Occasionally, weep deeply
This John Piper quotation is really speaking to me today:
Category: Catholicism
Mobile Catena
I’ve written before about the Catena Aurea, but I wanted to highlight a new phone app which I came across recently. The (admittedly rather unimaginatively titled) “Catena” app allows you to access Biblical commentary from the Apostolic Fathers.
There are a few bits of the interface which I find a bit clunky, but it’s a small gripe when compared to having Patristic commentary in your pocket for not just the Gospels, but for the entirety of the New Testament!
Fr. Michael’s Preaching
As many of you know, I spent about a year and a half living in Seattle. During that time, I attended the Byzantine parish of St. John Crysostom.
There were many things I loved about that parish, but one of my favourites was the preaching of the pastor, Fr. Michael Mandelas. It is no surprise, therefore, that I was delighted to discover that some of Fr. Michael’s homilies are being recorded and uploaded to Soundcloud:
While this is great, personally I consume most of my audio through the Podcast app on my iPhone. Fortunately, Soundcloud exposes the RSS feed for their channels:
http://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:301561424/sounds.rss
Happy listening 🙂
Science vs “The Science Guy”
I’ve been following How To Be Christian for quite some time now and really liked the alternative approach they take to apologetics. Today I would like to share a video they did concerning a media personality who has become increasingly vocal over the last couple of years, Bill Nye “The Science Guy”…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XG9Kmj4cvk4
Is a pro-lifer in charge of Planned Parenthood marketing?
Over the past week, I’ve shared several short posts pointing out that Planned Parenthood doesn’t seem to understand irony (Post 1 | Post 2). I’m now starting to think that there’s some kind of conspiracy theory! Has Planned Parenthood has accidentally hired someone who is pro-life to head up their marketing department?
The latest advertising campaign from the abortion provider begins with the words “Watch. Share. Slay“:
What an unfortunate choice of words! The introductory paragraph attempts to explain this rather questionable title:
If there’s anything we’ve learned from Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, The Avengers) over the years, it’s this – every single one of us has a hero inside ; and its our responsibility to use our superpowers to slay.
Erm, Planned Parenthood, this isn’t sounding any better… What exactly is being slain here? In Joss Whedon’s TV show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it is evil beings which are slain: vampires, demons etc. Tell me, what exactly gets slain at Planned Parenthood?
“Epistle Of Joy” Podcast
I recently setup the podcast feed for the San Diego diocese Theology On Tap. In order to do this, I had to learn a few things about RSS feeds and the Feedburner service. While I was learning, I setup a podcast feed for the MP3 version of the Philippians Bible study I posted during Lent. So, if you would like to easily listen to the audio version of that Bible Study, you can subscribe using your favourite podcast software by clicking below:
Make Church Music Great Again
On Sunday I had a friend visit my Byzantine parish here in San Diego. It was her first time visiting an Eastern parish, so afterwards we spent some time talking about the music used in the celebration of the Divine Liturgy. In case you have never visited an Eastern Rite parish, you should know that we don’t use instruments, relying instead on the human voice. If you’d like to have an idea of what that sounds like, you might like to check out this post.
This discussion after the Liturgy about music reminded me of this video by Brian Holdsworth, provocatively entitled “Make Church Music Great Again”. In his video he discusses the meaning and use of music, particularly with reference to the celebration of the Eucharist: