January 2009
60 posts
Viva Benedict!
From this morning’s NPR story “Pope’s Stance on Bishops Draws Criticism” –
Kung says Pope Benedict is gradually sapping the essential substance out of the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.
“He has an idea of the liturgy which is more similar to the liturgy of the Middle Ages, of the anti-Reformation time. He tries to interpret the council not forward, for...
"Celtic spirituality"
“This Christianity has been of special interest to those who have interpreted it as a form of nonecclesiastical or at least noninstitutional religion. Earlier partisans saw the Celts as proto-Protestants, rejecting the works and pomps of Rome, but modern devotees concentrate more on a supposed Celtic individualism, harmony with the natural world, and a constant awareness of the supernatural and...
An horology of St John Chrysostom
12 am. O Lord, deprive me not of Thy heavenly good things. 1 am. O Lord, deliver me from the eternal torments. 2 am. O Lord, if I have sinned in mind or thought, in word or deed, forgive me. 3 am. O Lord, deliver me from all ignorance, forgetfulness, faintheartedness, and stony insensibility. 4 am. O Lord, deliver me from every temptation. 5 am. O Lord, enlighten my heart which evil desire hath...
The Roots of 'Roe v. Wade' →
By Father Patrick Henry Reardon, Touchstone (January/February 2003).
The New Patriarch of Moscow →
Report from Inside the Vatican magazine
C. S. Lewis and the Orthodox Church →
“Apologists are prone to commit certain mistakes. In trying to win arguments with...”
– Avery Cardinal Dulles, SJ (source)
The SSPX and Holocaust Denial →
By Fr Anthony Chadwick
2009 Eastern Orthodox Bible Reading Plan →
“My own real religious inquiry began on my own when I was just a girl. I would go...”
– Meryl Streep, in an interview with The Catholic Herald about her role in the movie Doubt
“I am thy slave, because Thy Son is my Master. Therefore thou art my Lady,...”
– Prayer to the Blessed Virgin, by Saint Ildephonsus of Toledo
What is "Tridentine Liturgy"?
“Our missal is that of Pius V. We may be very thankful that his Commission [at the Council of Trent] was so scrupulous to keep or restore the old Roman tradition. Essentially the missal of Pius V is the Gregorian Sacramentary; that again is transformed from the Gelasian book, which depends upon the Leonine collection. We find the prayer of our Canon in the treatise de Sacramentis and...
The Bible as "a book of the Church" →
Caveats and clarifications by Wan Wei Hsien of Torn Notebook.
“Do not say … that one or two books is sufficient for instructing the soul....”
– St Paisius Velichkovsky (source)
On Friday ...
… which is the sixth day, wicked men set up the cross of the Most High, and on Friday again they pierced His side with a lance and there flowed from it for us blood and water of life, halleluia, in propitiation for the peoples, who confessed and believed in Him.
Tell me, Friday, why is there great honour to you among the Churches? “On me was created Adam, the head of mankind, and on me he...
In Memoriam: Olivier Clément (1922–2009)
The Orthodox theologian and historian Olivier Clément died in Paris on the evening of January 15, 2009 at the age of 87 years. Clément was one of the most significant witnesses of Orthodoxy in the West in the second half of the twentieth century, and was on the faculty of St. Sergius Institute in Paris.
Clément entered into dialogue on several major contemporary spiritual themes with Patriarch...
The "Fond du Lac Circus"
What Might Have Been By Leicester C. Lewis, Ph.D.
The Christian East, 1932, 13: 2, pp 79-80.
In view of the steadily increasing friendship between the Eastern and Anglican Churches, I am glad to put on record the account of a serious attempt at intercommunion, made in America now nearly thirty years ago, which in the mysterious providence of God miscarried.
It will be recalled that at the...
“If there be on earth a visible image of heaven, it is in the Church collected...”
– John Henry Newman (source)
Sanctity of Life Sunday
Archpastoral Message of His Beatitude, Metropolitan Jonah
January 18, 2009
To the Venerable Hierarchs, Clergy, Monastics and Faithful of the Orthodox Church in America
Dearly Beloved in Christ:
The Lord Jesus Christ emerged from the waters of Baptism, and heard the Word of the Father: “You are my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” The Lord’s word to each and every human being, to each...
Archbishop Carroll's "Prayer for Government" →
Vicariate liturgical musings
Caveat – In itself, this is certainly not an issue of great import or significance in the life of the Vicariate. But I do believe that it’s part and parcel of a very important philosophical conversation that the Vicariate should be having in the years to come, as we come out of a long period of confusion and inconsistency about who we are and what we do.
The Anglo-Catholic blog Mass...
The Pitesti Experiment →
Fr. George [Calciu]’s radiance was a lasting rebuke to the darkest intentions of torturers. In his native Romania he was imprisoned twice by the Communist authorities, for a total of 21 years. He was a survivor, in particular, of the brief but appalling Pitesti Experiment -the most intensive program of brainwashing to take place behind the Iron Curtain. The plan at the prison in the Romanian...
Solovievian ecclesiology and the TAC
… I personally do not believe that the canonical institution called the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of Christ are identical things. Rather, some (or even most) of the clergy and faithful in the institution of the Roman Catholic Church are Catholics. Alongside this, some...
The Cross in Tradition, History, and Art By William Wood Seymour
“The Cross I ever adore, The Cross of the Lord is with me, The Cross doth my safety ensure, The Cross still my refuge shall be.”
The Cross in Tradition, History, and Art By William Wood Seymour
Grace as God's Uncreated Energy →
By Stephen Kaster
Saint Hilary of Poitiers: Doctor of the Church,... →
The cult of the Martyrs
But our martyrs are not our gods; for we know that the martyrs and we have both but one God, and that the same. Nor yet are the miracles which they maintain to have been done by means of their temples at all comparable to those which are done by the tombs of our martyrs. If they seem similar, their gods have been defeated by our martyrs as Pharaoh’s magi were by Moses. In reality, the demons...
Palestine and Conservative American Christian... →
“Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming,...”
– G. K. Chesterton
Question: What do you think to be the typical mistakes Orthodox missionary Internet sites make, and how can they be avoided?
Bishop Hilarion of Vienna: One of the typical mistakes is aggressive missionary work whereby Orthodoxy is shown compared to other confessions, and the other confessions are criticized in an aggressive and polemic way. At the same time, as I said, we are to tell the truth...
Fr Richard John Neuhaus (RIP) on Reconciliation...
G. Dix on the Anaphora of Addai and Mari →
“The Book of Revelation speaks of only two odors in the afterlife: incense and...”
– Fr Patrick Henry Reardon (source)
Babies, Bandies, and Other Questionable Saints →
Ecumenical theology and the validity of Sacraments
Ecumenical theology begins in the first millennium with the Western Church setting itself free from the ‘common sense’ position that since the Spirit is the possession of the Church, the Sacraments cannot exist outside it.
Pope S Stephen I opposed this view, insisting that heretical baptism is valid. Augustine, during the Donatist controversy, established that Holy Order could validly...