Wow, it's been 4 months since I last posted. For the most part I have been absent from my usual online activities, but I have really missed it. I really hope to get back to posting at Beggars All again, but it may be a few more months before that happens.
So where have I been? Well, I have been trying to build up some online work so that I can someday work from home. I'm tired of working outside of the home, have lost interest in my field and would like to have a more time to spend with my family and to pursue personal interests. Top amongst these "personal interests" is a better theological education (which may just be more time reading) and online apologetics.
Unfortunately, my progress so far is not so great. I don't have alot of extra time to spend on building up projects so it will take more time. In the meantime, I need to put blogging aside to focus.
I do have plans to start some new sites focused around some of my apologetic interests. But again, it will probably be awhile before I get to them.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Quiet Time
While there is never a loss of things to write about, I just have not had the time to pursue a given topic. The fact that September is quickly approaching doesn't help - I feel like I really need to enjoy what remains of summer.
I have some new responsiblities at work and a child starting school (which will change schedules around at my house) along with the usual stuff (eating, sleeping, etc.) I will continue to focus my efforts over at Beggars All but haven't quite decided what to do with this blog. Perhaps change to a more personal angle. Perhaps not.
Just thought I would update the 2 people who happen to read this blog. I wish I had more to share.
I have some new responsiblities at work and a child starting school (which will change schedules around at my house) along with the usual stuff (eating, sleeping, etc.) I will continue to focus my efforts over at Beggars All but haven't quite decided what to do with this blog. Perhaps change to a more personal angle. Perhaps not.
Just thought I would update the 2 people who happen to read this blog. I wish I had more to share.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Trust in Mary
At the hour of our death...
Pope Benedict said, "prayer was the secret" of St. Edith Stein, who knew she was headed toward death, but radiated peace and concern for others.
St. Maximilian Kolbe's last words were reported to be the beginning of the Hail Mary, he said.
"It is moving to note that the humble and trusting recourse to the Blessed Mother is always a source of courage and serenity," he said.
As the church prepared to celebrate the Aug. 15 feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the pope told his visitors, "Let us renew our trust in the one who, from heaven, watches over us with maternal love at every moment." Catholic News
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Back at Beggars
I just realized my most recent post said I was on a break. I am back, sorta, but only posting over at Beggars All. Here are some of my recent posts over there:
The Alleged Magisterial Perspicuity
Faith is Optional?
Victory Through Mary
Venerating Bones
Follow the Pope
The Alleged Magisterial Perspicuity
Faith is Optional?
Victory Through Mary
Venerating Bones
Follow the Pope
Friday, March 28, 2008
Choosing Religion
Muslim converts to Catholicism:
Why did he convert?
Well, I guess if you are just looking for “religion”, that’s a reasonable method for choosing.
The Muslim-born journalist baptized by Pope Benedict XVI at the Easter Vigil said he wanted a public conversion to convince other former Muslims not to be afraid of practicing their new Christian faith.
Why did he convert?
“While he moved definitively away from Islam five years ago, Allam said it was Pope Benedict's teaching that convinced him to become a Catholic.
’He has said the basis for accepting a religion as true is how it accepts the basic rights of the person, the sacredness of life, freedom, choice (and) equality between men and women," Allam said.’”
Well, I guess if you are just looking for “religion”, that’s a reasonable method for choosing.
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Jewish Salvation Without Christ
Writing in the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, in December 2000, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger wrote, "As Christians we are the inheritors of their faith in the one God."
"Our gratitude," the future pope wrote, "must be extended to our Jewish brothers and sisters who, despite the hardships of their own history, have held on to faith in this God right up to the present, and who witness to it in the sight of those peoples who, lacking knowledge of the one God, 'dwell in darkness and in the shadow of death.'"
Two years later, Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Commission for Relations With the Jews, told a U.S. conference that Christians cannot ignore their core belief in the universality of salvation in Christ.
However, he said, "this does not mean that Jews, in order to be saved, have to become Christians; if they follow their own conscience and believe in God's promises as they understand them in their religious tradition, they are in line with God's plan, which for us comes to historical completion in Jesus Christ."
-Catholic News
"Our gratitude," the future pope wrote, "must be extended to our Jewish brothers and sisters who, despite the hardships of their own history, have held on to faith in this God right up to the present, and who witness to it in the sight of those peoples who, lacking knowledge of the one God, 'dwell in darkness and in the shadow of death.'"
