaration that someone who believes something erroneous is placed outside the visible boundaries of the Church, because he does not hold the faith of the Church.
In every branch of Christianity, up and down the centuries, teachers of impeccable orthodox credentials have believed in a massa damnata–the vast majority will be damned–and others have believed in either universal salvation, or quasi-universal salvation (most will be saved). The same New Testament that says “few are chosen” also proclaims that God’s mercy is bigger than we can imagine and His iron will to save all mankind. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. All our traditions wrestle with this tension in various ways. 
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry A Quick Note About What An Anathema Does Or Does Not Mean (May 28, 2015) Inebriate Me@ Patheos Catholic

Intentional Disciples by Sherry Weddell:  God has no grandchildren

6/14 – 8/15
Catherine of Siena Institute
GoodReads Profile & 2^nd GoodReads Profile

“Adoration appeals to postmoderns because it is experiential, mysterious, and accessible to everyone: the nonbaptized, the non-Catholic, the unchurched, the lapsed, the badly catechized, the wounded, the skeptical, the seeking, the prodigal, and those who aren’t sure that a relationship with God is even possible.”
― Sherry Weddell, Forming Intentional Disciples: The Path to Knowing and Following Jesus (2012) Our Sunday Visitor

K-Lo @ Large by Kathryn Jean Lopez

4/14 – 7/16
Author at Crux and National Review
Book A Year With the Mystics: Visionary Wisdom for Daily Living  (Sep 17, 2019)


I didn’t watch much of Dead Poets Society Sunday night but I felt prompted to pray for Robin Williams Sunday night. Perhaps simply in thanksgiving. Perhaps because we are — all the baptized — are the body of Christ, and I was called to hear a cry for help from a brother.
Perhaps because he needed prayers and God wanted me receptive to this, interceding for his pain. God looks out for His Creation and relies on His adopted sons and daughters to do the work of His graces, living sacramental lives as the Body of Christ.
I only prayed briefly for him.
What a world it might be if, every time someone made us laugh or otherwise entertained or informed us, we prayed for him? What if we always prayed in thanksgiving and with the knowledge that we don’t know what lies beneath? Anyone who followed Williams’ career knew he had his struggles. We often don’t know. But it’s so often there — no matter how clever or talented. We’re only human.
We must pray. And be alert — looking and listening for opportunities and promptings. Our lives must be ones of prayer and we must set aside time and plead with God on behalf of those who suffer most. In front of us and a world away.
In Christ’s wounds, we are healed. We are set from the tyranny of the chains of sickness and sin that afflict us. May each one of us be instruments of Christ’s healing. Always seeing the Cross — living it, seeing its reflection in the mirror — we can be God’s instruments, touching His wounds, and bringing those who suffer into encounter with His love and Divine Mercy.
We can start by being people of prayer who see a person who is right in front of us — whether right next to us in the flesh or on a screen — TV or Facebook. Embrace humanity, inflamed by the love of Christ. One person at a time, seeing the spark of the Divine in him, helping him see it. Even one celebrity at a time.
Kathryn Jean Lopez Laugh. Pray. Live. Robin Williams, R.I.P. (August 12, 2014) K-Lo @ Large @ Patheos Catholic

Kyle Cupp by Kyle Cupp

10/14 -4/16
Now at Kyle Cupp
Author of Living By Faith, Dwelling in Doubt: A Story of Belief, Uncertainty, and Boundless Love (Oct 1, 2013)

Instead of teaching me to trust and believe in the commitment of others, my dad taught me to fear that the people I love don’t really love me in return. Ever since, I’ve found it very difficult to get close to people, even though I desire close friends more than almost anything. I’m torn between the impulse to make lifelong friends and the impulse to push everyone away.
Kyle Cupp What Abandonment Taught Me (April 19, 2016) Kyle Cupp @ Patheos Catholic

Richard Dawkins himself cannot escape some religious instruction because he’s situated in a society formed by multiple religious traditions. He rejects these traditions and the teachings and practices they bear, but he can’t separate himself from them. They inform his world, his worldview, and his thinking. It’s in this context that Dawkins has learned to situate himself against the forces of religion. Religion is part of his being-in-the-world.
Kyle Cupp Teaching Your Children the Faith Doesn’t Mean Indoctrinating Them (February 25, 2015) Kyle Cupp @ Patheos Catholic

Love Among the Ruins by Kathryn Brightly . Posts by students of the Theology of the Body

1/15 -5/16
Author at Aleteia.

"For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known" (1 Corinthians 13:12).

Between the darkness of concupiscence and the clarity of Beatific Vision, we can spend our time learning to see ourselves, our neighbors, and all art ever more brightly. Domine ut videam.

It is Good Friday, and we are reminded of the day that promise gave way to despair.  A weak, powerless man hung before a crowd to be beaten, mocked, and killed.  All the rhetoric of salvation and eternal life reduced to naked, quivering flesh.
This is the death that we feel so heavily today on Good Friday.  As Christians, though, we know that the great paradox of the Resurrection is yet to come: when Life will come out of death.  The civilization of death tries to eliminate suffering and distort sexuality because both are intimately linked to the Cross through self-gift.  It was through Christ’s suffering on the Cross that he fully gave himself to us, and through the sacrifice of the Eucharist he continually gives himself to us.  Likewise, it is through the conjugal act that a man and a woman fully give themselves to one another to become two in one flesh.  When we profess our vows to Christ at the offertory of the Mass, we are participating in his Sacrifice by making ourselves into a full gift to him.  This union is then consummated as we eat his Body and drink his Blood, making us two in one flesh with Christ.  We must therefore be mindful that in order to rise with Christ on Easter Sunday, we first die to ourselves with Christ on Good Friday.
Anna Pfaff Suffering, Sexuality, and the Cross: John Paul II and Walker Percy on the Culture of Death (April 2, 2015) Love Among the Ruins @ Patheos Catholic

Marriage is hard work. The difficulty primarily stems from the frustrating fact that men are from Mars and women are from Venus, and according to my five-year-old who was recently studying the solar system, “Those planets are really, really different.” It’s not news to any members of the opposite sex who’ve  made a life-long commitment to occupying roughly the same space that this arrangement can be very grating at times. In my nearly eight years of marriage, I’ve discovered that the only way to avoid the near occasion of planetary collision is to take time and energy to put myself in my husband’s place—check out the view from Mars. This exercise is called empathy; and it is to a loving relationship what the sun is to the spheres.
Let’s Exchange the Experience: Relationship Help from Pink and Kate Bush
Kathryn E.  Let’s Exchange the Experience: Relationship Help from Pink and Kate Bush (March 15, 2015) Love Among the Ruins  @ Patheos Catholic

Michelle Arnold by Michelle Arnold

4/15 -12/15
Author at Catholic Answers

One of my favorite saints is St. Therese of Lisieux. She is all too often dismissed as one of those rose-and-rainbow saints who ascended into heaven on a cloud of cotton candy. But if you read her writings closely, you’ll find that she was very sympathetic with human frailty and had a deeply understanding heart. Here is one of my favorite quotes from St. Therese:
And it is the Lord, it is Jesus, who is my judge. Therefore I will try always to think leniently of others, that he may judge me leniently, or rather not at all, since he says: “Judge not, and ye shall not be judged.”
Michelle Arnold One Size May Not Fit All (July 7, 2015) Michelle Arnold @ Patheos Catholic

Monique Ocampo Writes by Monique Ocampo The storyteller with sainthood potential

9/14 – 2/17
Author at Catholic365

One thing associated with Asperger’s and Autism is that change is a harder thing for people diagnosed with Aspergers and Autism to deal with change. Most people don’t like change, but they have the ability to suck it up, deal with it, and adjust. For me, the process of accepting and dealing with change takes a bit longer. This especially applies when it comes to losing a loved one
Monique Ocampo Dealing With Grief (October 24, 2014) Monique Ocampo Writes @ Patheos Catholic

Someone once said to me that they would rather go to Hell than forgive the people who hurt them. To my surprise, a friend of mine who converted from Protestantism said that it’s something a lot of so-called Christians say. It’s hard for me to believe that people who claim to love their neighbor can hold on to a grudge so badly that they are willing to go to Hell for it. Believe me when I say this: Hell is not worth it.
There is a reason why CS Lewis said “The doors to hell are locked from the inside.” Hell is not worth staying angry or being judgmental or believing the lies of opportunistic politicians and fake news. Mercy and forgiveness aren’t just part of being a Christian, they are a part of having a healthy life.
I’m not saying to “forgive and forget.” I’m not saying you should reconcile to the people who hurt you. I’m not saying you should act like nothing happened. I’m asking you to let go. Let go of your anger. Let go of the hatred you feel. This is the greatest act of mercy you can do for the ones you and for yourself. The healing can’t begin until you let it all go.
Monique Ocampo Why We Still Need Mercy (December 19, 2016) Monique Ocampo Writes @ Patheos Catholic

I’m not saying that it’s easy to listen to different viewpoints. There’s a reason I avoid politics when I can, after all. I’m just saying that people need to be open to change and open to being able to laugh at themselves and admit that sometimes they’re wrong. Having the courage to change takes humility and that particular virtue is hard to find these days.

