| | I know that this is an unpopular opinion amongst the fanboy/girl population out there but I can't help but say it: Playing WoW makes me want to play 4th edition. | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment   |
| | Subject: | It seems we spoke to Soon | | Time: | 04:03 pm |
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| It seems we spoke to soon about good ol' Benedict XVI.
Now, I am not one of those who thinks that he is evil. Rather I think he's playing the radical traditionalists (Rad Trads) in the Roman communion like a fiddle.What he doesn't say is far more telling than what he dose. He has this tendency to give to the rad trads with one hand and take with the other. For example:
"You all want the Tridentine Mass? Fine, but you can only use it under these rules, and it is now defined as NOT the normative Mass."
"No women clergy!" But no reason other than Papal authority in the statement. No mention of the "fitness" of women or anything like that. The question has been freed up for future Popes.
He has also, finally, thrown a lasso around that bucking bronco that is the American RC's tendency to act as if the Mass ala a Peter Paul and Mary concert will pack the kids in. If nothing else, we may have seen the end of Polyester Butterfly chausables. If for no other reason, he may have earned canonization.
With that said, Damian Thompson, the editor in chief of the catholic herald, has this to say:
The Catholic Church will expand its provision of "Anglican Use" parishes in the United States in order to allow whole communities of traditionalist Anglicans into the Roman fold, a senior Catholic archbishop has announced.
The Most Rev John J Myers, Archbishop of Newark and Ecclesiastical Delegate for the Pastoral Provision, told a conference of ex-Anglicans on Friday that "we are working on expanding the mandate of the Pastoral Provision [of Catholic parishes using Anglican-inspired services] to include those clergy and faithful of 'continuing Anglican communities'.
"We are striving to increase awareness of our apostolate to Anglican Christians who desire to be reconciled with the Holy See. We have experienced the wonder of several Episcopal bishops entering into full communion with the Catholic Church and we continue to receive requests from priests and laity about the Pastoral Provision."
You can read the rest of his thoughts on his blog here.
This makes me wounder exactly what the old boy is playing at? I still have a hard time with the idea he takes Anglo-Catholics all that seriously, in particular those who come over. If you read the rest of Mr. Thompsons Blog you'll see what I mean about a distrust and distaste for these guys in the Roman World.
Things are going to be interesting.
Anyway, happy Our Lady of Mt Carmel day. Don't watch the EWTN Mass on the repeat tonight if you'd like to hear a good sermon on the feast though. | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | Pope rides to Rowan's rescue | | Time: | 12:28 pm |
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| Exclusive: Vatican shuns defectors and backs calls for Anglican unity
By James Macintyre, Religious Affairs Correspondent
Wednesday, 16 July 2008
The Pope is leading an unprecedented drive by the Roman Catholic Church to prevent the fragmentation of the worldwide Anglican Communion ahead of the once-a-decade gathering of its 800 bishops, which begins today, The Independent has learnt.
In his first public comments on the Lambeth Conference, Pope Benedict XVI has warned Anglican leaders that they must find a "mature" and faithful way of avoiding "schism". On top of this the Pope has:
* Sent three cardinals to the conference in Canterbury, including one of his top aides from the Vatican, to act as personal intermediaries between the two churches;
* Let it be known that he does not support the defection of conservative Anglicans to the Roman Catholic Church;
* Given behind-the-scenes support to the Archbishop of Canterbury's attempts to hold together the conservative and liberal wings of the Anglican Church, including at face-to-face meetings in Rome.
Read the rest here
One can imagine that this will not be well received in some quarters. I also think that this is in no small part because he's already facing complaints about married Clergy in the Latin Rite. I also think that what ever plans he really has for the future of the Roman Church would only be complicated by a pack of priests who have a proven track record of not wanting to go along with a program if it doesn't match what they want exactly. | | comments: 6 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | Cardinal Newman to be reinterred in preparation for sainthood | | Time: | 02:56 pm |
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| Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent
The Vatican has ordered that the body of Cardinal Newman, the Church of England’s most renowned convert to Roman Catholicism, be exhumed and reinterred in a marble sarcophagus, where it can be more easily venerated by the faithful.