Two years later, Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Commission for Relations With the Jews, told a U.S. conference that Christians cannot ignore their core belief in the universality of salvation in Christ.
However, he said, "this does not mean that Jews, in order to be saved, have to become Christians; if they follow their own conscience and believe in God's promises as they understand them in their religious tradition, they are in line with God's plan, which for us comes to historical completion in Jesus Christ."
-Catholic News
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Relic Escort
“Led by 18 sharply dressed Italian military police on horseback, hundreds of people who care for the sick escorted a relic of St. Bernadette Soubirous into St. Peter's Square.
The procession down the main street leading to the square opened festivities at the Vatican marking the Feb. 11 feast of Our Lady of Lourdes and the World Day of the Sick.
The golden reliquary containing one of the French visionary's ribs was carried into St. Peter's Basilica, where midday prayers were led by Cardinal Angelo Comastri, archpriest of the basilica.”
-Catholic News
The procession down the main street leading to the square opened festivities at the Vatican marking the Feb. 11 feast of Our Lady of Lourdes and the World Day of the Sick.
The golden reliquary containing one of the French visionary's ribs was carried into St. Peter's Basilica, where midday prayers were led by Cardinal Angelo Comastri, archpriest of the basilica.”
-Catholic News
Friday, February 1, 2008
Canon Ratified at Trent
Yves Congars writes:" "...an official, definitive list of inspired writings did not exist in the Catholic Church until the Council of Trent..."Congars, Tradition and Traditions, p.38
The English translator of the Council of Trent, H.J. Schroeder: "The Tridentine list or decree was the first infallible and effectual promulgated declaration on the Canon of Holy Scriptures." The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, footnote #4, p.17
“The idea of a complete and clear-cut canon of the New Testament existing from the beginning, that is from Apostolic times, has no foundation in history. The Canon of the New Testament, like that of the Old, is the result of a development, of a process at once stimulated by disputes with doubters, both within and without the Church, and retarded by certain obscurities and natural hesitations, and which did not reach its final term until the dogmatic definition of the Tridentine Council.” Old Catholic Encyclopedia
The Council of Trent definitively settled the matter of the OT canon. That this had not been done previously is apparent from the uncertainty that persisted up to the time of Trent.” New Catholic Encyclopedia, 1967
The English translator of the Council of Trent, H.J. Schroeder: "The Tridentine list or decree was the first infallible and effectual promulgated declaration on the Canon of Holy Scriptures." The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, footnote #4, p.17
“The idea of a complete and clear-cut canon of the New Testament existing from the beginning, that is from Apostolic times, has no foundation in history. The Canon of the New Testament, like that of the Old, is the result of a development, of a process at once stimulated by disputes with doubters, both within and without the Church, and retarded by certain obscurities and natural hesitations, and which did not reach its final term until the dogmatic definition of the Tridentine Council.” Old Catholic Encyclopedia
The Council of Trent definitively settled the matter of the OT canon. That this had not been done previously is apparent from the uncertainty that persisted up to the time of Trent.” New Catholic Encyclopedia, 1967
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
For my own bookmark:
[http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2008/01/legendary-alexandrian-canon.html]
“No two Septuagint codices contain the same apocrypha, and no uniform Septuagint ‘Bible’ was ever the subject of discussion in the patristic church. In view of these facts the Septuagint codices appear to have been originally intended more as service books than as a defined and normative canon of Scripture,” E. E. Ellis, The Old Testament in Early Christianity (Baker 1992), 34-35.
“As we have seen, manuscripts of anything like the capacity of Codex Alexandrinus were not used in the first centuries of the Christian era, and since, in the second century AD, the Jews seem largely to have discarded the Septuagint…there can be no real doubt that the comprehensive codices of the Septuagint, which start appearing in the fourth century AD, are all of Christian origin,” R. Beckwith, The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church (Eerdmans 1986), 382.
“Nor is there agreement between the codices which of the Apocrypha t include. Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Alexandrinus all include Tobit, Judith, Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus, and integrate them into the body of the Old Testament, rather than appending them at the end; but Codex Vaticanus, unlike the other two, totally excludes the Books of Maccabees. Moreover, all three codices, according to Kenyon, were produced in Egypt, yet the contemporary Christian lists of the biblical books drawn up in Egypt by Athanasius and (very likely) pseudo-Athanasius are much more critical, excluding all apocryphal books from the canon, and putting them in a separate appendix. It seems, therefore, that the codices, with their less strict approach, do not reflect a definite canon so much as variable reading-habits; and the reading-habits would in the nature of the case be those of fourth and fifth-century Christians, which might not agree with those of first-century Jews,” ibid. 383.