I think the fear of humility comes from the fact that most people don’t understand what humility is. Humility may involve some shame and embarrassment, but it doesn’t always. More often than not, humility is just knowing that you’re not always going to be right. That somebody knows more than you and that you have to learn from them. That you’re not a special snowflake, but at the same time, it’s okay that you’re not. Humility is the first step to embracing change and developing courage. And eventually, you’ll find that you’ve become fearless.
Monique Ocampo The Courage to Change (August 10, 2015) Monique Ocampo Writes @ Patheos Catholic

Nicholas:
Oh yeah, you snake? Cuz Jesus busted me out
so you’d better listen well and you’d better watch out.
I’m rewriting this creed cuz you’re causing a scandal
Our Lord’s begotten, not made, aka consubstantial
BT-Dubz, Our Lord gave me a warning for you
If you try to approach Him, you’ll be spelling your doom
He won’t let you get close, guilt will fill you with gloom
And you’ll die with all of your guts out in a public bathroom.
Monique Ocampo Epic Rap Battles of (Catholic) History: Nicholas vs Arius (December 6, 2016) Monique Ocampo Writes @ Patheos Catholic

Morning Rose Prayer Gardens by Margaret Rose Realy Prayer, coping and contemplation ...

 10/12 – 5/17

Author at aleteia and catholicconspiracy and several others

GoodReads page

Even though I work diligently at bringing the Lord into my heart by pulling up the weeds of sinfulness and removing the clutter of bad habits, if I do not fill that space with the Word of God and his Mercy, then there is nothing to prevent the disorder from returning.

Like most things that run off course, the intrusion of unneeded objects or undesirable plants begins so small. A few items back on the shelf, a few weed seeds falling on exposed earth. Then without me really noticing, things are seven times worse than when first begun.

The determination to remove the unwanted, without equal desire to take the next step, leaves us vulnerable and open to fall again.

Lord, save me from the pride that empties and fails to fill the void with your ways.

Margaret Rose Realy, Obl. OSB Demons Love a Well-swept House (March 1, 2016) Morning Rose Prayer Gardens @ Patheos Catholic

Pursued by Truth by Sr. Theresa Aletheia Noble

3/14 – 9/16
Now at https://pursuedbytruth.com
GoodReads Page

I approach my writing with the attitude encouraged by Blessed James Alberione, the founder of my order, The Daughters of St. Paul (and the entire Pauline Family) who said:
We need to put down the scissors of censorship and pick up the camera and microphone. We need to speak in the language of our own time… because God is so beautiful.
And that is my approach to all the issues I write about. God is so beautiful. So even if I am writing about something that is difficult, heart-breaking or horrific, I will always try to approach it from a stance of truth rooted in hope, because our God is beautiful. If I ever veer from that approach, I trust my readers will help me get back on course.
Sr. Theresa Aletheia Noble Pursued by Truth – Now at Patheos! (October 10, 2014) Pursued by Truth @ Patheos Catholic

I believe if there were more cultural mystics in our world, there would be more people coming into the Church than walking out.
Sr. Theresa Aletheia Noble David Bowie and the Call to Be Cultural Mystics (January 21, 2016) Pursued by Truth @ Patheos Catholic

People have many misconceptions about what living in a convent is like. One assumption people have is that religious sisters are so much easier to get along with than other people, (because a habit must be some kind of magical, automatic saint cloak). We put it on and BAM, we’ve got a saint on our hands.
I wish.
But unfortunately, religious life is not some kind of magic silver bullet to sanctity. The convent is a saint-making factory, and all of us are in various stages of completion.
Sr. Theresa Aletheia Noble Jesus and the Secret to Dealing With Difficult People (February 2, 2016) Pursued by Truth @ Patheos Catholic

One reason I love being Catholic is that we do not waste time arguing over whether someone has not been saved. People are basically in the “We don’t know but we hope” category or in the canonized Saint category.
The Catholic response to the Evangelical who asks us, “Have you been saved?” is, as Jimmy Akin puts it:
“I have been saved, I am being saved, and I hope to be saved.”
God can save people in the last moments of their life in whatever way he pleases. He does not require a pat formula of accepting Jesus into our hearts. He requires repentance. So we really can never know for sure whether someone has or has not been saved. In fact, even Judas, the betrayer of Jesus, could have been saved in the last moments of his life.
Sr. Theresa Aletheia Noble David Bowie and the Call to Be Cultural Mystics (January 21, 2016) Pursued by Truth @ Patheos Catholic

Return to Rome by Francis J. Beckwith, Reflections on faith, Ethics and Culture

6/12 -10/15
Now at Francis J. Beckwith
GoodReads Profile

So far as a man may be proud of a religion rooted in humility, I am very proud of my religion; I am especially proud of those parts of it that are most commonly called superstition. I am proud of being fettered by antiquated dogmas and enslaved by dead creeds (as my journalistic friends repeat with so much pertinacity), for I know very well that it is the heretical creeds that are dead, and that it is only the reasonable dogma that lives long enough to be called antiquated.
Francis J. Beckwith, (2009) Return to Rome @ Patheos Catholic

Seasons of Grace by Kathy Schiffer

3/14 -12/15
Now at Seasons of Grace
Author at National Catholic Register

For 2000 years, Catholic women have worn some kind of head covering in Church. Though the particular reasons for doing so have varied (for example, modesty, submission to God, etc.), this practice has always focused on the transcendence of the place – the church, the very dwelling of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Having been given this magnficent Gift by Jesus himself, every Catholic church holds something not found anywhere else: the true, living presence of our Savior, hidden under the appearance of bread and wine.
Today, wearing a veil – any kind of covering – is a symbolic gesture that points to the amazing reality of the Real Presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. As women, we are symbols of the Church – the Bride of Christ – and “the veil is meant to be a visible reminder of the perfect submission of the Church to the loving rule of Christ.”
Kathy Schiffer Wear the Veil Day: Catholic Young Women Veil in Devotion to the Real Presence (December 8, 2015) Seasons of Grace @ Patheos Catholic

Teresa’s life was not an easy one.  She fell ill with malaria, then suffered a seizure which left her incapacitated for four days.  When she awoke, she found that  those surrounding her were so  certain she was dead that they had already dug a grave for her beside the house.  What followed were three years of paralysis, then a lifetime of continued illness which made it difficult for her to pray.
Because of the maladies which befell her, St. Teresa of Avila is called the patron of headache-sufferers.  Because her autobiographical and spiritual writings have led so many to greater sanctity, she has been named patron of Spanish Catholic writers.
Kathy Schiffer Happy Birthday, St. Teresa of Avila: Patron of Catholic Writers and Headache Sufferers! (March 28, 2015) Seasons of Grace @ Patheos Catholic

But there is a steep price for delinquency, even for the Hollywood set.  During the teens and 20s, young people should be solidifying their values, emerging as adults with a sense of responsibility and a love for God and for mankind.  Without the practice of virtue in the early years, it will be ever more difficult to rebound and to become the men and women God intended them to be.  And despite their wealth and their notoriety, they too will stand before God to give an account for how they have used the gifts He has given.  Let us pray that they will, by that day, have redirected their energies toward His service.  Let us pray that our own teens and young adults, rather than being smothered by the barrage of Hollywood trivia, will find strength and love in Christ and will live their vocations with grace and wisdom.
Kathy Schiffer HOLLYWOOD RUMSPRINGA: Young Stars Run Amok Make Good Parents’ Job So Much Harder (February 9, 2011) Seasons of Grace @ Patheos Catholic

Shadows On The Road by Ben Conroy

8/14 – 12/15
Author at The Irish Catholic /Catholic Herald

When we are civil to those we engage with, however abhorrent we find their position, we make it that much more likely that we will actually change hearts and minds.

