Even the Devils Believe

When we got back from Philadelphia two weekends ago, we found something a bit troubling:

This is the remains of the bowl that held Mahler and Tomato’s Fancy Feast — which is basically junk food for cats. They get it as a reward now and again. While we were gone, they decided they deserved [...]

Today is the Commemoration of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. For me as an Augustinian, this is sort of a captivating feast, deeply connected to a number of themes that were a part of my oblate formation. There’s this tremendous interplay between the sense that our own sin pierced Jesus’ heart (at Vespers: [...]

Last week, USA Today treated us again to the “demographic theory” of mainline Protestantism’s decline. The Lead took up the refrain on Saturday.
But sociologists led by Michael Hout, at the University of California-Berkeley, have found that the problem for the mainliners is not that people are souring on their theology and ideology and defecting to [...]

I’m not going to be talking here about feminist Christianity (though obviously that has been a significant part of my formation). Rather, I wanted to address this story in the context of a significant value of feminism as I’ve received it and strive to pass it on.
Feminism for me and many others is predicated [...]

Jane has a post up at the Episcopal Cafe about reclaiming the Sabbath, exploring issues like overscheduling and the ways we are more “of the world” than not when it comes to time. It’s a great post, definitely worth a read.
It’s not a silver bullet to solve this problem — far from it — [...]

Scott Wells shared this with me by email — the Scottish Episcopal Church has a ton of liturgical materials available in PDF and Word format on their website. There’s the basic stuff you’d expect — their most recent Book of Common Prayer (called Scottish Liturgy) in English, for instance. But they also have a [...]

From NLM comes the news that the Community of St Martin, Solesmes, and others have gotten together to finally produce a Latin antiphonal for the Liturgy of the Hours. More information is available here.
As usual, the comments at NLM contain some useful background information from Fr Augustine Thompson, OP — I’ve learned most of [...]

As I mentioned earlier this week, we’re basically moved in and settled in DC finally. I’ve spent a lot of the week running errands to make sure we have everything.
So far, the cats have enjoyed the move. First, here is a picture of Tomato in the old apartment, sitting on one of the [...]

I just got back from a great lunch with the Rev. Scott Wells, of Boy in the Bands fame. Getting to meet so many bloggers and others folks I’ve known online for years is one of my favorite parts of traveling, and this summer in DC should be unusually good in that regard. (Lee, [...]

Thinking Anglicans is reporting that nearly half of the women clergy in England have signed a forceful statement of support for the consecration of women bishops — provided further “flying bishop” hedges not be attached:
We believe that it should be possible for women to be consecrated as bishops, but not at any price. The price [...]