Tag: Brandon Vogt

Tea, reading and other important topics…

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Here are some statistics from 2003 conducted by The Jenkins Group:

• One-third of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.

• 42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college.

• 80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.

• 70 percent of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.

• 57 percent of new books are not read to completion.

Shocking, right? I mention these statistics because I am currently picking out the books I’m going to read in 2013, drawing heavily from the Best Catholic Books of All-Time list posted by Brandon Vogt:

Best Catholic Books

I’ll be posting my 2013 Reading List in a week or two. So what books do you plan to read next year?

Liturgical Dance

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UPDATE: I saw this on Brandon Vogt‘s Facebook page…

A good friend told me a story this weekend about a priest he once knew. The local bishop was visiting this priest’s parish for Mass, but before Mass began the whole assembly was treated to an elaborate liturgical dance. It was the real-deal: hand-scarves, dresses, music, tambourines, hand gestures, and more.

When the dance was over, the bishop slowly turned to the priest and whispered in his ear: “If they come up and ask for your head on a platter, they’re going to get it.”

Distinctions

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I saw this on Brandon Vogts‘ Facebook page this morning about the Chick-fil-A kerfuffle. I felt it needed to be shared…

With the recent Chick-fil-A controversy, I now realize modern man is almost incapable of distinguishing between these four things:

1. The difference between “Approval” and “Implicit Condemnation”.
Just because you support one thing doesn’t mean you’re viciously antagonist toward another (i.e. “anti-” the opposite.) If Dan Cathy supports traditional marriage between one man and one woman, that doesn’t mean he ipso facto “hates gay people” or is “anti-gay.”

2. The difference between “Disagreeing” and “Hating”
I disagree with ideas all the time. This does not necessitate hating the person who proposed them. Your beliefs are not your identity.

3. The difference between “Beliefs” and “People”
This is somewhat similar to #2. Rejecting a belief does not equal rejecting a person. You can reject the validity of same-sex marriage on philosophical and social grounds while still profoundly loving people with same-sex attraction. I reject at least some opinions or actions from each of my friends (such as “double-rainbows are boring” or “playing the lottery is wise.”) They in turn reject plenty of my own. But we don’t hate each other. In fact, just the opposite is true. Our relationship is grounded on a communion of persons, not a symmetry of beliefs.

4. The difference between “Bigotry” and “Disagreement”
The definition of bigot is “one unwilling to tolerate opinions different than his own”–not “someone who disagrees with me.” Toleration doesn’t require agreement, merely recognition and respect. (Ironically, those quickest to accuse people of bigotry are often bigoted about their flawed definition of “bigot.”)

The solution to these failures is not more dialogue. It’s better philosophy, logic, and reason. Unfortunately, until two people are capable of making these distinctions, healthy, productive dialogue about same-sex marriage is almost impossible.

UPDATE: Brandon has now got around to posting this on his blog

So there you are. And now for something a little lighter…

Just in case…

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Just in case you didn’t you didn’t realize it, yesterday was April Fools’ Day.

About a month ago, Joe Heschmeyer sent out an email to a number of Catholic bloggers inviting us to do something a little different for April Fools’ Day this year. Rather than doing the typical “fake news story”, he suggested we do some kind of satirical analysis:

…[the] Catholic issues that maybe have crossed your mind, but you think, “This is much too stupid to write a blog post about.”  It treads the fine line between the serious and the absurd.

I had shared with Joe my theories on He-Man, Christian Allegory and Transubstantiation when we got to hang out last November. It seemed to perfectly fit the criterion of “too stupid to write a blog post about”  🙂

Anyway, just in case you missed them, here are some of the other April Fools’ Day offerings out there:

Shameless Popery: How the Summa might address Zombie Uprising
The Thin Veil: “Pope To Blogosphere”
St. Joseph’s Vanguard: “The New Perspective on Peter”
Almost Not Catholic: I Relent!
Young, Evangelical and Catholic: Pope Excommunicates All Of Us!

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