“At this point we encounter the Greek Old Testament in the three great codices of the fourth and fifth centuries: Vaticanus, Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus…All exceeded the scope of the Hebrew Bible…In Vaticanus, however, all four of the books of Maccabees are missing and in Sinaiticus, 2 and 3 Macabees, as well as 1 Ezra, Baruch and Letter of Jeremiah—presumably only the result of lacunae in the text. Codex Alexandrinus, approximately one century younger, is, in contrast, much more extensive; it includes the LXX as we know it in Rahlfs’ edition, with all four books of Maccabees and the fourteen Odes appended to Psalms. The Odes also include the Prayer of Manasseh, previously attested only in the Syria Didaskalia and the Apostolic Constitutions,” M. Hengel, The Septuagint as Christian Scripture (Baker 2004), 57-58.
“It should be considered, further, that the Odes (sometimes varied in number), attested from the fifth century in all Greek Psalm manuscripts, contain three New Testament ‘psalms’: the Magnificat, the Benedictus, the Nunc Dimittis from Luke’s birth narrative, and the conclusion of the hymn that begins with the ‘Gloria in Excelsis.’ This underlines the fact that the LXX, although, itself consisting of a collection of Jewish documents, wishes to be a Christian book. The relative openness of the Old Treatment portion of these oldest codices also corresponds to that of its ‘New Testament’: Sinaiticus contains Barnabas and Hermas, Alexandrinus 1 and 2 Clement,” ibid. 59.
[http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2008/01/legendary-alexandrian-canon.html]
“No two Septuagint codices contain the same apocrypha, and no uniform Septuagint ‘Bible’ was ever the subject of discussion in the patristic church. In view of these facts the Septuagint codices appear to have been originally intended more as service books than as a defined and normative canon of Scripture,” E. E. Ellis, The Old Testament in Early Christianity (Baker 1992), 34-35.
“As we have seen, manuscripts of anything like the capacity of Codex Alexandrinus were not used in the first centuries of the Christian era, and since, in the second century AD, the Jews seem largely to have discarded the Septuagint…there can be no real doubt that the comprehensive codices of the Septuagint, which start appearing in the fourth century AD, are all of Christian origin,” R. Beckwith, The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church (Eerdmans 1986), 382.
“Nor is there agreement between the codices which of the Apocrypha t include. Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Alexandrinus all include Tobit, Judith, Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus, and integrate them into the body of the Old Testament, rather than appending them at the end; but Codex Vaticanus, unlike the other two, totally excludes the Books of Maccabees. Moreover, all three codices, according to Kenyon, were produced in Egypt, yet the contemporary Christian lists of the biblical books drawn up in Egypt by Athanasius and (very likely) pseudo-Athanasius are much more critical, excluding all apocryphal books from the canon, and putting them in a separate appendix. It seems, therefore, that the codices, with their less strict approach, do not reflect a definite canon so much as variable reading-habits; and the reading-habits would in the nature of the case be those of fourth and fifth-century Christians, which might not agree with those of first-century Jews,” ibid. 383.
“At this point we encounter the Greek Old Testament in the three great codices of the fourth and fifth centuries: Vaticanus, Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus…All exceeded the scope of the Hebrew Bible…In Vaticanus, however, all four of the books of Maccabees are missing and in Sinaiticus, 2 and 3 Macabees, as well as 1 Ezra, Baruch and Letter of Jeremiah—presumably only the result of lacunae in the text. Codex Alexandrinus, approximately one century younger, is, in contrast, much more extensive; it includes the LXX as we know it in Rahlfs’ edition, with all four books of Maccabees and the fourteen Odes appended to Psalms. The Odes also include the Prayer of Manasseh, previously attested only in the Syria Didaskalia and the Apostolic Constitutions,” M. Hengel, The Septuagint as Christian Scripture (Baker 2004), 57-58.
