Author: John W Gillis

Life in Christ

We have the duty and joy of sharing in this prayer whenever possible

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Quote of the Day for Sunday, May 29th, 2011: Taken from the website of an Anglican priest in New Zealand, Bosco Peters, on the proper place of the Liturgy of the Hours in the prayer life of the Christian believer: Many who pray the Daily Office have a personal Rule of Life, or even an expectation or vows that require that regular discipline. These can often end up feeling guilty when a particular Hour has not been prayed by them. Some, in fact, will then try to “catch up” what they have missed – even gluing a number of Hours together an...

Culture & Philosophy

The way things are done now makes us importunate, dependent, and increasingly unfit to govern ourselves

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Quote of the Day for Thursday, May 26th, 2011. The always-readable J. E. Dyer, published in the Green Room over at HotAir, on the burgeoning bloat of judicial control over the character and content of America’s social order: When the law is in proper relationship to the people, the scope of the judiciary is very limited, but actually more meaningful to the enterprise of “good government.”  Today, we have a body of law so huge and burdensome that it has started going 15 rounds with itself on a regular basis, and the judiciary acts as a referee on intricat...

Music

Raphael’s Journey

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Music loving Pro-lifers might want to check out the latest solo album from Iona’s Joanne Hogg, entitled Raphael’s Journey. For those not familiar with Ms. Hogg, she is an angelic-voiced Irish beauty who has been the lead vocalist for the Contemporary Christian band Iona since its inception in 1989. Iona falls into more or less the same genre as bands like Clannad or Eden’s Bridge: playing ethereal, Irish-flavored pop, mixing traditional instruments and themes into the standard rock band ensemble. But when Iona rocks, which is not infrequent, they rock wi...

Culture & Philosophy

It is by their gods that human beings are shaped and known

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Quote of the Day for Monday, May 9th, 2011: A second helping from the wonderful essay by David Bentley Hart: John Paul II Against the Nihilists: For the late pope, divine humanity is not something that in a simple sense lies beyond the human; it does not reside in some future, post-human race to which the good of the present must be offered up; it is instead a glory hidden in the depths of every person, even the least of us – even "defectives" and "morons" and "genetic inferiors," if you will – waiting to be reve...

Culture & Philosophy

There are no negotiable or even very perplexing issues regarding our moral obligations before the mystery of life

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Quote of the Day for Sunday, May 8th, 2011: David Bentley Hart, in an excellent essay posted on a remarkably robust “Religion & Ethics” section of the website of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, which highlights the irremediably divergent visions of God inherent in the worldviews of modern, materialist “transhumanists,” and orthodox Christianity – particularly as expressed in Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body: To one who holds to John Paul’s Christian understanding of the body, and so believes that each human being, from the very...

Politics & Economics

Where OBL wins their empathy, American jocks receive only their bile

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Quote of the day for Saturday, May 7th, 2011: Brendan O’Neill, editor of spiked, providing an interesting critique from across the pond on the reaction of European elites to the killing this week of Osama bin Laden: It is extraordinary, and revealing, how quickly the expression of concern about the use of American force in Pakistan became an expression of values superiority over the American people. The modern chattering classes are so utterly removed from the mass of the population, so profoundly disconnected from ‘ordinary people’ and their ‘ordinary t...

Politics & Economics

Government serves best when it protects and safeguards—rather than crowds out—the poverty-fighting institutions of civil society

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Quote of the Day for Thursday, May 5th, 2011: Ryan Messmore, writing at the Heritage Foundation website, on the ruse that a social and political order disciplined by a commitment to limited government is to be equated with an antipathy for the poor: The goal of overcoming poverty is not simply to eliminate need, but to enable people to thrive—that is, to empower them to live meaningful lives and contribute to society. Thriving is much more than a full stomach and a place to sleep. People tend to flourish in the context of healthy relationships with their...

Culture & Philosophy

Hegel could take the place of The Talking Heads

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Quote of the Day for Thursday, April 28th, 2011: From Alvin Plantinga’s 1984 paper, Advice to Christian Philosophers, published at FaithandPhilosophy.com: Some positivists conceded that metaphysics and theology, though strictly meaningless, might still have a certain limited value. Carnap, for example, thought they might be a kind of music. It isn’t known whether he expected theology and metaphysics to supplant Bach and Mozart, or even Wagner; I myself, however, think they could nicely supersede rock. Hegel could take the place of The Talking Heads...

Life in Christ

Through obedience, we become who we really are

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Quote of the Day for Tuesday, April 26th, 2011: David Mills, from an On the Square post over at First Things, from an interesting, if somewhat bizarrely sensationalist, reflection on the moral significance of being true to the self: No one objects to being told to live like Jesus. But to live the way St. Paul says to live, or the way the Catechism of the Catholic Church says to live, that we dislike. Being chaste, or giving alms, or stifling our desire for profit, or going to confession, or watching our language, or suffering a fool gladly, that rankles,...

Life in Christ

I’m going to kill you! HA HA HA!

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I find the readings for the Mass of the 5th Sunday of Lent (Year A) to be among the most exhilarating set of liturgical readings in the canon, with its recurring promises of resurrection culminating in the Gospel story of Jesus raising his friend Lazarus from the tomb. I reflected quite a bit on them over the weekend of the 5th Sunday. During the following week, I came across what I’d guess is by now a well-traveled “sermon jam” drawn from recordings of Ravi Zacharias, which asks what should perhaps be considered, for Christians, the fundamental qu...