Right now I’m teaching parables with my fourth grade class, and they are really bothered by the injustice of God’s love and mercy. It makes them crazy to contemplate that even though they try to be good, God loves someone bad just as much. Fairness is the highest value to kids that age, and to imagine that God isn’t fair—that’s just too much.
Say not, “We are unable to set our own hearts on heaven; this must be the work of God only.” Though God be the chief disposer of your hearts, yet, next under him, you have the greatest command of them yourselves. Though without Christ you can do nothing, yet under him you may do much, and must, or else it will be undone, and yourselves undone through your neglect.
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I do love Jerusalem, and I do want peace with her walls. But my prayers don’t stop there; this psalm leads me on a journey that circles the world, touching down in other places, especially those I know and love, where strife threatens the peace and prosperity of their peoples.
While engaged in reading, after resting my mind for a while and desisting from study, I began to meditate on that versicle which in the evening we had sung at Vigils, Thou art fairer than the children of men, and, How beautiful are the feet of them that bring good tidings of Him.
CNN did an excellent little story on Joe Alonso, head stone mason at Washington National Cathedral. Have a look. Then take a look at what Jay Leno did with it.
The Cafe has not followed the “how many Anglicans will become Catholics now that the pope will let them keep their own liturgy” story as closely as some religion blogs because we think the answer is “not very many” and that the story is overhyped.
I was recently in America. It’s a country I love but it was depressing. All the energy for legislating on climate change has drained away. Those once leading the debate are now silent, the deniers have turned up the volume. The Administration has stalled on this vital subject.
How do priests end up where they end up? How well is the deployment process working? How could it be improved? And, as a favor to this former Roman Catholic, can someone discuss the pros and cons of relying as heavily as we do on interim rectors, priests-in-charge, etc.?
Says Fr. Mason: “Many bishops, seminary faculty and priests…suffer under this vice and are therefore unwilling or unable to recognize it as a vice and address it…. Does the seminary deal with a seminarian that sways when he walks, who has limp wrists, who acts like a drama queen or who lisps? It must.”