Sacrifice is one of those biblical concepts that make people uncomfortable. We don’t like it, and we’re glad we don’t do it any more. How is killing an animal going to help anything, and why would that make God happy? Chapter after chapter in the latter portion of the Torah detail exacting rules for cutting up critters. Needless to say, our lectionaries skip those.
The Oxford Movement called on people to look more deeply into the institutional life of the established Church to discover its inner mystery as the Body of Christ. In reading the Tracts one discovers beneath the concern for institutional structures a deep piety and spirituality, and even more a sense that the Tractarians’ concern about institutions and their outward forms arose from what they believed about Jesus Christ as Lord of the Church.
First day report from the House of Bishops meeting in Salt Lake City. Discussion centered around their experience of the Lambeth Conference. The bishops will take up the matter of the status of the Bishop of Pittsburgh, Robert Duncan, later in their meeting. UPDATED
New York Times: A struggle within the church over how Catholic voters should think about abortion is once again flaring up just as political partisans
The Order of St. Helena is consolidating, and making plans for a relocation: By Christmas, the number of Episcopalian nuns living in Augusta [GA] will
WalesOnline: The Rev David Thomas served as Provincial Assistant Bishop from 1996 – when women were admitted to the priesthood – until his retirement in
Peter Gomes is interviewed by Steven Colbert about his new book, The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus.
Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, took it upon himself to do what no one else seemed willing to do: poll economists and ask them their
Jesus responded to Greek speaking people in their own language. Jesus met people where they were. Jesus didn’t force people to conform to his smaller linguistic comfort zone of Aramaic. He learnt the lingua franca. Jesus doesn’t use his knowledge of Greek to proselytize. He uses Greek to enter the world of others so as to consider and respond to their requests.
As an old woman, Hildegard described very clearly the two different ways in which her visions presented themselves to her, in a letter to Guibert of Gembloux. (The letter caused Guibert to leave everything he was doing and become her secretary for the last few years of her life, following the death of Volmar.)