Category: Catholicism

Praying for Osama

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I meant to post this blog entry a long time ago, but it became one of the many posts to hide itself away in my Drafts folder. I came across it yesterday and, given the recent horrific events in Connecticut, I thought it was an appropriate time to finally post it.

An unusual prayer request

Back in May of 2011, there was a great stir after a parishioner of a parish in Florida requested a Mass to be said for the soul of Osama Bin Laden.

Osama Bin Laden

This request caused all kinds of uproar among other parishioners:

“I think it’s totally wrong, he doesn’t belong in the Catholic religion. For what he did to Americans, he doesn’t belong anywhere…”

“It’s unconscionable, it’s sacrilegious…”

While I can understand the gut reaction of those who objected to this proposed Mass intention, how compatible are these statements with the Catholic faith?

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Les Miserables. Go see it now.

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It has come to my attention that not yet everyone has gone to see the newly released movie Les Miserables…

I find this unacceptable. If this is you, please turn off your computer and go to the cinema straight away. Seriously, what are you waiting for? Power down and go watch it now.  Don’t worry, we’ll wait for you until you come back…

[Three hours later]

I know, I know, you’re welcome…  Wasn’t that wonderful?! Aren’t you glad you watched it? You cried your eyes out too, didn’t you? 😉 Now that you’ve seen the movie, I’ll feel free to continue with spoilers…

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Growing in understanding

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Question: “How do we grow in knowledge and understanding of Scripture?”
Answer: “Ask more questions”.

If you want to grow in knowledge and understanding of anything, asking questions is a great way to go about it! The sure and true way to stagnate in anything is to simply be satisfied with your current level of development and understanding and let yourself slowly atrophy.

So, if you want to grow in your knowledge and understanding of Scripture, ask questions about it! If you read a passage which contains lots of things in it that you don’t understand, get a good study Bible, find a Bible geek and keep asking questions until you’re satisfied with the answers!

Hippolytus Of Rome…Saint and Anti-Pope

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Hippolytus was an Early Church Father who lived in 3rd Century Rome and the story of his life is a particularly colourful one. He was the first Anti-Pope of the Catholic Church, setting himself up as Bishop of Rome in competition with with Pope Callixtus, and later with his successors Urban and Pontianus.

Yet, despite all this, we also call him Saint Hippolytus. How did the first Anti-Pope also manage to be declared a Saint of the Catholic Church? Good Question! Jimmy Akin has the Catholic answer…

Quite some time ago in the JP2 Group we read through Apostolic Tradition, a work attributed to St. Hippolytus. I have just finished recording the text onto MP3:


Apostolic Tradition – St. Hippolytus of Rome

Many thanks to the members of the JP2 Group for being my congregation! 😉

Five (hundred) Gold Rings!

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barnyDuring this Advent and Christmas season, everyone became engaged or got married.

Okay, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration…but only a bit! Seriously, there were a lot of engagements. It seemed like every day Facebook was announcing yet another one. During one particular twenty-four hour period, four new engagements were announced!

All this is wonderful news, of course. It’s great to see so many of my male friends, both in America and England, manning up, getting down on one knee and popping the question. For the last few weeks my News Stream has been filled with lots of happy pictures 🙂

As the number of engagements and weddings increased I thought about doing something here on the blog to mark the occasion. I’ve written a little bit about marriage before, but mainly focusing on the theological dimension and the exhortations of the Early Church Fathers. This time I wanted to share something of value concerning the day-to-day life in a Christian marriage, some advice on how to lead one another to Heaven and to keep God at the centre of the marriage as the “third strand”.

However, given that I’m not married myself, I don’t think I’m really in a position to give this advice! So I’ve decided to outsource this post, turning it over to my friends who are already married! I am also going to email my married friends and ask them this question:

As a Christian spouse, what piece of advice would you give all my friends who are committing to marriage?

Please comment below…

UPDATE: I put all the advice together into this post here, Wise Words for Newlyweds.

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