"We are travellers…not yet in our native land" – St. Augustine
This past week I was being interviewed on two episodes of The Counsel of Trent, the podcast by apologist Trent Horn. Needless to say, we chatted a lot about C.S. Lewis…
Episode #190: The Secret Life of C.S. Lewis (Download)
Episode #191: The Genius of C.S. Lewis (Download)
In the previous episode we began discussing the second book in The Chronicles of Narnia, which is called Prince Caspian. In this episode, we finish our discussion…
S2E27: “Caspian Continued…” (Download)
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00:38 – Continued analysis of Prince Caspian
22:29 – Overall review of the book
27:00 – Surprise Haiku!
Each Season we discuss briefly one of the Chronicles of Narnia. In Season 1 we read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. This Season, we’re reading Prince Caspian, as it was the second book to be published. In comparison to the previous book, Prince Caspian is less familiar to most people so we had to spend more time outlining the plot, so Matt and I ended up having to break up our discussion over two episodes.
S2:E26: Prince Caspian (Download)
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01:54 – Quote-of-the-week
03:16 – Drink-of-the-week
06:00 – Thematic overview
09:36 – Recap of previous book
10:09 – Begin discussion of Prince Caspian
The other day on Facebook, a friend of mine who is a Christian speaker asked for recommendations for romantic movies, but only ones which didn’t have lots of inappropriate material. Now, I understand that the term “inappropriate material” means different things to different people, but I was quite amazed at some of the recommendations he received. Anyway, I decided to start compiling my own list of movies and I would love your help!
What did I miss? Do you have any other recommendations?
A rather unusual episode this week! My girlfriend and I recently went on vacation to England, so we thought it’d be fun to sit down and tell you all about it, including how we got to play with the personal belongings of a literary giant, as well as have lunch with an Inkling’s grandson…
S2E24: God Save the Queen! (Download)
If you enjoy this episode, you can subscribe manually, or any place where good podcasts can be found (iTunes, Google Play, Podbean, Stitcher, TuneIn and Overcast).
Time Stamps
In case your podcast application has the ability to jump to certain time codes, here are the timestamps for the different parts of the episode.
01:50 – Quote of the week
03:01 – Drink of the week
11:18 – Meeting Owen Barfield
14:55 – The Wedding (Heckfield)
16:31 – Bath (Jane Austen Museum, Bath Abbey etc.)
22:26 – Oxford (Merton and Magdalen College, The Eagle and Child etc.)
45:01 – London (Hyde Park, Victoria & Albert Museum, Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese)
This past week, a friend of mine visited my Byzantine Catholic parish. Afterwards, she admitted that she had been rather apprehensive about how her small child was going to react to the whole experience. After all, she knew that the Byzantine Liturgy was typically ninety minutes long, rather than the forty-five minute Mass which her son had previously been used to experiencing.
Even though I have no children of my own, I offered the somewhat counter-intuitive claim that the Byzantine Liturgy is in some ways better suited to children than a Novus Ordo or Tridentine Mass. A bold claim, I know, but I stand by it! So, here are my top ten reasons why I think the Byzantine Liturgy is great if you have small children…
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Yet another person on Facebook recently told me that:
“It’s not for me or any other man or woman to place their beliefs upon a woman who should have the right to choose whether we agree or not. We will all stand before our maker if the story plays out as told.”
In response to these comments, I asked my friend whether or not he would say the same thing if he knew a mother planning on having her toddler drowned. If not, why not? As I’ve come to expect, I received no answer.
Instead I was told that my question was “wholly immaterial and inappropriate to this discussion”. I asked why this was this the case? Why was it inappropriate? Why was it immaterial? Once again, I received no answer.
I think it’s pretty clear that my friend would intervene in the situation with the toddler. The question is, why? After all, by interfering, he’d be “plac[ing] [his] beliefs upon the woman”, something which he’s apparently not meant to do. So, why interfere in one situation and not the other? What is the distinguishing factor? Why does one child demand her protection but another not merit it?
The implication here is that, unless I am directly impacted by a particular issue, I cannot comment upon its morality. That’s about as nonsensical as saying that unless you’re a plantation owner, you don’t get to comment on slavery. I have neither been the victim of sexual assault nor committed sexual assault. Despite this, I do not doubt for a moment that sexual assault is wrong and should be prevented.
The main reason I wanted to briefly blog about this conversation is because there is a deeper problem with what my friend said. He was saying that, because I am a man, I’m not even allowed to express my opinion on the morality of abortion. How is this anything other than textbook sexism? What was the basis for his dismissal of my argument? Was it the argument itself? Did he find a logical fallacy or a false premise? No, it was dismissed based on the gender of the person offering the argument. That’s a variant of the Ad Hominem Fallacy and remarkably sexist to boot!