Tag: featured

Restless Popery

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Yesterday on Facebook, Joe from Shameless Popery shared that he had intended to write a post on the supposed Pagan origins of Easter, but that our mutual friend, Steve, had referred him to Easter: The Pagan Conspiracy, a post I wrote on the same subject last year.

Joe had initially said he wasn’t going to write his own defense. Fortunately for us, rather than depriving the world of another of Joe’s excellent articles, he did write his own post on the subject, building off my original entry:

Shameless Popery

TEA: Life in Christ, not just improvement, but transformation

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In this episode of “Theology With An English Accent” (TEA) is the first of a few talks I’m giving this Lent at St. Ignatius in Los Angeles. This is a longer version of the talk I gave the previous week in Dodge City which was called “What is the point of Christianity?”. The first 20 minutes is basically identical, after which I get into new material.

Life in Christ: Not mere improvement, but transformation (Download)

You can subscribe to “Theology With An English Accent” manually, or any place where good podcasts can be found  (Feed | iTunes | Google Play).

Favourite People: Fr. Robert Barron

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In a previous post I spoke about one of my favourite people, Archbishop Fulton Sheen. I spoke about how I came to discover him, his sermons and writings, as well as try and describe something of the impact he had upon me.

I think it is appropriate therefore, that in this next entry, I’ve chosen to talk about someone whom I’ve often heard referred to by other people as “The Next Fulton Sheen”.

This person is Fr. Robert Barron.

If Sheen Had YouTube…

Fr. Robert is a priest who lives near Chicago in the United States. I first came across him on YouTube while I was still living in England.  He is a published author (I finished his book “The Eucharist” this week), but he has also embraced the new media and is using it to extend the reach of his ministry. It is in this sense that he is like Fulton Sheen – he’s a superb communicator and uses all means available to proclaim the faith, although in terms of style he and Archbishop Sheen are very different.

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Intercession

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A while ago in our Young Adult group we were talking about praying before the Eucharist (“Adoration”) and I had asked the question “What do you actually do during Adoration?”

Some of the group spoke about reading Scripture.

Others spoke about praying the rosary.

One girl beautifully described it as “…just having quality Father/Daughter time”.

One word which was absent from the discussion was “Intercession”. It got me to thinking. How often do I regularly pray for those in my life? My family? My friends? My co-workers? What about the employees of the shops where I purchase my morning coffee or lunchtime sandwich? How often do I intercede for these people? Almost certainly not as much as I should…

My friend Art went to Lourdes and took with him prayer requests from his friends here in California…

So, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is this: this week, especially during Adoration, I’d invite you to spend a little bit of time interceding for those people you know – friends, family, country…favourite bloggers.

Daughters Of The King

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The regularity of my posts in recent times has been pretty lamentable, but at least I can now finally explain why.  Much of my time over the last couple of months has been taken up with preparations for “Daughters Of The King”…

Genesis

The whole idea began back in August at Dan’s bachelor weekend.  Together with eight other guys, I spent the weekend hiking and camping a few hour’s drive from San Diego. While we were catching our breath halfway up a mountain, one of our number, Mike, shared with us an idea he had…

Mike wanted to put together some sort of event for all the ladies in our lives: friends, girlfriends, wives, sisters and mothers.  He wanted an evening for the guys to gather together specifically to honour all of the ladies.  Quite an extraordinary idea to come out of a bachelor weekend, hey?

Planning

Towards the end of September we began preparations.  I sent out an email to all the men on the JP2 mailing list, inviting them to join us in this unique enterprise.  Twenty men stepped up to the challenge…

We initially met at my apartment, drank some beer and discussed what kind of event we might organize. We were not short of ideas!  (In later meetings we would institute the “Don’t suggest an idea unless you’re willing to take it on yourself” rule!)  After much discussion, the idea we settled upon was to throw a classy gala evening in the parish hall of Our Lady of the Rosary.  We decided that the event would be completely free to the ladies and that the men would cook and serve all of the food.

We had wanted to hold the event on the same date as some Marian Feast, but we ended up choosing November 21st, the Feast of Christ the King.  From the title of this feast, we quickly settled upon the name of our event, since we would be spending the evening honouring the daughters of our aforementioned King.  Only later would we realise that this date is, in fact, actually also a minor Marian Feast, The Presentation of Mary, the commemoration of Our Lady’s presentation as a child in the Temple.

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The 3%

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DrunkI once read a quotation about statistics which said that “a politician uses statistics in the same way a drunk uses a street lamp, for support rather than for illumination”… I thought that this was an appropriate quotation to begin the subject of today’s post. You see, it’s quite impossible to speak out against Planned Parenthood for long before hearing the following response:

“But abortion is only 3% of what Planned Parenthood does!”

This objection has been raised by many of my friends and you hear this statistic rattled off by politicians and Planned Parenthood advocates. 3% seems so small and insignificant! The argument is that if you defund Planned Parenthood then women would lose access to all the other services they provide as well. This assumes that abortion and healthcare can only come together as a package, treating pregnancy as though it’s just another disease.

How is it that Planned Parenthood is known for being the nation’s premiere abortion provider if it’s only 3% of what it does? Isn’t that incredible?! In fact, if it’s such a small percentage of their work, you can’t help but wonder why Planned Parenthood doesn’t just get out of the abortion industry altogether and save themselves the constant annoyance of having all those pesky pro-lifers outside of their clinics all the time!

There is a problem with the 3% statistic. While there is a certain veracity to the statistic, it’s incredibly misleading, so much so as to be positively meaningless!

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