The Archive
Year: 2013
Religion and Downton Abbey
…what I think the series is doing is inviting us to think of faith in a new and different way. Faith is interpreting how we relate to each other. Faith is coping with the complexity of our past. Faith is carrying the baggage that shapes us all into the present and doing so in ways that are ameliorated and less damaging. Faith is hope even when you are in a predicament of hopelessness.
Original sin = original helplessness
Giles Fraser, writing in
Fear and hope for Christians in Middle East and North Africa
Harry Hagopian, an international lawyer, ecumenist and EU political consultant who also acts as a Middle East and inter-faith advisor to the Catholic Bishops’ Conference
Encouragement
With our heart firmly fixed in God — our mind and affections grounded — we can remember the hope to which he has called us. The eye of the heart in the heart of God.
Francis of Assisi: a pair of reappraisals
The minute he died, the Church redoubled its campaign of annexing this revered man. Within two years of his death, he was canonized, and work began on the basilica to be raised in his honor in Assisi.
Can 1,000 Catholic priests be wrong?
Oliver Kamm: The Church will damage itself by the vitriol and hyperbole of its campaign. That’s a prediction, not a complaint – indeed it’s a scenario that I welcome and look forward to.
Conservative evangelicals are asking whether they are welcome in public square
“Some are wondering if those who hold to traditional evangelical beliefs on homosexuality are no longer welcome in the public square…what does this mean for Catholics, Mormons, Muslims, Orthodox Jews, and so many more who believe that their authoritative religious texts teach something the prevailing culture finds so unacceptable that they are no longer welcome within the mainstream context?”
“To bring all things together in Christ”
The scripture insists that everything in heaven and earth is destined to be united “in Christ.” The whole of created reality is to be raised up and to be included “in Christ.”