Ben Conroy Does Civility Matter? (September 12, 2014) Shadows on the Road  @ Patheos Catholic

I am often told, by a young Catholic gentleman of considerable intelligence, wit, and virtue, that I am an undiscerning consumer of narrative art.
When I express my approval for this book, that film, or the other animated series, this gentlemen will – as reliably and good-naturedly as the rising sun – protest: “but Ben, you like everything!” My general positivity about the stories I expose myself seems to him to speak ill of my aesthetic judgment.
God’s creation is good. Humans are part of God’s creation. One of the most amazing things about humans – one of the ways that we’re made in God’s image and likeness – is that we are capable of creative work, of what Tolkein called “sub-creation”. If a person or a group of people have gone to the bother of writing a book, or producing a film, then that is a wonder in itself. If it’s only all right? That’s still, in my view, pretty impressive.
Honestly trying to spin a good yarn will almost always yield at least some fruit. The second Night At The Museum film isn’t going to set anyone’s mind on fire – but it has Amy Adams playing Amelia Earhart, and if that isn’t self-recommending I don’t know what is.
Ben Conroy I like most films I watch. Am I a sucker? (October 13, 2014) Shadows On The Road @ Patheos Catholic

Shoved to Them by Rebecca Frech

8/07 – 5/16
Now at catholicconspiracy IGNITUM TODAY National Catholic Register
GoodReads Profile

Earlier today, I asked my children (ages 15, 13, 10, 7, and 5) what they thought Mary was really like.
“So you think she was funny?”
“Definitely funny.” There were unanimous head-nods at this.
“God likes joyful. He would never give his Son to someone who wasn’t funny.”
“Remember the way that Elizabeth ran out to meet her, all excited? You don’t run out the hug someone who’s not fun to be around. You watch them from the window and sigh.”
“This angel stands in front of her and says God sent him and she says ‘Why would God send you to me?’ She doesn’t even offer him water or a place to sit down. Hospitality was a big thing back then. She ignored all of that, and told him to explain himself. That’s sass.”
“And she bossed God around. He was her kid, but she knew he was God and she still had to tell him to clean his room and stuff. You can’t be totally meek and mild, and still be bossing Jesus to do his chores.”
Rebecca Frech The Perfectly Imperfect Mother of God (December 18, 2014) Shoved to Them @ Patheos Catholic

 “I don’t know that he was very fun though. I mean Jesus went to parties and joked around with people and all that, but John was like the un-fun guy who only talks about the Bible all the time. I mean, I know it’s important, but would it kill you to talk about sports or the weather or like movies or something?”
Rebecca Frech Jesus’s Stinky Cousin (February 2, 2015)  Shoved to Them @ Patheos Catholic

This is what Confirmation really is, it is the fulfillment of the promises of Baptism. In Confirmation, we stand in front of God and accept both full responsibility for ourselves, and the Grace which is necessary to take on such an immense burden. It’s an important step on the road to adulthood, as their Faith stops being something their parents have chosen for them, and becomes something they have chosen for themselves.
Rebecca Frech Confirmation – Passing the Flame (April 18, 2016) Shoved to Them @ Patheos Catholic

Summa by Ryan Adams A Sarcastic Response to Post-Christian Angst

12/11 -12/13
Christ, even in our post-Christian world of positive science, space travel, and the internet, is a symbol inextricably linked to divinity.
Ryan Adams Why Dan Brown Desperately Needs Jesus to Have Sex (May 30, 2013) Suma @ Patheos Catholic

You go to bed to a cold and desolate world and awake to a warm and inviting sky and the ground aflame with bright and passionate flowers that carry their flame of life in such a manner that one would not believe that they could ever die, save for our previous experience with them.  Indeed, almost over night, our entire world is overrun by an army, the likes of which the world seldom sees, of things which had for so long been dead and forgotten.  But unlike the undead of our fiction, these are not zombies, they do not mimic life, instead they have it -truly have it.  It is far more frightening for something to rise from the dead and truly be alive than for it to just be an animated blob of flesh.

And so, in this season we also remember that Christ is Risen, and in exactly the same way.  He was dead, more truly dead than the hibernation of the natural world, but to our experience the deaths are the same.  Like the bees and the rabbits and the birds Christ is risen not as a zombie, but as one who has true life!  Christ, like the flame of the wildflowers, kindles a fire of hope within us, that we who follow him will some day rise like him, not as bruiting, mindless, flesh-hungry monsters which need to kill to sustain themselves, but instead as ones who have the true life within them.
We will be like the animals who are all but forgotten over the long and desolate winters, alive again and alive in fullness.  And the trees stand alive, topped with leaves like the green flames of the Holy Spirit upon the heads of the Apostles at Pentecost.

In this frightening and forceful display of strength and power, nature prefigures for us a look – albeit simple and flawed- at the reality of our own resurrection from the dead.
Ryan Adams The Horror of Springtime (May 3, 2012) @ Patheos Catholic

We know that hell is real, through Scripture and Tradition, but it should be our utmost hope, in Christian love, that all men, no matter how awful, have somehow opened themselves up to the salvation which God has offered to them.  No one knows the internal life of a man, except he himself, and God.
It is important to remember the torments of hell, for in fact we can know of at least one soul who truly “deserves hell,” our own.  With our sins ever before us, we should always seek out the Lord and His forgiveness, working out our salvation in fear and trembling, and loving our neighbor and praying for them, and seeking their prayers for us, never hoping for their damnation any more than we would hope for our own.
Ryan Adams Against Hope in Damnation (November 2, 2013) Summa @ Patheos Catholic

There is a strange thing that seems to happen when we discuss these great men and women of the faith.
We make them fluffy.
Our saints become much like the greeting card Cherubim or the  “my buddy Jesus” motif which took the incarnate Word of God and reduced Him to a winking, bearded, hippie giving you a “thumbs up” because “you’re awesome, man.”  Maybe you are awesome…man, but regardless it is impossible to ignore the fact that this is not the Jesus of the Gospels.  And just the same, our saints are leveled out into something palatable.
The most blatant example of this is St. Francis of Assisi.
St. Francis, in reality, was young, hot tempered, and radically devoted to God, His Church and His liturgy.  He was a man who was so dissatisfied with his father’s love for money that he stripped naked in order to remove all that his father had given him.   This is a man who, when not only refused entrance into a lodging of his own friars because they did not recognize him, but also beaten for fear that he was there to rob them, remarked that “this is perfect joy,” that is, joy in the unity with Christ’s sufferings on the Cross. He even went as far as to go before the Sultan and request that he convert to Christianity during the Crusades.
Instead of the fleeting “nice” there is a reality of the saints that should be called to attention whenever we discuss them, they are knights of faith.  They are, in Sartrean terms, the existential heros, if ever there were any.  They’re the one’s who hear the word of God, and act.
Ryan Adams The Disservice We Do Our Saints (February 8, 2013) Summa @ Patheos Catholic

Summa This, Summa That by Joseph Susanka Ancient Faith Meets Modern Life

10/10 – 12/15
Now at Joseph Susanka

Former Patheos Colum Through a Lens, Darkly
Being divorced from our own traditions and culture appears to have awakened in many Americans a hunger for great tradition, tales, legends and historic languages.

For me, the genius of Tolkien’s Hobbit, particularly in contrast with its more ambitious, more successful sibling, has always been that its protagonist is so ordinary, so life-sized. Bilbo's adventures are as influential in the future of Middle Earth as his nephew's, but he is blissfully unaware of that larger context. He doesn’t realize his role in the epic struggle taking place between the Light and the Darkness, and he doesn’t need to. His journey is personal rather than mythic; his virtues as applicable to everyday life (and everyday people) as they are to the Hero's Quest.
Joseph Susanka Wherein Peter Jackson Misses the Point (December 21, 2012) Summa This, Summa That  @ Patheos Catholic

Countless saints and spiritual advisors have warned against the dangers of inordinate and improper desires, and ordering them correctly is a never-ending challenge for each of us. Yet some of our desires are essential to the working out of our salvation: our desire for knowledge, for example; or for truth; or beauty. God has given us these desires for our own good; they are some of the most transformative agents for change and self-mastery in all of human existence. It is the power of these desires—right-ordered and guided by His Grace—that is one of our greatest strengths.
Joseph Susanka Thank God for Desire (July 1, 2011) Summa This, Summa That  @ Patheos Catholic

The Anchoress by Elizabeth Scalia

8/4 – 8/16
Now at The Anchoress
Author at aleteia and Word On Fire
GoodReads Page

I fail in love every day, no matter how much I try. Managing unconditional love for the people in my house, whom I like to think I would die for, is hard enough; my love is always imperfect and impatient, tsking and selfish. Loving everyone else? No wonder I give such scandal. And then, the blog; no matter how hard I try to observe politics with detachment, the mouth, the sarcasm, the ME still intrudes, every day, and my spiritual dismantling of myself (and, most abhorrently) of others, continues apace. God help me.

