Sunday Night Journal
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The Social Justice Challenge One of the unhappy effects of the attack from within the Church itself on Catholic doctrine is a tendency for the orthodox to be almost as much occupied with preserving the faith as with practicing it. I think it is becoming possible for us to move past this, now that the
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This Culture is Ugly: Dark Thoughts on Roe Day Many years ago I heard attributed to an Episcopal seminary professor the observation that Americans have a difficult time dealing with the Christian concept of sin, because we want to believe that “if it’s a sin you ought to stop doing it, and if you can’t
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Report from the Hurricane Coast I made an overnight visit to New Orleans this weekend, and it left me wondering whether the city can ever recover fully. What struck me most forcefully there was not the physical damage done by hurricane Katrina, for which I was more or less prepared, but the fact that, as
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On the Last Day of Christmas The actual last day of Christmas was, of course, a couple of days ago in the Western calendar, on December 6 (or December 5th—there seem to be different approaches to the counting). But the Feast of the Epiphany has been moved to the nearest Sunday, or however the rule
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Common Courtesy and the Christmas Wars I hope it’s not just my subjective impression that some of the intensity faded from the struggle over public expression of Christmas this year. Over the past few years it had come to be, in some circles, a major breach of etiquette to wish someone “Merry Christmas.” I noticed
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Continuing The child wonders at the Christmas Tree: Let him continue in the spirit of wonder… So that the glittering rapture, the amazement Of the first-remembered Christmas Tree… So that the reverence and the gaiety May not be forgotten in later experience…. So that before the end, the eightieth Christmas (By “eightieth” meaning whichever is
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Stained Glass and Organ Music I listen to a lot of recorded music. Too much, really. That overused word “addiction” could perhaps be legitimately applied to my habit, and I find it useful but very painful to give it up or at least cut it way back for a while, which I often do during
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Solemn Advent Vespers at the Cathedral You can’t read much in the history of Christianity without running across the story of the 10th century Russian emissaries who, being sent by their ruler Prince Vladimir to discover the true religion, decided that they had found it when they witnessed the Divine Liturgy in the Church of
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Let’s Get Religion Out of the Biology Textbooks I’ve been thinking a lot—“brooding” might be an applicable term—about evolution, materialism, and the nature of science. It seems plain that materialists, in their eagerness to suborn science in aid of their views, have drawn conclusions that aren’t supported by the physical facts. And it occurs to
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Thanksgiving Morning The street in front of my house is unpaved. It used to be an ordinary gravel road, but a few years ago the city came in and covered it with some sort of dark gritty stuff that looks and feels like it could be old pavement ground to bits. It’s coarser than sand
Light On Dark Water 