The Causes of Saints wants the remains of John Henry Newman, who died in 1890, to be moved from a secluded cemetery and placed in the Birmingham Oratory, part of the English Oratory movement that he founded.
The declaration, expected in December, could coincide with the announcement of a new deal for English traditionalists who want to “go over” to Rome with their congregations in protest at moves to consecrate women bishops in the Church of England.
The Cardinal, already a Venerable, is expected to take the next step up the ladder to sainthood this year when Pope Benedict XVI declares him “Blessed”. He would be the ideal saint for converts to Rome. He was the founder of the Anglo-Catholic Oxford Movement revival in the 19th century and advocated a “via media” for the Church of England. But eventually he could no longer walk it himself and was received by Rome in 1845, and created a cardinal eventually.
Read the rest at the Times.
Now, this is a major violation of Blessed Newman's last wishes. He wanted to be buried with his friend and long term companion Alexander St. James. This has as much to do with the homophobia of the Curia as it dose with wanting to have a shrine to help symbolize the absorption of the Anglo-Catholics. | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| Your result for The Steampunk Archetype Test... The Aetherist Bodger9 Swashbuckling Engineer, 46 Crazy Clockwork Tinkerer, 40 Charming Noble, 17 Roguish Pirate, 8 Mechanical Fian and 50 Aetherist Bodger! 
The aether carries the information, the aether is information. You are one of the few who know the ins and outs of Aether Terminals. You can access information across the Aethersphere, tapping into the Aetherpipes of anyone you want and stealing the information stored in their datatanks. Some think of you as a myth, a legend created to scare people. You are no myth or legend, you are quite real and you are currently reading the Queen’s AetherMissives. Take The Steampunk Archetype Test at HelloQuizzy | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | Assize Day | | Time: | 01:17 pm | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/moonsis/stars/green/pensive_sg.gif) contemplative |
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| 175 years ago today the Rev. John Keeble preached a sermon to Assize Court while it was sitting in Oxford.
This was not an extraordinary event. The Church of England is the Establish Church of the Kingdom and the preacher was one of the most renown Churchmen of his era. He was only the second person in the History of Oxford to achieve a "Double First" and was the Professor of Poetry.
What was exceptional was the content of the sermon. He, against all precedent since the 17th century, preached a sermon with content.
The first two paragraphs of the Sermon follows:( Read more... )
The entire text is here.
This is generally seen as the beginning of the Oxford Movement. It would trigger the Tracts for the Times under the editorship of John H. Newman and caused a stir that lasts to this day. The Movement was defined by it's belief in the catholic heritage of the Church of England and her daughter churches, it's adherence to the Church Fathers and a distrust of evangelicals and "enthusiasts" alike. They were dedicated to expanding the missionary impulse of the Church and to reenergize the moribund Establishment. The current shape of the Book of Common Prayer for the Episcopal Church relates to the work of the Movement, as do the Prayer Books of most of the Anglican communion.
In light of the anniversary and the upcoming Lambeth Conference (another piece of the legacy of the Movement), many are spending an hour in prayer for the continuance of the Movement and the health of the Anglican Communion. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Hat tip to Mark Harris over at PRELUDIUM
I want this book!
I also suggest that anyone interested in the topic do so as well. A few of my readers might want to send it to colleges of theirs.
The Blurb on the book follows:
( Read more... ) | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | Denial is not Just a river ... | | Time: | 03:46 pm |
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| Somebody explain to me why the English Anglo-Catholics think Rome is going to welcome them with open arms?