Then I consider that this is one of the beauties of Catholicism; we are an ancient church. If I am being chastised through the centuries by a spot-on homily, well I am also comforted to know that the people who lived in the second century, some of whom may have known Christ or his apostles, were struggling with these same human failings, were familiar with this human condition. Suddenly, we are all connected -reaching to each other through generations- and I relearn the lesson: we’re all in this together, and quite outside of time. It brings hope.
Elizabeth Scalia Prayer is ruining me for blogging… (November 12, 2009) The Anchoress @ Patheos Catholic

I understood that Elijah and Enoch had been assumed into heaven, so if I considered Mary’s assumption at all, it was simply to shrug it off: “Mary was assumed into heaven. Sure, why not?” The whys and wherefores of the matter were so far above my paygrade that they didn’t seem worth pondering.
All of that changed for me when I took a class in anatomy and physiology. As marvelous as it was to learn about how “wonderfully and fearfully” we are made — what with blood cells forming and fading, and bones and tissue becoming oxygenated and cleansed via blood and breath — nothing presented in the class coaxed an audible reaction from me until we studied the process of microchimerism.

In the simplest of terms, microchimerism is the process by which a smattering of cells live within a host body but are completely distinct from it. In human fetomaternal microchimerism (or “fetal cell microchimerism”), every child leaves within his mother a microscopic bit of himself — every pregnancy, brought to delivery or not, leaves a small amount of its own cells within the body of the mother — and those cells remain within her forever.

 A small amount of Christ Jesus’ cells remained within Mary, for the whole of her life. Where we Catholics have a limited experience of Christ’s flesh commingling within our own upon reception of the holy Eucharist, Mary was a true tabernacle within which the Divinity did continually reside.

Our Lady’s body, holding Christ within it, could not remain on earth; of course, it would have to join itself to Christ in the heavenly dimension.
Elizabeth Scalia How Does Science Back Up a Theological Dogma? Like This: (August 14, 2016) The Anchoress @ Patheos Catholic

 The Capstone by Tim Muldoon Culture at the Crossroads

8/14 – 11/15
Author at Ignatian Spirituality
GoodRead Profile

At the heart of any intellectual exercise is meaning-making. Whether I am using a microscope or a telescope, an ancient text or a new survey, a legal document or a recorded conversation, my desire to make meaning out of the raw material reflects something fundamental about being a homo sapiens, a “wise person.”
What is the meaning of meaning? Our participation in the life of God. Catholic intellectual life is the self-consciousness of this participation. Catholic universities are the institutions that encourage both meaning-making (like all good universities) and the reflective habits of understanding the meaning of meaning-making. These include habits of silence and self-awareness (which I teach my students), as well as habits of prayer and worship.
Tim Muldoon The meaning of meaning (March 30, 2015) The Capstone @ Patheos Catholic

At the heart of Catholic education,   God has created us to do some good in the world, and that education is a means to discovering what it is. Saint Ignatius of Loyola, who in the Spiritual Exercises counseled that we use our imagination to discern what that good might be. The history of Jesuit education shows particular emphasis on the arts, in large part because of the way that art can provoke in us new ways of imagining ourselves and the world. The third point to highlight is the fact that education is a form of distributive justice, enabling Rusty to more fully participate in and contribute to the common good.
Tim Muldoon Become who you are (April 7, 2015) The Capstone @ Patheos Catholic

The Crescat by Katrina Fernandez: Fortified with Vitamin BXVI. Not a substitute for regular mass attendance. Side effects may include Mackerel Snapping

6/06 12/15
Former Patheos Colum More than Mortal Beauty
Writer at aleteia and National Catholic Register
Author in One Body, Many Blogs

I tried doing a novena to him that one year when he was stalking me. I swear! He was! St. Anthony turned up everywhere I looked. It was freaky. I bought a painting at a thrift store and when I went to re-frame it there was a an old print and holy card of St. Anthony stuck back there. And I found a St. Anthony medal in the church parking lot. And my son said St. Anthony was his imaginary friend and reminded me to watch my language because St. Anthony was listening. Always listening. Creepy stuff I tell you. I never finished that novena so I think he was haunting me. Except saints don’t really haunt. But they do stalk. I know this for a fact
Katrina Fernandez St. Anthony and never ceasing to be amazed…(June 13, 2012) The Crescat @ Patheos Catholic

As awesome as I think the Catholic Church is; with Her brains, beauty and generous nature, that is not why I choose to remain a Catholic. It’s not the beer nor the bacon.
I remain Catholic because the Church is Truth.
I’ve seen the Truth. I’ve experienced it firsthand. I’ve been baptized in the Truth. Confirmed in it. I’ve tasted and drank the Truth. I’ve Adored it and received graces and forgiveness from the Truth.
I have looked plainly and unflinchingly at the Truth and to leave the Church would be to turn my back on all that I know, believe, and have experienced.
To leave the Church is to embrace Hell.
Amen. The end.
Katrina Fernandez Will Remain Catholic For Beer…(June 3, 2015) The Crescat @ Patheos Catholic

The Faithful Traveler Exploring the Treasures of Faith, One City at a Time

4/2008 -6/15
Now at The Faithful Traveler dappledthings Catholic Digest

“Christian perfection consists in three things: praying heroically, working heroically, and suffering heroically.”

–St. Anthony Mary Claret

When I moved to New York City, I knew no one–ok, I knew one guy, but he was dating a jealous girlfriend who made sure I never saw him–so I was lonely a lot.

I remember singing the Ave Maria to myself as I wandered the city streets, to remind myself that even though no one was physically by my side, God, his Blessed Mother, and my Guardian Angel were always with me.

That still makes me laugh. Not because it’s crazy, but because it’s so trusting. Sometimes, I surprise myself

Earlier this week, I was speaking about this with a dear friend who has been enduring her own prolonged suffering, and she said something wise, as she always does.

Everybody’s cross can’t be the same… it’s the willingness to pick it up and move with it that matters.

That’s the key, isn’t it? To pick up the cross that we’ve been given and get going.

I’m amazed at how many of my friends have recently told me of their own sufferings. They’re all different–one friend’s mother is ill, for another friend it’s her husband, and yet another, his niece. God doesn’t give us all cancer or multiple sclerosis or ALS. He doesn’t give us all strokes or heart attacks. And, thank God, not all of us have to die by beheading. But as another one of my wise friends said to me as we discussed the meaning of life, the universe, and everything:

We’re ALL terminal.

We’re all dying. And let’s face it: we’re all suffering, too.

So what are we gonna do about it?

The thing I love about my faith is that it gives me something to do. It gives my life purpose. Every stupid little stinking thing that happens in my life could be one more reason why life sucks or it could be the opportunity for me to make a HEROIC ACT.  I am the one who gets to decide which it’s going to be.

God, that makes me so happy. When I remember it.

Diana von Glahn Heroic Suffering (February 17, 2015) The Faithful Traveler

The Jesuit Post by Eric Sundrup:  Faith that does relevance

1/14 -1/16
Author at America Magazine and The Jesuit Post

Look at your bookshelf. Take stock of the titles. Now narrow them down: How many of the books there were written by Catholics? …Got it? Now, among those, ignore the theological titles from your undergrad years, along with any titles you’d consider “devotional.” In other words, how many of those books are novels, testimonials, or collections of poetry?
And now, the final filter: How many were written in the past forty years?
Chances are that precious few remain after you put your books through all three filters. After the first two, most book buffs would pat themselves on the back for having some O’Connor, Powers, or Waugh on the shelf. But you have to admit that, when it comes to works outside the realms of theology and spirituality, the forty-year mark cuts away a significant swath of Catholic writers in the average reader’s collection. (Walker Percy would have made it past the last filter, as he continued to publish until close to his death in 1990. But he probably wouldn’t have much company on the common reader’s shelf.)
Why is this the case? Where are today’s Walker Percy, Flannery O’Connor and Georges Bernanos? Or was the post-war generation of prominent Catholic writers just a fluke? As for today’s great writers – some of whom might be in your Kindle or on your second shelf – there must be Catholics among them. Do we even know who they are?
Jay Hooks, SJ Catholic Writers – Who’s on YOUR Shelf? (January 30, 2014) The Jesuit Post @ Patheos Catholic

Water into Wine by Lisa Mladinich "Do whatever he tells you “ (John 2:5)

8/14 – 6/16
Former Patheos Colum Be an Amazing Catechist
Author at Amazing Catechists and The Raphael Remedy
GoodReads Profile

