Even the Devils Believe

Yesterday, someone posted a link to this detailed article on liturgical colors. (I hope it shows up on technorati soon, because I can’t remember who posted it!) It is geared primarily toward the Sarum Rite colors now in revival in Anglican settings, among many others. The Sarum Rite’s use of blue for Advent is becoming [...]

I recently discovered, rather happily, that the Washington National Cathedral has on its website streaming video of many of its programs — recently they posted video of Barbara Brown Taylor talking about her new book, for instance. (I’ve never heard her preach before, but that short program online is pretty incredible.)
I’ve been spending the last [...]

Camassia has a great post today with some important nuts-and-bolts suggestions for churches to be better about making people feel welcome at church. Her rumination begins with something very interesting, though — the question of open communion, about which she says, “As I said on her blog, my own experience with churches is that their [...]

About two weeks ago, Tobias Haller, BSG, posted an excellent entry on Christian unity in the face of disagreement over the law and standards of conduct. I recommend it highly as a commentary on the struggles we are now (as always) experiencing over divisive issues of local practice:
To use Alisdair MacIntyre’s telling imagery, What deep [...]

I can’t remember who first told me about With God in Russia, the memoir of American Jesuit Walter Ciszek, who spent fifteen years in the Soviet Union in prison, prison camps, and on parole — I believe one of the Jesuit bloggers mentioned it some time ago. Fr Ciszek was the first American priest ordained [...]

Over the weekend I finished Urban Holmes’ Ministry and Imagination following a brief detour through Hannah Arendt’s On Violence. (More on Arendt later this week.)
I really think Holmes has a great deal to say to the whole church catholic, but especially to the Independent Catholic movement. His work is located on the dividing line between [...]

Things are starting to settle down around the house — some of our new furniture finally showed up, we’ve unpacked some DVDs, and I’m starting to have the time to spend some quality time in the kitchen. (Tried my hand at gelato tonight — we’ll see how it turns out in the ice cream machine [...]

Around the time I launched the About Independent Catholicism site, John Plummer mentioned to me that he and Fr John Mabry of Grace North Church had a new book on the movement coming out. Entitled Who Are the Independent Catholics?: An Introduction to the Independent and Old Catholic Churches, the main text is about 50 [...]

Sr Steph posts a useful reminder for us all from today’s Epistle reading:
Brothers and sisters:
Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God,
with which you were sealed for the day of redemption.
All bitterness, fury, anger, shouting, and reviling
must be removed from you, along with all malice.
And be kind to one another, compassionate,
forgiving one another as God [...]

Wrapping up my series on the introduction to Urban Holmes’ Ministry and Imagination, I’d like to deal with the final reaction he identifies to the crisis in ministry — the retreat into professionalism:
I have written on professionalism at considerable length in The Future Shape of Ministry. My discomfort with the paradigm grows. This is largely [...]