I mean I now understand that they have adopted a magical realism view of Apostolicae curae and can eve side step Ad Tuendam Fidem and wear blinders when it comes to the recent statement from the Vatican about them being the only "true" Church. What gets me is the desperation when you bring it all up and present it as a seamless garment, as it were. The anger and wild eyed denials is beyond me. | | comments: 5 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | 2 Paragraphs from an essay that I found to be vindicating: | | Time: | 09:28 pm |
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| This leads me to my second point: for those of our colleagues who know how we work, philology and the kinds of historical criticism that Anglo-Saxonists do is an irritating rebuke to standard dogma. But far too many of our colleagues (and even more of their students) really have very little idea of what we do because they are appallingly ignorant about language. This statement may seem deliberatively provocative, but I think it is true. Far too many English professors and graduate students don't really know much about how English works. Oh, they have many ideas about about how language works, but this is all knowledge at an incredibly high level of abstraction (binary oppositions, texts with nothing outside them, prisonhouses of language). Ask a colleague to explain semantic shifts over time or phonological change or the influence of Old Norse on English and you'll get a blank look. My colleagues, intelligent PhDs all, laughed and muttered to each other "what's Grimm's Law?" when I suggested that it was something all of our students should know, on the level of recognizing a participle or a sonnet. These same colleagues can go on about Otherness, etc. but they have no idea how actual language works. My particular colleagues are good-hearted people, real intellectuals, who care about literature, English and the Liberal Arts. But they certainly do not like it when I rub their noses in the fact that I know stuff they don't know (but feel they should). This is one reason, I believe, that medievalists are in such a marginalized and minority position within English departments. We possess knowledge and disciplinary practices that call into question the work that other members of the profession do, and so for them the easiest thing to do is to ignore and marginalize us. This can be done visibly and viciously, by accusing scholars or whole disciplines of racism, sexism, etc.,1 or subtly, by insisting as dogma that all knowledge is contingent and situated. In both cases the result is rhetorically to prepare the ground for the replacement of Anglo-Saxonists by colleagues whose sub-disciplines are more amenable to the dominant paradigm. But this political success comes with a clear intellectual price for English departments. There are now faculty in the Psychology department on occasion who know more about language than faculty in the English department. I think this is an intellectual and disciplinary failing of the highest order.
*****
( Read more... ) | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | For those of you who wonder what I want to sound like in my Blog Posts: | | Time: | 03:53 pm |
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| "Caesar Egassius BULAEUS (du Boulay), in his six enormous folio volumes, Historia Universitatisis Parisiensis a Corolo M. ad nostra tempora 1665-73, gathered together an immense mass of material for its history, but his own view of its origin is as completely mythical as anything in the first decade of Livy, while his inaccuracies and inconsistencies are only equalled by his tedious prolixity. He was perhaps the stupidest man that ever wrote a valuable book."
(From Rashdall's Medieval Universities, p. 269)
That is I want to sound like Rashdall, not Bulaeus. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | Archbishop of Canterbury's Sermon at York Minster | | Time: | 01:49 pm |
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| Sunday 06 July 2008
General Synod, July Group of Sessions
Any congregation might be forgiven for wondering what are we going to hear about this morning. Members of Synod in particular (but perhaps members of the Church of England in general) may have the slight sense that there's rather too much to be hearing about, that we're suffering somewhat from issue fatigue. So perhaps we ought to begin where we always ought to begin, in listening to what the Word of God has to say. And scripture says, 'Rejoice greatly, o daughter of Zion. I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit". And today's scriptures say, 'Who will rescue me from this body of death. Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord'. And scripture says, 'Come to me all you who travail and are heavy laden. My yoke is easy and my burden is light'. In a way, the pivot for understanding all this is provided in the epistle today. Paul in the letter to the Romans gives us the key.
We live under law, different kinds of law. The law of God, which is for our health, and the law we make for ourselves. We long to be masters of our future, and so we become the prisoners of our past. We long to take control of the world we're in. And because we are who we are, and our histories have been what they have been, we dig ourselves deeper and deeper into unfreedom. The will that we want to use to conquer the world, is a will weakened and bruised by the legacy of self-love, going back to the very roots of the human race. The effects of that legacy work themselves out as relentlessly as any oriental karma. We want to take hold of our future and we are gripped, paralysed, by our past.