We are people of joy because of our hope in the Lord–even in the midst of darkness and suffering. King David once danced ecstatically before the Ark of the Covenant–blowing horns all the way to Bethlehem and jumping for joy in the presence of the people of Israel –which rather annoyed his wife (see 2 Samuel 6:14-16). (Killjoys are nothing new.)
The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that we humans are a unity of both body and soul, not just souls trapped in bodies, but a true unity that expresses one human nature (see: CCC 365). That nature images our luminous and beautiful God (see Gen 1:27). This is a beautiful truth that we should never forget.
But if  you’re like me, you tend to forget about the gift of your physical body and sit too long at a computer screen. Your neglected body–as well as your hard-working brain–is craving some healthy, oxygenating movement.
So in the spirit of joy in the Lord, I begin this series of posts urging the people of God to GET UP AND DANCE!
Lisa Mladinich It’s GET UP AND DANCE Wednesday! (September 30, 2015) Water into Wine @ Patheos Catholic

The other day, I looked in the mirror and saw some new lines and wrinkles in my face. At first, I was a little saddened. But then I thought, “Each line is a reminder that my time on earth is limited, and I have a lot of loving to do, so I’d better get busy.”
The thought made me so happy! Each time I look in the mirror, I see the impermanence of my physical body and the way signs of aging are a countdown to my ultimate destination: heaven.
Some fine day in heaven, I’ll be living in my glorified body.
I imagine that it will be flawless in ways that my puny human brain cannot conceive, now. The truth of our God-given beauty will be realized in each resurrected body, and it will show us how foolish human ideals of beauty really are.
True beauty is about love–always, always–because the source and summit of our beauty is Jesus Christ.
Lisa Mladinich Lines in My Face: Countdown to Eternity? (May 6, 2015) Water into Wine @ Patheos Catholic

Why I Am Catholic by Frank Weathers

8/9 -6/16
Author at aleteia and the book One Body, Many Blogs:

No. Like most things in my life, I don’t deserve what has been given to me. I could pretend that everything I have accomplished has been because of my diligent hard work, clairvoyant planning, and herculean work effort. But the truth is, everything I have, and have accomplished, is an unearned grace. And in the great scheme of things, it doesn’t amount to a hill of beans if I don’t try to become a little Christ.
Still, I am grateful for all the blessings that have been bestowed upon me. For my life, my wife, my children, my health, etc. But I am especially grateful for having been called to be a Catholic, and to having access to the channels of grace that are provided by the sacraments of the Church, Christ’s body here on earth. I want others to know that this is something that I am grateful for and that what they are searching for can be found in the Catholic church, too.
Frank Weathers Because I Don’t Deserve The Graces That Have Been Bestowed Upon Me, Including Folks Reading This Blog (August 4, 2014) Why I Am Catholic @ Patheos Catholic

All I see is what is left of the engineering feat of a little creature that, without any help from me, constructed something so intricate, and beautiful, that all I can do is admire it.
In the Bible, spiders get short shrift. They are not lauded like the ant, the badger, the locust, or the lizard are. Regardless, they are another of the myriad of marvelous creatures that surround us on our journey.
Frank Weathers God Made The Little Spider, That In Turn Made This Amazing Web…  (October 4, 2014) Why I Am Catholic @ Patheos Catholic

Word of the Day by Anthony Esolen

9/13 – 1/14
Author at Crisis Magazine The Imaginative Conservative
GoodReads Profile

But if we really wanted to help young students to sort out their thoughts and place them in order, we would instill in them a love for the order of language itself, that is, grammar. Yes, reader, a love for grammar – and what is so strange about that? I take for granted that teachers whose eyes do not light up when they find odd shortcuts in arithmetic should not be teaching arithmetic, and teachers whose hearts do not skip a beat when they learn of a new tense should not be teaching grammar. And if they do love these fine things, they should feel no shame at all in showing students that they might well love them too.
Anthony Esolen Grammar Lesson of the Day: genitive of time (December 29, 2013) Word of the Day @ Patheos Catholic

Our Old English tid (long i) meant time, not as duration but as instance.  So, if you wanted to say, “That time I decked him,” tid was your word.  It was applied to the waves for the obvious reason that they are at their highest and their lowest at certain instances: hence, the tides.  Also, if you want to know what has happened or what is happening right now, you’re asking about the tidings.  The angel to the shepherds: “I bring you good tidings of great joy.”  The word kept its pride of place in German: Zeit, time.  You read the Zeitung, the newspaper, to get the tidings.  Whether they’re tidings of great joy is another matter.

The word time comes into English through French, after the Norman invasion in 1066, when William the Conqueror unloaded into English harbors whole boatloads of surplus words, and instead of throwing them overboard as the patriots did with the tea in Boston, the English people started to use them, and, voila!  We end up with French words everywhere we look: place, large, chief, munch, main, very, money, pay, people.  Our time is French temps, Latin tempus.
Anthony Esolen Word of the Day: tidings (November 23, 2013) Word of the Day @ Patheos Catholic

Patheos More Shows

Bradely Jensen Murg by Bradley Murg

 2/16 – 2/17
At the same time, Catholic social teaching neither jibes with the late 20th century ideologies of the two main parties nor their contemporary views. Being a Catholic voter has in the last few decades generally meant compromise. As a religious minority in a predominantly Protestant country, European-style Catholic parties never took hold here. So today, the pro-life, pro-subsidiarity, anti-death penalty, pro-immigration, anti-secularism, social safety net loving “Catholic Social Doctrine Voter” (a rare breed, I grant you) is not going to find a comfortable home among the Nationalist Conservative GOP or the secular Social Democratic Democrats. Thus, as this shift continues – it’s time for Catholics to have a more serious conversation as to where these changes leave us; determine which issues we are willing to compromise on; and come to grips with the fact that our nation’s politics is becoming much more European. It’s not going to be easy.
Bradley Jensen Murg Is American Politics Becoming (Gasp) “European?” (June 15, 2016) Bradely Jensen Murg @ Patheos Catholic

 Church of the Masses by Barbara Nicolosi

2/03 -3/14 Not Always on Patheos/Not always on Patheos Catholic
4/11 ? on Patheos Catholic
Author at Catharsis – Who is Catharsis?
Podcast
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Great writing is basically just great communication, and it understands that to last and to make a big impact, you should always speak to the reader’s humanity, not to their particular moment. Flannery O’Connor was great because she mastered the art of writing from the inside of her readers. She was very conscious of human psychology and the dynamic process that a reader goes on in a story. She wasn’t thinking about writing for Southerners, or for academics, or even for Christians or unbelievers. She was writing to any one who was engaged in the activity of dodging Divine Grace.

Barbara Nicolosi Who is Your Audience? Writing What Your Soul Knows (September 25, 2010) Church of the Masses @ Patheos Catholic

 So when people experience the beautiful, the problem of the Garden of Eden is fixed. You know, the Garden’s temptation in Genesis was “You will be like God.” And this is still the paramount temptation for human beings. Well, when you experience beauty, you know you’re not God and you also feel that that’s OK. You feel good about your life and your very “un-Godness” because you’re filled with awe and gratitude. So, Pope Benedict makes the case that you can know everything in a book of theology and make a prayer that is proud and cold. Or, you can know almost nothing of theology but respond to a sunset and feel God’s presence there and it can be a prayer that is holy and that will be heard.

So just briefly, there are many, many, many goods that come to the Church through the arts, but the idea of the beautiful is the main one.

Barbara Nicolosi “The Real Patron of the Arts” (June 30, 2008) Church of the Masses @ Patheos Catholic

Confessions by Cynthia Dagnal-Myron

6/16 -5/17
Author of The Keka Collection (2013)

You Call Yourself a Catholic?
Do I call myself a Catholic? Yes. A proud, joyful, grateful and vociferous one. Jesus invited me, and I’m staying.

“Catholics live in an enchanted world, a world of statues and holy water, stained glass and votive candles, saints and religious medals, rosary beads and holy pictures…hints of a deeper and more pervasive religious sensibility which inclines Catholics to see the Holy lurking in creation.”
Andrew Greeley’’

I’ve been trying so hard to explain to friends and other curious onlookers, sanely, a side of Catholicism that scares some people. I used to call it the “voodoo” side. The world of “reminders,” of statues, incense, candles and holy water.
It’s the side that turns to St. Anthony or St. Dismas when something is lost. Or to St. Expedite for financial assistance, or says Mother, or now Saint Teresa’s “express novena” nine times in a row when all seems lost.
Cynthia Dagnal-Myron Catholicism: The Enchanted Kingdom (September 30, 2016) Confessions @ Patheos Catholic

Sometimes Catholicism reminds me of those Matryoshka dolls.
There’s layer upon layer of meaning behind every rule, rite and sacrament. And for those newly baptized who are not cradle Catholics, getting past that top layer can be daunting.
I chose Catholicism in part because it was so spiritually and intellectually challenging. I welcomed the rigor and the rituals. But sometimes I feel a bit overwhelmed trying to listen to that “still, small voice” while grappling with the systematic spirituality of St. Ignatius and St. Teresa’s interior “castle.”
Cynthia Dagnal-Myron High Octane Brain: Father Mike Schmitz Breaks It Down For You ( September 23, 2016) Confessions @ Patheos Catholic

Daily Reflections

12/13 -12/14

When life seems too big or overwhelming to deal with—even when it takes a swat at you—persistence, focus, confidence and enthusiasm can help you to reach your goal—or at least enjoy the journey.

