Tag: featured

Be a man!

4 comments

This afternoon I wanted to advertise the upcoming Be A Man! event. At the end of this month, Matt Fradd, the most recent addition to the Catholic Answers team, will be recording his latest talk before a live audience of men here in San Diego. Here’s some of the event blurb from the flier:

Chuck NorrisIn the first part…[Matthew] invites the men to listen to powerful, moving, and often-times hilarious stories. Then, he poses questions to show the men, or perhaps even to convince them, that who they desire to be, and who God commands them to be, is in fact the same man. 

In the second part of his talk, Matthew lays out five rules that every man must break (yes, that’s right, break) if he wants to fulfill his deepest desires and follow God’s commands.

Matt really knows what he’s talking about. He’s an Australian who married a Texan and, quite frankly, it doesn’t get much more manly that that!

Accent-uated Differences

I spoke to Matt on the phone a few weeks ago and we bonded over the highlights of Australian culture (Tim Tams and The Castle), as well people’s inability to identify our accents:

I'm Australian!

The most common question I get asked is “Are you Australian?”  Well, my friends, you now have the opportunity to come and hear what a real Australian sounds like.

Read more

Qur’an Cover-to-Cover: Day 23 (“Those who set the ranks”)

Leave a comment

angels

It’s another long one today, one hundred and eighty-two verses.

Surah 37 – “Those who set the ranks” (As-Saaffat)
The chapter opens with Allah swearing by the different angels that “your God is One”.

We are then treated to a description of Heaven’s defense system. We are told that an “adornment of stars…[act] as protection against every rebellious devil [so] they may not listen to the exalted assembly [of angels]” and “are pelted from every side” by flaming meteors. I believe this is a reference to the jinn we read about earlier who eavesdrop on Heaven and report what they hear to soothsayers.

Read more

Plucking out your eye

5 comments

Today’s post is another entry in response to a recent Facebook conversation. This post won’t be as long as yesterday’s post, but I would like to say a few words about Jesus’ unsettling teaching in Chapter 18 of Matthew’s Gospel:

“…if your hand or your foot causes you to sin cut it off and throw it from you; it is better for you to enter life maimed or lame than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into the eternal fire.

And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it from you; it is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire. – Matthew 18:7-9

This passage from Matthew’s Gospel is rather interesting in that, in my experience, it’s a verse which fundamentalists never take literally (along with John 6 and Acts 2:38). Now, you’ll find pockets of Christians who handle snakes (Mark 16:18), but I have yet to meet someone to apply the same literalistic hermeneutic to that passage. The funny thing about this passage is that the literal sense here is clear – it is better to lose everything in this life rather than to lose Heaven – even hands and eyes.

MrPotatoHead

The central message Jesus teaches here is that we can’t take sin lightly. You can’t treat sin as though it were something with which you can negotiate. You don’t negotiate with cancer! You don’t sit down with a tumour and ask it not to grow too large. No, you cut that stuff out! You eradicate it as quickly as possible because, if left unchecked, it’ll be your ruin. The same is true with sin.

What might be an application of this passage? Well, I would say that we can understand this passage in the context of what is known in Catholic circles as “the near occasions of sin”, which the times and places where we know we can easily fall from grace. In particular, I’d like to apply this passage to the issue of porn.

If you know you are tempted to watch porn when staying a hotel, the best thing to do is cut it off at the source, literally, by phoning ahead and asking the hotel to put a block the channels on the TV. I remember Matt Fradd referencing this passage when speaking about the temptation to watch porn on a smart phone:

“If your iPhone causes you to sin, disconnect it and throw it from you; it is better for you to enter life with a dumb phone and poor connectivity, rather than to be thrown into the eternal fire with a touchscreen and wifi access”

Symbolism: The Nativity Icon

Leave a comment

I never thought that going to Matins would generate so many blog posts! So…today I sat next to this icon of the Nativity:

2015-09-03 08.48.53

In the centre of the icon is Mary the Theotokos, with the infant Christ in a manger, together with some animals (“The ox knows his owner, and the donkey his master’s crib” – Isaiah 1:3). These figures are not in a stable, but in a cave, which reflects the Eastern tradition as well as the practice of the time for keeping animals. Above the cave are the other well-known nativity characters: angels, shepherds, and wise men following the star.

However, what I didn’t understand were the scenes depicted on the bottom-left and bottom-right corners of the icon. In the bottom-left we see St. Joseph sitting by himself with an odd look on his face and in the bottom-right there’s an illustration of what looks to me like an infant baptism taking place. What do these scenes represent?

Read more

Vatican Website Updated!

Leave a comment

*sigh*…the Vatican website has been updated again…and it’s still terrible.

Website

Here’s a selection of my favourite comments about this that I’ve seen on Facebook:

At World Youth Day, Pope Francis did say, “Go, make a mess!”
The Vatican web-designers took him literally.

What the… Great, now I need to go to confession.

There are no ‘boing’ noises when I move the cursor to a hyperlink. Why are there no ‘boing’ noises?

I thought Lent was over? Why are we still being made to suffer?

The church should recognize that IE 6 makes Jesus cry.

Look, someone discovered how to use the <table> tag in HTML!

I’m not too keen on the Times Roman font. They really should be using Comic Sans!

You know, for an outfit that’s big on infallibility, this really doesn’t bolster their cred…

Meet the new website, same as the old website.

Maybe they used the folks who did the new translation of the roman missal.

Still Better Than Obamacare

Sunday Lectionary: A God who goes looking…

Leave a comment

Below is a reworked version of a reflection I first presented at Cheltenham’s Week of Prayer for Christian Unity on 26th January 2008…

Now the tax collectors and “sinners” were all gathering around to hear [Jesus]. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” …

Jesus said: “There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them.  Soon after, that son got together all he had, set off for a distant country where he squandered his wealth in wild living.

After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.

When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.’

So he got up and went to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.  The son said ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s feast and celebrate.

The older brother was angry and refused to go into the house. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’ ‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.  But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.'” – Luke 15:1-2, 11-32

Read more

1 2 3 … 137