We find ourselves in that 'waterless pit' of which Zechariah speaks. Waterless pits - perhaps that should trigger a memory of one particular Old Testament story. Do you remember that when Joseph went in search of his brothers and they decided to kill him – they threw him into a pit where there was no water. Remember Joseph? Joseph who was so unpopular with his brothers because he believed his future was in his hands. He knew he could foresee the day that his brothers and his father would bow down to him. But he finds himself in a waterless pit, sold into slavery. God's future for him only begins to happen when he is stripped of his claim to be master of his own future. In a waterless pit the dreams fade away. There is only God over against the body of death.( Read more... )
'Who shall deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord', we are delivered from the body of death by our incorporation into the body of his life; the body that is the Catholic fellowship of Christ's Church. The body that is all of us in our various waterless pits, in our corporate waterless pit of bewilderment and confusion and division today. Nonetheless, his body, his body of life, which this morning as week-by-week we take once again into our hands in the sacrament, the body of life. The body of life which makes us prisoners of hope, which takes us where he is. 'Come to me, I will give you rest. The yoke is easy and my burden is light'.
Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
© Rowan Williams | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | Dr Rowan Williams stands tall in the Church | | Time: | 09:22 pm |
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| By Jonathan Wynne-Jones
The Guardian
It was a little after half past ten when the Archbishop of Canterbury shuffled up the steps of the pulpit in York Minster to address the hushed congregation.
After six years in the post, this could well become a defining moment for Dr Rowan Williams - the time when the real Archbishop appeared before his Church.
He has been weighed down by the crises that have engulfed the Anglican communion virtually ever since his arrival at Lambeth - pulled this way and that by the warring factions in the battles over homosexuality and women bishops.
Today, however, he grew in stature as the sermon went on, emerging by the end of it as the leader that the Anglican communion so desperately needs - compassionate yet direct and vulnerable yet firm.( Read more... ) | | comments: 5 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | The Obama Niebuhr Connection | | Time: | 08:30 pm |
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| Forget Jeremiah Wright, the Democratic hopeful owes much more of his worldview to the flinty—eyed perspective of a long-dead, Christian Harvard theologian
Jun 14, 2008 04:30 AM
PAUL ALLEN
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
Earlier this month, Barack Obama talked about the hype surrounding him: "One thing I've learned about myself is that the surface glitter, the vanity element of this campaign, becomes less satisfying as I go along."
This may be false humility. But, it may also reveal a great deal about what Obama has read, understood and made his own: a moderate, Christian vision of things, a vision that tempers his view of himself, of human nature, of government. And this vision could alter American liberalism itself.
Read the rest here | | comments: Leave a comment |
| If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were
merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the
morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a
desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the
day.
E. B. White | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | Mutterings over the graves of soldiers | | Time: | 08:55 am |
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| On Memorial Day we'll hear about men who gave their lives for their country, but many lives were not given, they were taken, and taken stupidly and carelessly.
By Garrison Keillor
May. 21, 2008 | The Current Occupant tossed Nazis into a speech last week, something he rarely does since it only reminds people of Dick Cheney. He likened those who would negotiate with terrorists to those who tried to appease the Nazis, an awkward comparison, since Nazis were self-defined and wore the swastika proudly, and terrorists are anybody we nominate to be terrorists, who may include terrorists, people who know terrorists, people named Terry, or people with wrists. One reason Guantánamo is kept top-secret is so you and I won't know how many innocent people have been locked up there and how little the bureaucracy cares about innocence, which might remind people of the Nazis. <lj-cut>
The Nazis have served us well as an embodiment of evil even after they're all dead and buried, thanks to wonderful movies with cruel men with bad skin and guttural voices -- and the word itself, which has an ominous buzz to it, unlike the gentle "communist," a cousin to "communion" and "community," though when it comes to outright hardcore evil, communism outdid the Third Reich hands down. Stalin was the most murderous man in the history of the world, having had a larger victim pool to work with, and yet "Stalinist" is not the epithet it should be.