Do not be faint-hearted.  (Jeremiah 51:46)

Patheos Daily Reflections August 8: When Life Takes a Swat at You (August 8, 2013) Daily Reflections @ Patheos Catholic

Dialogue of the Dogs by Sergio Bermudez EADEM MUTATA RESERGIO

 12/15 -7/16
 Cultural Catholicism tends to refer to a subset of people that hold tenuous ties to Catholicism, but don’t attend church or agree with doctrine. I would go further and say those that attend Church and don’t actually believe the teachings also can fall into this category. To put it another way, they are nonbelievers that merely embrace Catholicism in the most superficial way. They might go to mass on Easter, Christmas if at all. Some fast on Lenten Fridays, but more out of habit than actual understanding (or maybe they just love the deals on Fish). I point to this group of people not to shame them or ostracize them, but to point out there is a stranger problem that permeates this term. If Catholicism is merely just the idea that one maintains basic precepts at best, or just loves the imagery of the faith, then we are all at fault here.

The faith should extend beyond prayer before meals, and an hour on Sundays. Beyond the philosophers and theologians, there must be a larger more inclusive understanding of Catholicism that extends beyond just liking prominent well-known Catholic authors. In short, the world must be viewed through a Catholic lens and themes and images must be sought, rescued, and rehabilitated. This doesn’t just mean artists, we are called to live out our faith and do more than just go to mass on Sundays.
Sergio Bermudez Catholic Culture is more important now than ever (March 12, 2016) Dialogue of the Dogs @ Patheos Catholic

Feast of Eden by Dawn Eden Saints and spiritual healing

9/12 – 8/14
Now at The Dawn Patrol - Dawn Eden Goldstein
GoodReads Profile

When I, as an abuse survivor, encounter Jesus’s passion as I worship at Mass, I do so through the very same mental faculty through which I harbor the memories that are a source of my own passion. But whereas my passion is ongoing (for my memories of past trauma are always part of me, even if I am not bringing them to mind at a given moment), Jesus’s passion has come to a definitive end with his death and resurrection. And I likewise encounter Jesus’s death and resurrection at every Mass, dying with him and rising with him.

Thus, if in worship I encounter Jesus’s death and resurrection through my memory just as I encounter his passion through my memory, then my own memory cannot end with my own passion. It has to continue with my rebirth in Christ—the renewal that began with my own baptism and is intensified with each encounter with him, which will culminate one day in my own resurrection and divinization.

Dawn Eden Goldstein, S.Th.D., aka Dawn Eden Healing Through the Liturgy: Insights from Vatican II (January 27, 2020) The Dawn Patrol

God is still speaking the world into existence; He is still speaking His own very Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity onto every Catholic church’s altar. And He is doing it in the words of consecration, the words that he spoke nearly two thousand years ago, in a voice that transcends time, an unbroken chain passed from generation to generation by the laying on of hands.

Have you seen how the entire world all but disappears for a split second at the consecration of the Host at Mass? It happens very quickly, and if you blink you will miss it. Everything in the created universe is revealed to be hanging as though suspended, as though the fabric of reality were as fragile as a bubble dangling from a leaf. The only thing that is fully real, fully true, fully grounded, is the elevated Host and the words pouring from the priest’s lips that telescope time and space to the Last Supper.

Dawn Eden Reflecting on the still, small voice that sustains us (September 3, 2013) Feast of Eden @ Patheos Catholic

Lisa Hendey

10/12 -8/15
Now at LisaHendey.com | Author & Speaker & Missionary Disciple
GoodReads Profile

I pondered the possibility of adding one more spinning plate on the top of a stick to my balancing act. Could I do it? Maybe. But one of the things that kept nagging at me was the “tone” of my work — I’m not a controversy hound. I tend to err on the side of “niceness”, perhaps to a fault. Combox wars make my skin crawl and keep me up at night. So what on earth could I possibly contribute to a place like Patheos, where the conversation is intelligent, current, and never pulls any punches? Elizabeth’s assurances that I don’t need to try to blog boldly like Mark Shea or to be as holy and wise as Deacon Greg Kandra put some of those fears to rest.

So while I still love a good conversation about “how on earth to get your two year old to sit through Mass“, I’m ready to take on a few new topics too.

I like to give. I love sharing the good news about authors, musicians, and just generally cool people doing totally awesome stuff to share their faith. I like my life to be full of adventure, of loved ones and of busyness. My “measure” is ready to be packed together to make room for a bit more goodness. Its ready to be shaken down to welcome new friends, new thoughts, and new memories. I welcome that moment of overflowing, and invite you to join me in considering the possibilities of “yes” when the logical option is “no”. Guess what: He will provide, according to His plan, not Lisa’s.

Unimaginable gifts have already been given me, so abundant that I sometimes marvel at my life. How is it possible? Don’t ask me. But Luke’s exhortation to “Give and gifts will be given to you” sometimes feels like the theme of my life. I don’t give nearly enough to ever merit what I’ve been given, but I’ll keep trying.

Our call — each of ours — to be a part of the New Evangelization doesn’t come based upon our talents or abilities. It’s universal. We have the greatest gift ever to give: our faith in a God who loves us so unconditionally and a Church who — despite her flaws — acts every day to draw us closer in relationship with Jesus Christ and with one another. I’m thrilled to have this little corner of Patheos to do my best to share the joy (and occasional frustration) I find in being a Catholic.

Lisa M. Hendey A Good Measure (October 14, 2012)   Lisa M. Hendey @ Patheos Catholic

The Skeptical Catholic by Matthew Miller

1/16 -4/16
 At the risk of greatly oversimplifying the history of the Christological controversies, we might say that people tended to err theologically in detecting and resolving contradictions (such as ‘Jesus is fully human’ and ‘Jesus is fully divine’) where in fact there was no such contradiction.  It is very understandable how someone might see a contradiction here.  The affirmation that Jesus is fully human seems to imply that he could not be fully divine.  For those of us with centuries of doctrinal development and theological reflection at our fingertips the answer (hypostatic union, communicatio idiomatum, etc., etc.) seems obvious enough.  This is an illusion fostered by our vantage point several centuries on.  We need to step out of our privileged place in ecclesiastical history, fire up our imaginations, and place ourselves in the awful mess of the theological controversies of the 4th and 5th centuries.
Matthew Miller A plea for a measure of incoherence (April 24, 2016) Matthew Miller @ Patheos Catholic

Through the Threshold by Scott Beauchamp

4/16 -2/17
Author of Did You Kill Anyone?: Reunderstanding My Military Experience as a Critique of Modern Culture

 One thing about Saint Thomas’ thought requires you to understand ideally all of the rest of it, but certainly a lot more than just the atomized section you’re looking at.
Scott Beauchamp Saint Thomas, Acedia, And Taedium Operandi (August 17, 2016) Through the Threshold @ Patheos Catholic

I spent some time in County Kerry, in the extreme Southwest of the country. It was like a cold jade rainforest, completely denuded of trees. I saw a stone fortress built 2,000 years ago. With my finger I traced circles that had been carved into stones 5,000 years ago. And I walked the ruins of the Derrynane Abbey, technically on an island, and only accessible by a bridge of beach.

