Mar
30
Bishop Daniel Herzog Comes Home
March 30, 2007 | 2 Comments
According to a story at The Living Church Foundation, Bishop Daniel Herzog, the retired Episcopal Bishop of Albany, NY, has entered into full communion with the See of Rome. While I don’t think salvation hangs on such things, I do confess to a certain amount of excitement at such news. Is it nothing more than [...]
Mar
29
“Moderate” vs Authentic
March 29, 2007 | Leave a Comment
According to the website of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Daniel Maguire of Marquette University has been “corrected”, so to speak, by the Committee on Doctrine of the USCCB for his non-Catholic views regarding contraception, abortion, and same-sex marriage. Last June he sent out pamphlets to all the Catholic bishops in the United [...]
Mar
21
It’s All About the Blood
March 21, 2007 | Leave a Comment
I went to see 300 the other day with my son. It was more his speed than mine, even though I’m a lot closer to being 300 years old than he is. He’s 13, and in spite of the R rating the movie seemed to have been aimed at 13 year old boys, so it [...]
Mar
19
I Get Paid For Doing This
March 19, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Remember Steve Martin’s old stand up routine from the late 1970s? That’s OK, I don’t remember it very well, either, but I do remember that he used to sing a song while playing his banjo and wearing a fake arrow-through-the-head about how much fun it is to be a stand up comic. The chorus of [...]
Mar
19
Plus ça change
March 19, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Here is the abstract for a very interesting article to be found in volume 17 (2006) of Acta Patristica et Byzantina:
According to a report of Gregory of Tours a controversy arose in the course of the 2nd Council of Mâcon (585 AD) on the question whether women can be called “man”. Some historians have interpreted [...]
Mar
16
Secret Codes
March 16, 2007 | Leave a Comment
I have never been a huge fan of the Straussian approach to interpreting Plato. Straussians often have very interesting and valuable things to say about Plato, but they sometimes read more into the text than seems to me to be warranted by what Plato actually says. In defense of their views they will often cite [...]
Mar
15
On Rallying Cries
March 15, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Fr. Al Kimel of Pontifications has drawn my attention to a post at a blog called Reformed Catholicism (where, apparently, at least one person thinks that the title of Augustine’s Retractationes means “retractions”!) that argues, in effect, that the truth is out there. One may seriously disagree with certain elements of the Reformed tradition, it [...]
Mar
14
Mohr on MacIntyre on Stein
March 14, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Two books about Edith Stein by Alasdair MacIntyre get “thumbs up” from Eric Mohr of Duquesne University (quondam universitatis ohioensis) at The Charioteer. MacIntyre is perhaps best known for his work in communitarian moral theory, a brand of ethics that traces its lineage back through Saint Thomas Aquinas to Aristotle and Plato. (He was teaching [...]
Mar
13
Thy Will Be Done
March 13, 2007 | Leave a Comment
One of the most basic prayers of Jesus in the Synoptic tradition is that the Father may bring about the accomplishment of His will (Matt 6.10; Mark 14.36). The life of the Johannine Jesus is a perpetual “Your will be done,” because Jesus does nothing on his own (John 5.19). His very food is to [...]
Mar
12
Further Proof that Google is in League with Oceania
March 12, 2007 | 1 Comment
As many of my readers know, this site has a mirror at blogspot.com. Using the testing site, GreatFireWallofChina, I’ve discovered that that version of An Examined Life, the version running under Google’s Blogger, is not blocked in China, but this version, the version running under StBlog’s version of WordPress, is blocked. I suppose this means [...]