"We are travellers…not yet in our native land" – St. Augustine
Yesterday, we began a guest post series from the author of SystematicChristianity.org, Matthew Grivich, on the subject of on-line Catholic dating…
In yesterday’s post, I outlined the advantages and disadvantages to online dating. Today I would like to give my suggestions as to how to use Catholic dating sites most effectively.
One of my New Year’s Resolutions for 2012 has been to “Make an effort to dress well for Mass”. Some of my friends expressed surprise when I said that this was one of my resolutions, since they assumed that I was the sort of person who would naturally dress smartly for Mass.
I was trying to work out how my laxity came about. Here’s how I think it happened…
So, I’ve made a decision… Once I reach the halfway point in the Qur’an (which should happen in a few days), I’m going to take a break from this series for a couple of weeks.
I’ve finally managed to make contact with a local Imam, so I’m hoping to meet him soon and start working through the large backlog of questions I’ve recorded about the chapters read thus far.
I’m sure that more than a few of you are getting a bit tired of the relentless posts about Isalm. To be honest, I’m also finding that my daily reading and writing is becoming a bit of a grind. It’s time-consuming and there are some other long-overdue posts I’d much prefer to complete!
However, as I am not quite at the halfway point, today I read the chapter of the Qur’an which is rather excitingly titled “Rock City”…
Surah 15 – “Rock City” (Al-Hijr)
We open with the affirmation that this is a “clear Qur’an [i.e. recitation]”. I will no longer point out when the Qur’an’s chapters begin like this. Hitherto, I wanted to make sure that I emphasized in these notes how often the Qur’an affirms its perspicuity.
We are told that no city was ever destroyed which had not previously received a warning of imminent destruction from one of Allah’s Messengers. This will be important for the examples which we will cover later in this surah.
We hear the common objections given by the disbelievers:
I’ve mentioned before that in the last year or two I’ve started to pay more attention to the clothes which I wear to Sunday Mass. Not only do I find it puts me in a better frame of mind, it also has the added advantage that I get to pretend that I’m one of my favourite TV/movie characters 🙂
Okay, small rant alert…
Bad parish websites. They have to stop. Seriously.
I never fail to be amazed at how little time, attention and money is devoted to the websites of some Catholic parishes. It’s 2013 people! Bad parish websites are now simply unacceptable.
If you arrived at a parish for Mass for the first time and you walked through the front door and are greeted by 70’s decor, peeling paint and a sparsely populated notice board containing only out-of-date notices, what conclusions would you reach about that parish? Well, having no website or an extremely poorly produced or out-of-date website is the digital equivalent of that today. A parish’s website, or lack thereof, is the first impression most people will have of that parish.
My Dad’s birthday party (2007)
Today’s article is one which I’ve wanted to write for some time. You see, 2015 has been a very eventful year for me, but unfortunately much of it has been less-than-pleasant. In fact, I think I can say without exaggeration that this year has featured some of the most painful experiences of my life. Not least of these events was the death of my father in July. Up until now I haven’t said much about this publicly, but I would like to share a little bit about it today…
I had spent Independence Day with friends on Whidbey Island. It’s a truly delightful part of the world and I had a wonderful time there. We spent the day at the pool and had an evening of fine food and board games, followed by fireworks at the beach. The following morning, for some inexplicable reason, virtually everyone in the house rose early and went for a three-mile run. Since it was early on the day after a national holiday, we pretty much had the island to ourselves and in the crisp, early morning air, we passed several deer as we made our tour of the island. It was beautiful.
It was after breakfast that I received a message from my family back in England, asking me to call. A knot formed in my stomach; I had a suspicion as to the reason for this message. I excused myself and went out to my car, where I called my Mum. She confirmed what I had feared: my Dad was dying.
You see, my father had been diagnosed with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma several years before. After several rounds of chemotherapy, his health seemed to be under control, but in recent months things hadn’t been looking so good. Infections had become increasingly common, necessitating numerous speedy trips to the hospital. My Mum said that Dad had suffered yet another infection, but unlike the previous ones, this one was certain to kill him. She told me that the hospital staff said that there was nothing more they could do and that it was unlikely he’d last another twenty-four hours. After hanging up the phone, I composed myself and went back into the house, said my goodbyes and was soon on my way back to Seattle.
This week I heard a talk on the Gospel of John by Dr. Michael Barber at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church.
In the early part of his talk, Dr. Barber discussed the question of authorship of the Gospel. He mentioned how modern sceptical scholars often say that the Gospel was originally anonymous, and that the text “The Gospel according to John” was a later addition. I have often heard claims such as these, so I was delighted to hear Dr. Barber present some potential problems with this position…
The main issue in asserting that the Gospel was original anonymous is that the manuscript evidence does not support this hypothesis at all. Where the manuscripts survive, we find the text present. Not only that, there are some other problems which flow from this…
If the original Gospel was anonymous and the association with St. John was a later development, why don’t we find divergent attributions? Since St. John is not identified as the author within the narrative itself, surely one would expect many divergent attributions to develop? Why was the Gospel never associated with, say, St. Peter? The obvious answer is that the text “The Gospel according to John” was in there from the beginning.
If the sceptics are right, the text had been copied as an anonymous Gospel and distributed throughout the Empire. Why is it that manuscripts from all these different regions bear the text claiming Johannine authorship? It would have been an impossible task to gather up all these different manuscripts retrospectively in order to “fix” them with an agreed-upon author, particularly since they were in different languages (Greek, Latin etc). Once again, the simplest explanation for consistency in all these manuscripts in all these areas in all these languages is simply that the text “The Gospel according to John” was in there from the beginning.
These reasons, coupled with the universal testimony of the Early Church Fathers, should give us great confidence that, from the very beginning, this Gospel opened with the words “The Gospel according to John…”