Even the Devils Believe

Hi all,
I arrived in Paris a couple of days ago but have been on the run non-stop. A lot of France is on holiday right now, but those of us who are in the office are working full steam, and that’s not leaving a lot of time for blogging. So I’m going to [...]

I’m getting ready to leave for France tomorrow — first work, then vacation. Sue is flying to London early next week to visit a good friend, whose daughter (now a toddler) we still haven’t seen in person; she’ll join me in Paris next Friday. I should be blogging next week, but will take [...]

I watched the Democratic primary debate on CNN last night. It was interesting — the format, which had ordinary Americans asking questions of the candidates via YouTube videos, worked quite well. It did leave me wondering why CNN’s journalists find themselves incapable of asking the kind of tough questions YouTube users asked, but [...]

Yesterday was the first anniversary of my ordination — I was ordained to the priesthood on the feast of St Mary Magdalene last year. I celebrated by going to church and watching a Cubs game. (The Cubs lost, naturally. We fans are used to it.)
I am celebrating the feast of the [...]

Fr Tobias Haller has an out-of-the-park post today on the doctrinal unsoundness of the argument against women’s ordination. The first part of the post deals specifically with an argument in Inter Insigniores, now more than three decades old, about the need for the priest-as-sign to be “perceptible” to the people:
Leaving aside the fact that [...]

Inspired by Derek’s Office of the Dead from his trial liturgies page, which adapted the traditional Office of the Dead for the Book of Common Prayer using Rite I language, I recently put together a booklet of materials for the Office and Eucharist using Rite II language. Unfortunately, I’ve had occasion to pray the [...]

How’s that for a fun title?
In the wake of the recent Vatican document discussing their belief that the Church of Christ subsists in the Roman Catholic Church, headed by the Pope, I’ve been thinking a bit about the papacy. I’ve had confused thoughts on the matter ever since Benedict went to [...]

A couple of quick notes about the blog to clarify some things that have been going on on the technical side.
Lately, I have not been getting 100% of the notifications I should be getting about new comments and so forth. So if I don’t respond in a timely way, please drop me an email [...]

I had a rare opportunity last week to really sit down with an agnostic friend and talk about his objections to Christianity as he has experienced it. It’s not really a natural kind of evangelism for me — I’m more of the St Francis, “use words if necessary” type — but it was a [...]

In light of the recent document released by the Roman church about ecumenism and the term “Church”, I thought I’d revisit a contentious issue from last year. Back then, I commented on a trend among Indies of posting notices on parish and jurisdiction websites claiming recognition of our orders by Rome, based on a [...]