Tag: featured
My Country Music Confession
I have a confession.
I like Country Music.
There, I said it.
Maybe it’s just me, but I think there’s definitely a stigma attached to Country Music. There is the perception that the music is quite hokey and that every song is about how the singer has lost his woman, his pickup truck, his favourite horse and/or dog.
A while ago, a girl whom I was rather rather sweet on, unashamedly declared that she really liked Country Music. For this, of course, I mercilessly teased her. In fact, that reminds of a joke…
Q. What happens when you play a country song backwards?
A. The guy gets his wife back, his truck back, stops drinking, and his dog comes back to life.
Calling the Pope names
Yesterday, I posted a quotation from Pope John Paul XXIII for this week’s “Wise Words on Wednesday”. When I published it, I was reminded of a conversation I had with Jay about the Papacy.
I have mentioned Jay on this blog before. He was a Protestant with whom I dialogued for a few months several years ago. When speaking about the Pope, here’s what he had to say:
“…[the Pope] has the names of God such as Holy, Father, …Vicar of the Son of God (which means in place of God)” – Jay
So, Jay asserted that Catholics give the Pope “the names of God”.
When I replied to him I responded by working through each those names in turn: “Holy”, “Father” and “Vicar”…
Disturbing numbers
Today I looked up the number of abortions which happen worldwide in the space of a year. The number was truly shocking:
42 Million 56 Million
42….million…that number is just far too big for me to even try and wrap my head around. How about the number just in the US?
1.37 Million 638,169
1.37….million… Even that number is too large for me to even attempt to visualize… What would that be per day?
3,700 1,748
Over three and a half thousand abortions a day in the USA… To put that into context, September 11th, the event that shook the world, claimed approximately 2,977 lives…
I recall hearing a soundbite on TV of a certain politician defending the current abortion laws and saying that he wanted abortion to be “safe, legal and rare”.
I’m sure there’s constant medical progress towards protecting the mother’s health during the abortion procedure.
Abortion is certainly legal.
But rare?
Restless Heart: 1 – “Worshipping with St. Justin”
We won’t normally be posting more than one episode a week, but here is the first full episode of the Restless Heart podcast. In today’s show we talk about an important figure in the Early Church known as St. Justin Martyr and look at what he had to say about Mass in 2nd Century Rome.
Episode 1: Worshipping with St. Justin (Download)
— Notes —
* If this subject interests you, you might be interested in watching a longer presentation I have given on the subject of worship in the Early Church.
* If you have any feedback or would like to pose a question for an upcoming episode, you can always tweet us at @davidandnessa.
If you have iTunes installed, you can click here to launch iTunes and subscribe. Alternatively, you should be able to find us in the podcast section of the iTunes Store and Google Play. If you need to setup your podcast feed manually, our feed may be found here.
Love in a time of COVID-19
Marie and I will still be getting married at the end of July. Unfortunately, with the present COVID restrictions, the wedding itself is going to be very small, restricted to our wedding party and Marie’s immediate family. Due to travel restrictions, all of my family will be watching the livestream from England (while dressed in their formal wedding attire, of course)!
However, since we took the time to create a wedding website, I thought we’d share it here and ask for your prayers as I prepare to make Marie the happiest woman in the world!
Vatican 2 on the The Eastern Churches
As part of my continued service to the students of Franciscan University of Steubenville ;-), I have just recorded the audio for the document “Orientalium Ecclesiarum”.
This document was produced by the Second Vatican Council and concerns the Churches in the Catholic Church which follow an Eastern Rite. Given that I attend an Eastern Rite parish during the summers, it’s rather odd that I’ve never actually sat down and read this document before.
Still, better late than never I suppose…
A long time ago, when I first began this blog, I start producing a series entitled “V2 we love you!”. At the time, the JP2 Group was reading the document “Dei Verbum”. I anticipated that we would work through more of the Council’s documents. My hope was that the series of blog entries would provide a helpful accompaniment to our study.
We didn’t end up studying any more of the documents and so I never wrote the blog posts. However, a little while ago I signed up for a course on the Second Vatican Council at the Diocesan Institute which starts this October. Hopefully that’ll get me motivated and I will once again be renewing my efforts with the series.
Anyway, the text for the document is available here and the audio is available below:
