Read It Again!
My post about dancing got picked up by ChurchPop! It’s been tidied up a bit and been upgraded with some snazzy animated gifs. Go read it again 🙂
Tag: featured
Sitting down with a Jehovah’s Witness
So, as many of you know, a couple of weeks ago I had Jehovah’s Witnesses (JW) scheduled to visit my home. I had already received two rounds of visits from them but had not yet managed to get them across my threshold. However, on their previous visit they had promised that next time they would have time to come in and have a proper chat.
I had received my first visit about a month earlier when two female JWs had called. During our discussion on the doorstep, I had spoken a little bit about my reversion to Catholicism and about how the question of the canon had played an important part in my return, being rather unimpressed with the various Protestant explanations as to the Bible’s Table Of Contents. Since JWs are distinctly set apart from Protestants, I asked the ladies on my doorstep how they would justify the contents of the Biblical canon. They had no explanation, but said that they would find out and get back to me.
Several weeks later, two gentlemen rang my doorbell, saying that they had heard from their associates that I was interested in knowing about the “hidden” books of the Bible. I explained that my question was not about the deuterocanon/apocrypha per se, but rather about the Biblical canon as a whole. How did they know the right books were in the Bible? How did they know that there were no wrong ones included and no books missed out? Unfortunately, they said that they didn’t have time to talk with me there and then, but they booked an appointment for the following week.
In today’s blog post I’d like to explain what happened on this next visit and the rather interesting turn of events towards the end…
Is England in London?
Yesterday I uploaded to Facebook a picture of a can of Boddingtons as my profile picture. This prompted a childhood friend of mine to go on a lovely little rant:
“Hmmm, since when has Boddingtons originated from ‘Britain’? Was it brewed in Scotland, N.Ireland or Wales? I don’t think so! England!!!!!!!! You can bet your life if it was a Scottish product it’d say imported from Scotland on it 😀 Plus… If the collective ‘Britain’ really has to be used they should at least have the decency to use the ‘Great’ at the beginning of it! Phew… Sorry- Rant over! PS I guess I should be grateful that it doesn’t state ‘Imported from Europe’ on it :-D”
I told him that if this sort of thing bothers him, he shouldn’t move to the USA!
I find that Americans are usually rather flummoxed when it comes to knowing the difference between England, Great Britain and the United Kingdom so I thought that today I’d offer a brief explanation…
Quick Apology: Potential Life?
In January there was the annual “March For Life” in Washington DC. Unfortunately, I couldn’t go this year, but thanks to Facebook, I got to defend life in a different way, through Facebook. Many of my pro-life friends posted about the March on Facebook, and these posts were not without their detractors…
The Objection
As I browsed my newsfeed, one objection which was made repeatedly was some variation of the following:
“The fetus is a potential life”
Is this true? How might we respond to this statement?
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New “Theology On Tap” Podcast!
I’m very pleased to announce that the San Diego Diocese has just launched a podcast feed! From now on, the audio from the Theology On Tap sessions will be available on your desktop and mobile devices.
It is available on iTunes:
…and also on Google Play:
If you have difficulty subscribing with either of these, you can either search for the podcast in the respective stores, or manually add the feed to your podcast app:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/sdyam
If you have any problems with the podcast, please let me know in the comments below and I’ll do my best to sort them out!
"Coming Soon"
As the Labo(u)r Day weekend and my personal mini-retreat draws to a close I’ve just finished the book I’ve been chipping away at for the last few weeks: “Coming Soon” by Dr. Michael Barber:
Sunday Lectionary: Grapes of wrath
Sorry it’s a bit late this week – I had two big posts that I wanted to write at the weekend and I kinda ran out of time… :-/
Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time: October 2nd, 2011
Last week we heard Jesus’ parable of the two sons and the vineyard. The Readings this week also focus around the image of the vineyard…
The bold refrain of the psalm this week is “The vineyard of the Lord is the house of Israel”. In our First Reading this image of the vineyard is used to describe how God gave Israel every possible blessing, yet all these graces were scorned. For this, Israel will have to pay the price. Yet, in our Gospel we hear how, through the rejection of Christ, the Gentiles come to have a share in God’s Kingdom.
For this week’s Readings I would suggest reading the Psalm first since it clearly establishes the metaphor of the vineyard and explains Israel’s exodus in those terms. I would then move on to the First Reading to hear how this metaphor is also used to describe God’s coming judgement. Next, I would read the Gospel as it shows how Jesus uses this familiar image to predicts His own death. I would optionally conclude with the Second Reading.