In these places the horrors of history felt pierced by an elusive and transcendent permanence. The wind and water were slowly melting the rock away, but it was all held within a cohesive eternity that gave the grinding gears of nature an order and coherence that I felt (temporarily) attuned to. And I’m grateful.
“Concepts create idols; only wonder understands anything.”
― Gregory of Nyssa
Scott Beauchamp In From The Wilderness (May 13, 2016) Through the Threshold @ Patheos Catholic

Time and the Mystery by Michael Mangione

 11/15 -1/17
https://www.mikemangione.com/podcast
So, in place of the old, tired adage, I shall suggest the following: If you make a mistake (or if you fall down), do not make the mistake of not seizing the opportunity. This will make you what you are: Perfectly human, perfectly imperfect. Your life will be a work of art; your greatest creation.
Ego sum mea culpa – “I am my own fault”
Michael Mangione On the road with Tom (July 2012) https://mikemangione.com/blog Patheos Blog: Time and the Mystery 

2011

Columns at Patheos

 After Manresa by Matt Emerson

Now at Matt Emerson
Book: Why Faith?: A Journey of Discovery (2016) by Matt Emerson

What is WebMD Catholicism? I use that term, first, to reflect the fact that we have thousands of documents, statements, books, letters and other publications that give the average lay Catholic tremendous knowledge concerning all branches of Catholic theology and worship. Want to understand the Church's position on love? Read Deus Caritas Est. Want to know about mortal and venial sin? Check the Catechism. Want to know how American Catholic Bishops treat marriage and family? Navigate to usccb.org. Want to question the Bishop's decision on the distribution of communion? Consult the General Instruction of the Roman Missal.
In addition to official Church teaching, there are limitless blogs and other forums where people are speaking about, on, or on behalf of Catholicism. Patheos alone features a total of twenty columns and blogs on the Catholic portal (including four added in the past two months). Jennifer Fulwiler links - last time I checked - to 53 other blogs under the heading "Faith and Life." The National Catholic Register features ten bloggers, Commonweal 24 and America 23. And that is only a tiny portion of the thousands more out there.
Matt Emerson The Rise of WebMD Catholicism (November 03, 2011) After Manresa @ Patheos Catholic

The wisdom of mystery, of being okay with not knowing, is a lesson always worth remembering. So much of the good of the spiritual life comes from the unexpected, from surprise, from moments we could not have planned or scheduled. When I visited Manresa and Montserrat, key places in the conversion of St. Ignatius, I sat there imagining how he must have felt, and what I thought was, He could not have known. He could not have known what he was getting into. He could not have known what would happen when he set out from Manresa -- that he would end up in Paris, meeting a few friends and forming the Society of Jesus, and creating one of the most consequential religious orders in world history. He let himself be led into the unknown; he let his life be a poem. And that, I often think, is what characterizes the life of a saint.
Matt Emerson The good of not knowing (October 21, 2015) After Manresa @ Patheos Catholic

A Book of Sparks by Heather King,

Now at HEATHER KING | ARTS, CULTURE, DIVINE INTOXICATION
Heather’s Books

Reading for me is a whole kinetic mind-body experience. If the book is mine, I turn down pages, underline, scrawl notes, arguments, insults. I spill coffee and crumbs. When I finish a book I like, it's often bristling with little neon Post-Its, at which point I sit down and copy out (i.e., type) the quotes and passages that have struck me. That alone is a rudimentary form of "communication" with the author, a kind of paying homage by way of the effort required to copy out his or her words, to re-experience and more deeply absorb and imprint them upon my memory/soul.
You can't rest an iPad in a comforting little tent on your chest as you lean back and muse. You can't use an iPad as a makeshift pillow when you're lying on the grass and decide to take a nap in the sun. You can't prop up the leg of a desk, or hold down the corner of your beach towel when you run in to take a dip, or press leaves or ferns or wild violets between the pages of a Kindle. You can't surround yourself with e-books and thereby help make a cozy den redolent of civilization, the wisdom of the ages, God.
And how are we to size up a potential friend if we can't scan his or her bookshelves?
Heather King, And Then There Were Books (May 24, 2011) A Book of Sparks @ Patheos Catholic

The long answer is that Catholicism is a radical search for the truth. We don't hear nearly enough that grace costs. We don't hear nearly enough that to follow Christ more or less means being poor. We're not called to live in destitution but we're clearly called to not own much more than we can use, which is really not all that much. We're called to poverty, chastity, and obedience. And what I've found is that these are the most exciting, challenging states possible! They lead to a kind of freedom and a state of being awake is completely lacking in our narcotic culture.
I lost my marriage in part because I converted. I quit my job as a lawyer because I converted. I'm not sure I lost friends, but I may have lost a certain closeness with certain friends. That Catholicism is constantly misinterpreted, misunderstood, maligned, scorned, despised, spat upon I can accept. What bothers me more is the view of Catholicism as mindless eccentricity.
Heather King Freak for Christ: The Cost of Conversion (May 03, 2011)  A Book of Sparks @ Patheos Catholic

Catholic Being by Kathy Coffey

Now at Kathy Coffey | Catholic Speaker, Writer, Poet,
Kathy’s Books

While it may seem contradictory, placing community and solitude together here shows that the roomy house of Christian spirituality isn't a simplistic either/or, but a place for both/and. We need solos and we need a full chorus. The tradition has always emphasized the value of silence, entering into the stillness of our hearts to find God. If we fear silence, we risk becoming shallow or fickle, never quite sure what we believe or who we are.

Kathy Coffey A Spirituality Smorgasbord of Styles (September 20, 2011) Catholic Being @ Patheos Catholic

If we think of Jesus as floating amiably three feet above earth, never dirtying his hands or his garments, always surrounded by a golden aura and enjoying a perpetual serenity, the gospels quickly correct that image. John 6, for instance, tells of Jesus crossing the Sea of Galilee, followed by a large crowd. Tired and hungry, he sits down to rest with his friends. But guess what? A large, demanding, hungry crowd invades their privacy.

Some of us would run the other way. But Jesus asks Philip where to buy bread to feed them. That leads to the miraculous feeding of five thousand. Afterwards, realizing the people want to make him king, Jesus "withdrew again to the mountain by himself" (15).

That alternation between action and prayer seems to be a constant rhythm in his life. He never says, "Today I fed five thousand, or cured a leper. I don't need to pray." Or, "Those Pharisees are really stressing me out! No prayer today!" He seems to draw the strength and energy for draining work from life-giving times apart with his Father. As regularly as we feed our bodies, he feeds his soul. And if he who was God needed such nourishment, how much more do we!

Kathy Coffey Stress: A Pathway to Prayer? (July 26, 2011) Catholic Being @ Patheos Catholic

Guided Sight by Marcia Morrissey
 All Christians can use the examen; his exercise of "prayerful mindfulness" at the end of the day focuses us on the awareness of God's constant presence and His direction in our daily lives. If we are paying attention, God can subtly move us through ordinary experiences, seeing Him in those "aha" moments.

 Marcia Morrissey The Conscience and the Examen (February 03, 2012) Guided Sight @ Patheos Catholic

 

 Epiphany is one of the earliest Christian feasts, dating to the 3rd century, and its name comes from a Greek verb that means "to reveal." In the eastern Catholic and Orthodox traditions it is called "Theophany"—the revelation of God to man. The feast began in the east, and almost from the beginning has been universally celebrated on January 6. The Nativity was eventually made into a separate feast that begins in the evening between December 24 and Christmas Day the 25th.

Epiphany can sometimes get lost in the shuffle, and after Christmas and New Year's is often forgotten. Contrary to the idea of the "Christmas season" beginning in the weeks prior—which is really Advent, the time to prepare and reflect—and ending on Christmas Day, or at the very least by New Year's, Christmastide actually begins with the celebration of the Nativity; the twelve days of Christmas follow, ending the season with Epiphany. In the western Church the celebration of the baptism of Christ follows right after. These Epiphanies are separate holy days, but linked as revelations of Christ to us.

In many countries of Europe Epiphany is as important as Christmas, and gifts are actually opened that day in remembrance of the wise men's gifts to the Christ child. In some northern countries, smaller gifts are given each of the twelve days of Christmas with the main celebration on Epiphany, January 6.

Other epiphanies, in addition to the wise men from the east coming to pay homage to the baby Jesus and thus revealing Him to all nations of the earth, include: the angels' message to the shepherds, who represent Israel, announcing that the Messiah has been born in Bethlehem; Jesus' baptism, where God the Father's voice is heard declaring that Jesus is His Son; and the wedding feast at Cana, when Jesus is revealed as divine with His first miracle turning water into wine.

Marcia Morrissey Bringing Our Own Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh (January 06, 2012) Guided Sight @ Patheos Catholic

A Word In Season by Pat Gohn
 now at Pat Gohn — Writer, Speaker, Catechist

 Family prayer passes on the faith. Through it, faith is both caught and taught. Moreover, family prayer reminds our children that faith is not about what we say we know, but who we know. Prayer is an act of love, a conduit of grace that welcomes God in our midst, and aligns us in right relationship with Him and one another.

We take our example for family prayer from the Mass—the ultimate family prayer—where the entire family of God prays at the Sunday Eucharist. From this worship we are called to serve our own families—to make our homes a domestic church, as Vatican II suggested. This entails not only Sunday attendance, but also creating our families to become a school of prayer for our youngest members, and sturdy shelter of prayer for those who are older.