That's because communism was exploited for short-term political advantage after World War II by Richard Nixon and other weasels of the right, much the way "terrorist" is today, to scare people into acceding to unprecedented secrecy and concentration of power and freedom of bureaucrats from any accountability whatsoever. Spooky old hammerhead politicians found anti-communism to be wonderfully profitable and they rode that horse for years and cheapened the language.
The war on terror, to most people, is a lame joke, and Republicans who've been embedded in Washington too long are now finding that the word "terrorism" has lost its tread. This multitrillion-dollar war is going to wind down, one way or another. The Occupant will hand it off to the next president, who can then negotiate with people who know people who know terrorists and work out a way to extricate our people from the desert.
If a Democrat does it, it will be appeasement, and if a Republican does it, it will go down as a courageous act of statesmanship, but one way or another, it will be done.
I got a letter from a U.S. Marine in Fallujah ("trapped in this heat and smoke ... running in circles that won't change anything") who, though a "right-wing social conservative," asks, "Where are the protests from my contemporaries in America's colleges? Why do I not detect an appropriate sense of urgency from our citizens and elected officials?"
It's only May. You will see more urgency from elected officials as November nears. Sen. McCain is now talking about withdrawal except of course he wants to call it "victory," and Republicans up for reelection are learning to sound a little more thoughtful and even skeptical about the war. In Minnesota, a man is up for reelection who sat on a Senate committee with oversight responsibility for the rebuilding effort in Iraq and who showed no keen interest in the billions of dollars disappearing down rat holes. He is now starting to recover some memory.
Meanwhile it's almost Memorial Day and here is a vet on television talking hopefully about his dream of making a good life who has been horribly burned and grafted back together, his head looks like a candle stub with a mouth and blinking eyes. Your heart goes out to the brave young man. And what choice does he have other than to be brave? It's either that or the life of a potato. But who did this to him?
On Memorial Day we'll hear about men who gave their lives for their country, but many lives were not given, they were taken, and taken stupidly and carelessly. And there has been great public piety about those men and their "sacrifice" on the part of politicians who blithely sacrificed them. </lj-cut>
Back in 2001, McCain said that a person couldn't talk policy to the Current Occupant for more than 10 minutes and then his mind wandered and he was anxious to talk about baseball. His impatience with detail was apparently a factor in the disastrous move to disband the Iraqi army. I hope he gets to spend some time in his presidential library in Dallas and catch up on what he missed out on.
© 2008 by Garrison Keillor. All rights reserved. Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/keillor/2008/05/21/memorial_day/print.html | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | Vatican: It's OK to believe in aliens | | Time: | 10:02 am |
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| The chief astronomer says those beliefs don't contradict faith in God
updated 3:57 p.m. ET, Tues., May. 13, 2008
VATICAN CITY - The Vatican's chief astronomer says that believing in aliens does not contradict faith in God.
The Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, said that the vastness of the universe means it is possible there could be other forms of life outside Earth, even intelligent ones.
In an interview published Tuesday by Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, Funes said that such a notion "doesn't contradict our faith" because aliens would still be God's creatures.
Funes said that ruling out the existence of aliens would be like "putting limits" on God's creative freedom.
Tip of the hat to ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) orangebeaver
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| | Subject: | Interesting: | | Time: | 04:23 pm |
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Eucharistic theology
created with QuizFarm.com |
| You scored as Orthodox You are Orthodox, worshiping the mystery of the Holy Trinity in the great liturgy whereby Jesus is present through the Spirit in a real yet mysterious way, a meal that is also a sacrifice.
Orthodox |
| 100% | Luther |
| 63% | Calvin |
| 63% | Catholic |
| 56% | Zwingli |
| 25% | Unitarian |
| 13% |
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