Month: May 2008

Learning

Modern Scholar series (part III)

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I’ve listened to a couple more volumes in the Modern Scholar series over the past month. The first was A History of Ancient Rome, by Utah State University professor Frances Titchener. This set of lectures was not among the best of those I’ve listened to in this series, though I’ve also heard worse. Covering 1,500 or so years of complex history in 14 half-hour lectures is not an easy task, and she certainly deserves some freedom to present it as she sees fit, but I found the presentation overly idiosyncratic, nonetheless. Professor Titch...

Church

One Foot Out the Door, the Other in the Mouth

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I was rather taken aback by the explanations put forth by recently retired Saint Paul & Minneapolis Archbishop Harry J. Flynn, as conveyed in this article in last week’s Boston Pilot, as to why he was putting an end to the practice in his diocese of lay preachers delivering homilies during Mass. In the interest of full disclosure from the outset, I have no intention of agitating for permission for laity to preach during the Mass, and if I ever sink to suggesting that anyone somehow possess a “right” to such a role, please shoot me b...

Media & Culture

Interiorizing Pop Brands

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Over the past few weeks, I’ve written several posts related to the challenge of introducing growing children to the ubiquitous pop culture while minimizing the negative effects of the encounter on their moral and spiritual well-being. Given that ubiquitousness of pop culture, and that my primary responsibility toward my children is for their moral and spiritual formation, this is a big deal to me. I suspect this is also a big deal to many others, even to many who think that the moral and spiritual formation of their children is a secondary responsi...

Critical Issues

Human Rights and the Right to be Human

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BlogCatalog.com is organizing a campaign today, May 15th, to encourage bloggers around the world to help raise awareness of human rights issues by blogging about them. I think it’s a terrific idea, and was more than happy to sign up to join the campaign. Human rights is a concept that speaks to the need for each of us to acknowledge the common humanity we share with the rest of the race, and to recognize the duties that we all inherently and inalienably have toward each other in the light of the particular dignity we each possess as human beings. S...

Ruminations

There’s No Time Like Ordinary Time

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The Easter season is over, and the Church moves back into Ordinary time. I feel a little reluctant to let it go, though I’m not sure why. But as I said the final “alleluias” of Night Prayer last night, I felt a little twinge of sadness. I suppose I am, as usual, resisting the passage of time because of a sense of disconnect between what I’ve accomplished, and what I’d hoped to have accomplished. I need to learn to be more satisfied with my effort, and perhaps to not set expectations so high, either – although it would ...

Media & Culture

The Heart of the Matter (part 2)

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My last post ended up focusing on the need to understand the nature of the problem of pornography, but what I’m really trying to get at is understanding how people are shaped by the ideas they encounter and absorb, how this is particularly true of children, and how this generality might be applied to the concrete situations parents find themselves in when confronted with the need to make decisions regarding their children’s involvement in pop culture, with its attendant mores. I take it for granted that everything we encounter in life, includ...

Media & Culture

The Heart of the Matter (part 1)

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It seems to me there is little more critical for a parent to do than to work to understand exactly why and how things - and the ideas they convey - are dangerous for our children, so that decisions can be made and guidelines set that are based on sound principles, so they can be applied consistently, and eventually understood rationally by the children, which will allow them to likewise make their own principled decisions based on a sound understanding of the nature of the threats the world presents to them.

Church

Athanasius the Great

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Today, May 2nd, is the feast day of Saint Athanasius the Great. Athanasius was, in a sense, the Saint Paul of the Constantinian era – maligned, persecuted, exiled, all for defending the triune faith against scholarly innovators, false brethren, and over-reaching politicians. It’s unrealistic to say that he defeated Arianism, since it continued to flourish as a rampant heresy long after his death, but he certainly deserves the lion’s share of the credit for repudiating it doctrinally, and it was his theological genius that gave us Trinit...