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brett: "kvs, there is vast amount of classic art that would be almost as difficult to appreciate as it's modern equivalent. The classic western art aesthetic…"
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cherryl: "my question is what church if any follows the apoysials doctrien? I have read to be baptised in the name of jesus. but the ones that do so, seem to…"
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Ales Rarus
A Rare Bird, A Strange Duck, One Funky Blog
random thought of the moment:
Power may justly be compared to a great river. While kept within its due bounds it is both beautiful and useful. But when it overflows its banks, it is then too impetuous to be stemmed; it bears down all before it, and brings destruction and desolation wherever it comes. If, then, this is the nature of power, let us at least do our duty, and like wise men who value freedom use our utmost care to support liberty, the only bulwark against lawless power, which in all ages has sacrificed to its wild lust and boundless ambition the blood of the best men that ever lived….
— , The Trial of John Peter Zenger [1735]
Christianity
Marriage, Sex, and Childrearing
Since both Funky Dung and Jerry have recently entered the world of parenthood, I thought it fitting that my first guest post for this blog should discuss parenthood – specifically, attitudes toward parenthood in different religious groups.
When the Shoe is on the Other Foot
Recent events in Grand Island, Nebraska, should illustrate for many Christians exactly why many of us object to official accommodation of their religious beliefs. First, Muslim employees at a meat packing plant there complained that workplace policies prevented them from participating correctly in Ramadan. Here is what happened next:
The Grand Island plant and United Food […]
Bishop to Celebrate Mass for the Catholic Medical Association
For all those Pittsburghers in medicine, nursing, dentistry and other healthcare fields (which is probably a good chunk of the population), please mark this on your calendars:Sunday, September 21, 2008Mass @ 9:00 a.m., Holy Family Chapel, UPMC-Mercy HospitalBishop David A. Zubik, D.D. - Main Celebrant […]
In Search of Catholic “To Kill a Mockingbird”
I met my wife three years ago in northern Quebec, and at the time she could barely speak English and I could barely speak French. Now that we are both proficient in each other’s language, one of the great joys of our married life has been to introduce each other to the […]
Liturgy Is For God

“There were practical reasons for the fact that [the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy] was the first [of Vatican II]. Yet looking back, we have to say that this made good sense in terms of the structure of the Council as a whole: worship, adoration, comes first. And thus God does….The Constitution on the Church, which then followed as the Council’s second text, should be seen as being inwardly bracketed together with it. The Church derives from adoration, from the task of glorifying God. Ecclesiology, of its nature, has to do with liturgy. And so it is logical, too, that the third Constitution talks about the Word of God, which calls the Church together and is at all times renewing her. The Fourth Constitution shows how the glory of God presents itself in an ethos, how the light we have received from God is carried out into the world, how only thus can God be fully glorified. In the period following the Council, of course, the Constitution on the Liturgy was understood, no longer on the basis of this fundamental primacy of adoration, but quite simply as a recipe book concerned with what we can do with the liturgy. In the meantime many liturgical experts, rushing into consideration about how we can shape the liturgy in a more attractive way, to communicate better, so as to get more and more people actively involved, have apparently quite lost sight of the fact that the liturgy is actually ‘done’ for God and not for ourselves. The more we do it for ourselves, however, the less it attracts people, because everyone can clearly sense that what is essential is increasingly eluding us.”
-Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger in Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith: The Church as Communion.
