Purify Your Bride

Some comments on a Christipher Hitchens article found in the Washington Post vis exChristian.com:
On Sunday the New York Times reported on the recrudescence of “faith-based” teaching in Russian public schools:

“A teacher named Irina Donshina set aside her textbooks, strode before her second-graders and, as if speaking from a pulpit, posed a simple question:“Whom should we [...]

It will be interesting to watch all the conservative supporters of Benedict in the blogosphere as he talks more and more about social doctrine.  There has already been some discomfort over his comments on Iraq and global warming. There is every indication that in the next year or two Benedict will kick the liberal talk into [...]

How much jail time should a woman get if abortion is illegal and she has one anyway? The debate around this question shows a bit about why this nation is not ready to make abortion illegal. The pro-choice side has been forcing this question to the forefront because the public reacts very badly to the [...]

I think it was Augustine who suggest schism was worse than heresy. He was dealing with the Donatists who were in schism over the moral failings of bishops in that area. There is an article on this here applying the history to the Anglican situation. They felt that the bishops were so bad they had lost [...]

I found some comments on John 6 by Sinner and Saint. His words are in black, mine are in purple:
Verse 51
“I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread also which I will give for the life of the world [...]

Ellen Burnstyn is no friend of the Catholic church. She left the church when she was young and now has written a book pushing some combination of many religions. Still when CFRB in Toronto asked her what the lowest point of her life was she said it was her abortion. She is 74 years old [...]

One thing you see constantly is the ability of the human mind to not see something in scripture that goes against their tradition. Catholics get accused of this all the time but it is more often the protestants who do it. There are a lot of examples but the most striking one is John 6 on the [...]

There is a post at the Beggars All blog that quotes from Calvin’s Institutes I.7.1-2. Calvin’s words are in black. Mine are in green:
But a most pernicious error widely prevails that Scripture has only so much weight as is conceded to it by the consent of the church. As if the eternal and inviolable truth [...]

Interesting comment from Thos on the pill and how many abortions it may be producing. I am not sure if the numbers are accurate but you get the point. Even a small rate of abortions produced by the pill does mean a lot of babies killed when you multiply by 10 million users of the pill. Of [...]

I wonder is the recent spat of publications on atheism is a good thing. For a long time many people have been what is sometimes called functional atheists. They profess to believe in God but they don’t really allow that belief to impact their lives very much. They may go to church once in a [...]

One of the very first Catholic distinctives that I accepted was contraception. My wife and I chose to use NFP long before I thought becoming Catholic was possible. There were a few reasons:

It just felt like there was something sacred about the whole process of sex and conception. Manipulating that stuff seemed like it should have [...]

Christianity in the west is in a hard fight these days. Europe is already described as post christian. Canada might qualify as well. Many feel it is only a matter of time before the US follows them. We need to be faithful to God’s word and we need to articulate the gospel to this generation [...]

Vatican II was from 1962-1967 or thereabouts. John Paul II became pope in 1979. By all accounts the church changed a lot during that time. There were so many things that happened. I am just interested in figuring out which were the main causes and which were the effects. One reason is that at least some [...]

Archbishop Burke has restated in a more rigorous way his belief that those who take the prochoice position, especially in a very public way, should not be allowed to receive the Eucharist. I say more rigorous because he is arguing from cannon law. That is his area of expertise so this analysis should carry some [...]

A little parody by way of Chris Carmichael and some inspiration from Veggietales.

We are the pirates of the magisterium,
We just sit in Rome, Dogma’s expound,
And if you tell us, You don’t believe in them,
We’ll just tell you, We’re the magisterium.
O we’ve never been Nestorian,
And we’ve never been Pelegian,
And we’ve never worshipped Mary,
Because we’ve never erred [...]