Pat Gohn Synod on the Family? Let us Pray, Please! (July 07, 2014) A Word In Season @ Patheos Catholic

 

Other Patheos Channels And Catholics who moved There

A Contemplative Faith by Carl McColman

 12/04 – Present @ Contemplative
10/13 -4/18 Catholic Channel
His Books  His Website

There’s a reason why Benedictine monks have as their motto Ora et Labora, which means “prayer and work.” Physical labor is a meaningful and valuable way to keep the body strong, and the mind focused on something other than its own interior drama. Even a task as simple as mowing the lawn or mopping the floor can help us remain grounded and stable. Kahlil Gibran said “Work is love made visible” — likewise, labora is ora made visible.
Carl McColman Is Contemplation Dangerous? (January 20, 2016) A Contemplative Faith @ Patheos Catholic

The Irish word for contemplation — or contemplative prayer — is rinnfheitheamh. Yes, that’s a mouthful! I only have enough Irish to be dangerous, and the pronunciation of Irish depends on which of several dialects you’re speaking, but to the best of my knowledge the pronunciation is something like RINN-eh-hev.
So why such a big word, for such a simple concept? To answer that question, let’s take rinnfheitheamh apart.
Rinn means a point or a tip, as in the sharp point of a sword. Fheitheamh means “waiting.”
So a literal translation of rinnfheitheamh would be “at the edge of waiting.”
Which could easily be the most evocative and useful word for contemplation I’ve ever come across, in any language.

Remember, Celtic spirituality is the spirituality of the edge of the world. It’s the spirituality that stands on windswept rocky shores, gazing westward to the open, stormy sea. It acknowledges that “edge” place in our hearts where time meets eternity, where words fade off into silence, and where heaven silently gazes into the turmoil of earthly life.
And we are always invited to gaze back, to gaze out of the chaos and the tensions and the paradoxes of our lives, into the silence, into the deep waters of eternity.
 Carl McColman At the Edge of Waiting — A Celtic Approach to Contemplation (June 9, 2017) A Contemplative Faith @ Patheos Catholic

Indeed, my other favorite word for contemplation is a Hebrew word for silence, found only four times in the Hebrew scriptures, and always in the Psalms. That word is dûmiyyāh (דּוּמִיָּה), which means not only silence but a kind of repose, a kind of still waiting. We find it in Psalm 62, in the line “For God alone, my soul in silence waits.”

When we pray at the edge of waiting, silence becomes a surgical scalpel to carefully remove our attachments to transitory pleasures or addictive compulsions. The silence of waiting sets us free — but it doesn’t do so violently or instantaneously. That’s where the “waiting” part comes in.
We pray at the edge of waiting when we bring our patience into the silence, trusting that the roots and thorns of our graspings and our anxieties must be slowly and gently pruned away, measured by a process of unraveling that opens us up according to the leisure of eternity, not the relentless ticking of terrestrial time. And yet, this waiting, this silence, this edge of prayer is something we live into breath by breath, heartbeat by heartbeat, instant by instant.
Carl McColman At the Edge of Waiting — A Celtic Approach to Contemplation (June 9, 2017) A Contemplative Faith @ Patheos Catholic

Sister Rose at the Movies by Sister Rose On Entertainment Channel

10/03 – Present
Bibliography

Our current American culture presents another paradox: differing religious moral codes that call themselves Christian. Publicists, whose target audience is the evangelical community, organized the screening I attended. Evangelicals were in attendance as well as veterans. A former military chaplain was present in case any of the vets needed to talk.
The publicist triumphantly announced that due to negative feedback about the film’s language from test audiences in the evangelical community the filmmakers edited out every single bad word in the film. There was a small reaction rather than cheers to this statement because I think the veterans knew this was ridiculous or she embarrassed them because they actually used such language. It was such a surreal, weird moment for me. I wanted to tell her: You can look at horrific battle scenes, limbs being torn off, heads exploding, blood and extreme suffering everywhere — and an occasional swear word offends you? Don’t you think that your value system is a tad skewed if you believe that God is more offended by bad words uttered in the worst of circumstances than reality-defying violence and war?  ….

Sister Rose ‘Hacksaw Ridge,’ for all its heroism and love, remains a paradox (November 3, 2016) Sister Rose at the Movies @ Entertainment Channel

Fellow bloggers: blog on! Because we, and the blogs we write and communicate through, are relevant, increasingly so because people are reading them. Well, at least, they are stopping to look around and may read something!
This relevance status can always change because technology is dynamic and always developing. But the Internet today is the vast neighborhood with micro communities where people go for information, inspiration and entertainment. It’s the hub of connectivity.
But then, if the Zombies are right (as my sister thinks they are) the grid is about to go down and all our blogs will ever have done, hopefully, is inspire people to be disciples of Jesus, to be the change they want to see in the world – and tell great stories around the campfires.
Sister Rose Top 300 Christian Blogs for Ministry – check it out and blog on (before the zombie apocalypse) (April 29, 2014) Sister Rose at the Movies @ Entertainment Channel

Flannery O’Connor is a beacon of light and sanity in the contested world of art and theology. “Writers who see by the light of their Christian faith will have, in these times, the sharpest eye for the grotesque, for the perverse, and for the unacceptable,” O’Connor said. “To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.” (“The fiction writer and his country” in Mystery & Manners: Occasional Prose, 1970)
Sister Rose Listening to Flannery O’Connor (July 1, 2012) Sister Rose at the Movies @ Entertainment Channel

The Past

The Pickled Pencil @ Patheos Faith and Work  A Free-Wheeling Blog on Faith, Economics, and Everything in Between

Suffering doesn’t always lead to creative work, but I doubt creative work is possible without it, even in small doses. I remember, as a student, complaining about those contemptible compulsory attendance laws. No teacher ever acknowledge the plain truth – that school is, indeed, a “sentence” and that miserable students are justified in their feelings. The important point, then, is how do we respond to that frustration? There isn’t a correct answer to this question, but Martin Luther King Jr. gives us a heroic example.

Brandon Harnish The Prison Sentence of the American Student (October 10, 2016) The Pickled Pencil @ Patheos Faith and Work

I hope this post serves to demonstrate how and why some thinking Christians have come to a different conclusion, based on scripture and using reason and tradition, that is different from the conclusion that Christians who are politically conservative have come to.

I hope that I have written respectfully enough (and biblically enough) that, even if they would not agree with me, she and those who agree with her would be willing to consider my perspective and recognize that it is at least as biblically-based as hers.

And I would, of course, hope just a little bit that they would come to see things my way.

David Schell Is Socialism Biblical?  (March 12, 2016) The Pickled Pencil @ Patheos Faith and Work

I long for a forum in which people of differing ideological perspectives can talk to each other, and it seems that our society has fewer and fewer of those. We all tend to preach to the choir–the left as well as the right. And we need to find ways of breaking out of that pattern.

Edwin Woodruff Tait Preaching to the choir? (July 4, 2016) The Pickled Pencil @ Patheos Faith and Work

[In what’s bound to shake the Catholic blogosphere to its foundations, OnePeterFive founder and executive director Steve Skojec announced this morning he is moving his popular site to the Patheos Catholic Portal.
“After months of careful deliberation, I have accepted an offer extended by Sam Rocha, editor of Patheos Catholic, to have 1Peter5 hosted at the world’s largest religious website. I am excited about expanding 1P5’s reach. I look forward to joining his well-established team of talented writers. I’m humbled that my little ol’ blog is considered worthy to be published along side such luminaries as The Divine Wedgie, Jappers and Janglers, and Daffey Thoughts.
“I’m sure many of my readers will be surprised by this move,” he continued, “but they’re ultra-faithful followers, totally dedicated to my cause, and they will continue to read me. You will read 1Peter5.”

Catholic Conspiracy

For days, the film and the epistle swirled simultaneously through my mind, while sudsing down dishes and babies or folding laundry.  The scene that stands out the most is of a grown daughter extending mercy to her dad, one who had failed her countless times in the most basic of ways but whom she cherishes nonetheless.  It’s a scene synonymous with the film’s message, which happens to be St. Paul’s timeless treatise as well:  The greatest of these is love, because it is.
Sarah Johnson Watching the Glass Castle With St. Paul (August 25, 2017) Backstage Pass (Patheos) Inside the Movie and Music News

My boys carried their banner of the Child in the March for Life. When they returned home, they hung it on our living room wall in a spot that competes with the computer screen. It’s a breathtaking painting. I researched the artist but could only find “Italian / Unknown.” And now this “Italian / Unknown” is among a handful of sojourners I hope to meet in heaven. Will he be skinny and slumped with the strong smell of oil paint on his skin? Will he tell me his model was his grandson, who had the face of an angel?
Sarah Johnson Thy Kingdom Come: Reflecting on What Really Matters (February 2, 2017) OnePeterFive

Sarah Johnson & Aleteia.org, Catholic Digest Catholic Exchange and Shalom Tidings

Also known as Sarah Robsdottir

 Website at sarahrobsdottir