“It should be considered, further, that the Odes (sometimes varied in number), attested from the fifth century in all Greek Psalm manuscripts, contain three New Testament ‘psalms’: the Magnificat, the Benedictus, the Nunc Dimittis from Luke’s birth narrative, and the conclusion of the hymn that begins with the ‘Gloria in Excelsis.’ This underlines the fact that the LXX, although, itself consisting of a collection of Jewish documents, wishes to be a Christian book. The relative openness of the Old Treatment portion of these oldest codices also corresponds to that of its ‘New Testament’: Sinaiticus contains Barnabas and Hermas, Alexandrinus 1 and 2 Clement,” ibid. 59.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Digging up Relics
“The body of St. Padre Pio will be exhumed, studied and displayed for public veneration from mid-April to late September, said the archbishop who oversees the shrine where the saint is buried.
Archbishop Domenico D'Ambrosio, papal delegate for the shrine in San Giovanni Rotondo, announced Jan. 6 that he and the Capuchin friars of Padre Pio's community had decided it was important to verify the condition of the saint's body and find a way to ensure its preservation.
"It is my personal conviction and that of the confreres of St. Pio that we have an obligation to give the generations that will come after us the possibility of venerating and preserving in the best possible way the mortal remains of St. Pio," Archbishop D'Ambrosio said.
…In addition to marking the 40th anniversary of Padre Pio's death Sept. 23, 1968, the public veneration of his remains also will coincide with the 90th anniversary of the day on which he was believed to have received the stigmata, bloody wounds recalling the crucifixion wounds of Jesus.”
-Catholic News
Archbishop Domenico D'Ambrosio, papal delegate for the shrine in San Giovanni Rotondo, announced Jan. 6 that he and the Capuchin friars of Padre Pio's community had decided it was important to verify the condition of the saint's body and find a way to ensure its preservation.
"It is my personal conviction and that of the confreres of St. Pio that we have an obligation to give the generations that will come after us the possibility of venerating and preserving in the best possible way the mortal remains of St. Pio," Archbishop D'Ambrosio said.
…In addition to marking the 40th anniversary of Padre Pio's death Sept. 23, 1968, the public veneration of his remains also will coincide with the 90th anniversary of the day on which he was believed to have received the stigmata, bloody wounds recalling the crucifixion wounds of Jesus.”
-Catholic News
Sunday, January 6, 2008
The Pope on Mary
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI called on Christians to turn to Mary, the mother of God, for help in being true friends of Jesus and courageous builders of peace.
…He invited the faithful to "carefully consider the importance of the presence of Mary in the life of the church and in our own personal life" and prayed that Mary would help "make us more keenly aware of her maternal presence."
…The incarnation through Christ's birth is not a past event, the pope said; like the Magi and the poor shepherds of Bethlehem, today's men and women drawn to the Christ Child are "full of joy because God wanted to be the God who is with us and who has a mother who is our mother."
…"In fact, being totally with God, this woman is very close to us and helps us like a mother and like a sister," he said.
Mary is also the mother of the church, the pope said, which makes her the mother of "every one of us who are members of the mystical body of Christ."
Pope Benedict asked audience participants to trust in Mary and pray to her to "guide our steps" during the new year and "help us be authentic friends of her son and that way also (be) courageous builders of his kingdom in the world, the kingdom of peace and truth."
"Supported and comforted by the Virgin's protection, we too can contemplate with renewed vision the face of her son, Jesus, and more energetically follow the path of the good," he said.
-Catholic News
…He invited the faithful to "carefully consider the importance of the presence of Mary in the life of the church and in our own personal life" and prayed that Mary would help "make us more keenly aware of her maternal presence."
…The incarnation through Christ's birth is not a past event, the pope said; like the Magi and the poor shepherds of Bethlehem, today's men and women drawn to the Christ Child are "full of joy because God wanted to be the God who is with us and who has a mother who is our mother."
…"In fact, being totally with God, this woman is very close to us and helps us like a mother and like a sister," he said.
Mary is also the mother of the church, the pope said, which makes her the mother of "every one of us who are members of the mystical body of Christ."
Pope Benedict asked audience participants to trust in Mary and pray to her to "guide our steps" during the new year and "help us be authentic friends of her son and that way also (be) courageous builders of his kingdom in the world, the kingdom of peace and truth."
"Supported and comforted by the Virgin's protection, we too can contemplate with renewed vision the face of her son, Jesus, and more energetically follow the path of the good," he said.
-Catholic News
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)