There is a useful, well-worn framework for reflecting on sacramental actions – the church’s efficacious signs: Licit We talk about a sacramental action as licit if it follows the church’s agreements. In the wider church (the church catholic, if you will) sacramental actions are regularly described as having agreed matter and agreed form. The matter
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I’ve been playing with the word ‘provisional’. Provisional means temporary, useful or valid for a while – until something better comes along; anticipating that the better will come. Taizé (image above) often stresses the provisional. Having laboured long to produced a complex (famous) monastic Office Book, the monks of Taizé abandoned it as too perplexing
[Update: Image above has been changed after the Beirut-Paris events] Spoilers You don’t need a degree in archetypes to see Christ-like qualities in the Doctor Who Television programme. The Doctor loves humanity, cares for us, coming from outside our time and space to save us, and all without the usual whack-pow of superheroes, but by
The issue has come up again recently: why are there often two different numbers for the same psalm? The Hebrew Bible counted the psalms one way. The Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek counted many psalms slightly differently. The early Christians used the Septuagint, and then went on to translate into Latin (the
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I was at a service as a visitor recently and most of the pretty-trite, repetitive singing had a theology, explicitly or implicitly, of Jesus’ death draining all of God’s Wrath. God, apparently, we were singing, was able to discharge all His wrath onto Jesus and so had no wrath left for us who would have
Be Still: A book of prayers, images and blessings by Iain Gow (Author), Nat Tate (Illustrator) 94 pages Publisher: Without Walls NZ (December 9, 2014) I recently received Be Still, a book of prayers, images and blessings. Each time, across two pages ,there is a wonderful illustration by Nat Tate, a reflective prayer and a blessing.
Recently NZ columnist Joe Bennet wrote to the Vatican urging it to ditch the theology and just focus on being good. Here is the Vatican’s reply: Dear Joe We at the Vatican don’t usually read your columns, being tired of the hackneyed anti-religious, straw-man arguments, or as your guru, Dawkins, would say, “meme”. But since
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The final paragraph of The Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection by Charles Darwin, the 1872 sixth edition, considered the definitive edition: It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through
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