Note that neither Origen nor Augustine nor Jerome was writing for tenure or to impress an academic audience

Quote of the Day for Saturday, October 1st, 2011: Fr. Robert Barron, from the Introduction to his book, Thomas Aquinas: Spiritual Master (Crossroad, 1996), on the pastoral character of pre-Scholastic theology: [P]rior to 1300, that is, from the earliest centuries of the church up until the time of Thomas Aquinas, there was no significant split between theology (talk about God) and spirituality. Many of the significant spiritual masters of the patristic period – Origen, Augustine, pseudo-Dionysius, Ambrose – were what we would call theologians. All of the...

You need to know what you believe

Quote of the Day for Monday, June 6th, 2011: Pope Benedict XVI, from the forward to Youcat, the new Youth Catechism of the Catholic Church published last year, and released recently in English by Ignatius Press: You need to know what you believe… Yes, you need to be more deeply rooted in the faith than the generation of your parents so that you can engage the challenges and temptations of this time with strength and determination. You need God’s help if your faith is not going to dry up like a dewdrop in the sun, if you want to resist the blandishm...

O Rex Gentium

“O King of all the nations, the only joy of every human heart; O Keystone of the mighty arch of man, come and save the creature you fashioned from the dust.” (O Antiphon for Dec 22nd) Of all the titles of Christ given in these antiphons, I find the notion expressed in today’s antiphon the most difficult to see my way clear to. The others all seem to allow a kind of "religious" perspective to them – “light” and “wisdom” and other even more abstract ideas. I don’t mean by that to contrast the obvious political character of the idea of...

Archbishop Chaput Fingers JFK

Related to the juxtaposed references to articles on civic and religious engagement in Monday’s post, Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput delivered an address at Houston Baptist University on Monday entitled The Vocation of Christians in American Public Life, which is particularly interesting for the way he takes John F. Kennedy to task for his famous speech in Houston 50 years ago, in which Kennedy tried to reassure his audience of Protestant ministers that his Catholicism would not play a meaningful role in his public performance of duty, should he b...