350 Maronite Martyrs

Martyrdom of 350 Martyrs, Disciples of St. Maron
The Story of Maronite Catholics

The Need for a Reinvigorated Monasticism in the US

MONASTICISM AND THE CHURCH
Address of Abbot Schema-Archimandrite Sergius of St. Tikhon's Monastery to the 18th OCA All-American Council

The Shadow Council

Rod Dreher: The Shadow Council Speaks

On the Anniversary of the Repose of St. Vladimir

HIS HOLINESS PATRIARCH KIRILL CELEBRATES LITURGY AT THE CATHEDRAL OF CHRIST THE SAVIOUR ON THE DAY MARKING THE MILLENNIUM OF THE DEMISE OF THE HOLY PRINCE VLADIMIR, EQUAL-TO-THE-APOSTLES

MESSAGE BY PATRIARCH KIRILL ON THE OCCASION OF THE MILLENNIUM OF THE REPOSE OF THE HOLY PRINCE VLADIMIR EQUAL-TO-THE-APOSTLES
His Holiness Patriarch Kirill

Pravmir and MosPat

PRIMATE OF UKRAINIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH OFFICIATES AT DIVINE LITURGY IN KIEV LAURA OF THE CAVES ON COMMEMORATION DAY OF HOLY PRINCE VLADIMIR

WHEREIN LIES THE MORAL POWER OF HOLY PRINCE VLADIMIR?
St. John (Maximovich) of Shanghai and San Francisco

Prince Vladimir and the Baptism of Russia: The Blade of Christ’s Grace by Archpriest Andrei Tkachev
It seems that most of us are double-minded and weak-willed, but the Prince-Baptizer was not. Vladimir arose from the baptismal font another person. His lust faded, his cruelty was replaced by the desire to feed the hungry, and his proud and cunning thoughts were supplanted in his soul by the simplicity of the Gospel. In this we ought to imitate the Prince.

Baptism Of Rus': Beast Becomes Man
Source: Vechernyaya Moskva
The baptism of our land occurred one time , but we make the choice to be a person or a beast in every moment of our life.
Vladimir Legoyda

Major Archbishop Sviatoslav on the Church in Ukraine

From 2011

Helpful to the Dialogue?

ST. JOHN OF DAMASCUS AND THE ‘ORTHODOXY’ OF THE NON-CHALCEDONIANS by Protopresbyter Theodore Zisis

It may be difficult to generalize about the Cahlcedonian Orthodox -- perhaps it is the Slavs who are most distant from the Oriental Orthodox.

Related:
“The Hidden Source of Heresy Is Always the Pride of the Human Mind” by Archimandrite Boris (Dolzhenko)
The Memory of the Holy Fathers of the Six Ecumenical Councils

"The Jewish Roots of Catholic Charity"

Gary Anderson

Fr. Lombardi on Pope Francis

Father Lombardi, the Mouth of Truth by Sandro Magister
He gives a description of Francis that is very far from the flattering mainstream, and much more credible. On questions like the reform of the curia and diplomacy. But he leaves one open question: does this pope act more by instinct or by strategy?

Fr. Lombardi, head of Holy See Press Office, on how he feels about Pope Francis: "Confused." by Carl E. Olson
The remarks come from a "National Geographic" piece, which posits that Francis was elected by "more progressive cardinals"

Giacomo Cardinal Biffi

CWR Blog: Cardinal Giacomo Biffi, in his own words by Alessandra Nucci

Rorate Caeli: Marcello Pera: what an abyss between the Church of Biffi [Benedict XVI] and Galantino [Francis]!

Softness

The Forgotten Vice in Seminary Formation
July 27, 2015 By Fr. James Mason

A Worship that Appeals to Both Men and Women

Rorate Caeli: FIUV Position Paper: The Traditional Mass and Men

The claim that prayers and lyrics that are overly sentimental and do not strongly assert the truths of the Faith are repugnant to men is probably right. But one could probably find a trend of declining Mass attendance by men in the Roman rite churches after World War II; this is parallel to other churches (i.e. Byzantine) suffering from low attendance, both here in the US and in Europe, despite their maintaining traditional forms of worship. Why has there been a difficulty in retaining males? This is something those in authority need to address. Male converts are more likely to seek out traditional, more reverent forms, with the exception of charismatics and those who participate in some of the new ecclesial movements? But even those can be said to share with traditional forms a more demanding, robust Christianity, even if the theology of the latter groups may be suspect.

Two from TAC

News

Dr. John Goyette: Aquinas on Law, Happiness & the Political Common Good
Address at the Seventh Annual Conference on the Social Doctrine of the Church, June 20, 2015

Dr. Gregory L. Froelich: Self-Love and Friendship
Talk from the 2015 West Coast Meeting of the Society for Aristotelian-Thomistic Studies

A short profile on Michael Augros and an interview with him.

An Effective Use of Social Media?

Could Something Similar Be Done Within a Gothic Temple?

I don't think so, but maybe someone can create a virtual design to show that it is possible.

Bishop Nicholas Samra Visits St. Elias

Is there anything more seductive to the ear than a sung Semitic language (e.g. Arabic) during Divine Liturgy? I'm not sure if Greek chant can compare, even though the music for Greek chant is Eastern as well.

Heard Dr. Ray Guarendi tonight for TOT SV -- he did a typical Latin apologetic, "Why Be Catholic?" I think it might have been more beneficial if he had talked about the emotions and their relation to the spiritual life, especially since he mentioned in his talk that one of our current problems is that people think that emotions mean everything (my very poor paraphrase, as I don't remember his exact words at the moment). It would be good to explain how the emotions are good and how they need to be regulated.

The New Armenian Catholic Patriarch

One thing a discussion of the virtues within moral theology or moral philosophy can easily incorporate is sex differences, which could easily be ignored if the focus was solely on law or the morality of human acts.

Preserving the Musical Patrimony of the East

New Liturgical Music Book

Related:

Patriarch John X

Metropolitan Tikhon's Address

Because the Western Patriarchate is Too Centralized

Headhunters for the Future Bishops by Sandro Magister
With twelve criteria for their selection. Proposed from Australia by Paul A. McGavin, theologian and economist

Awesome, Indeed

St. Elias Antiochian Cathedral

website

Turn the Rest of the Department Over to Orthodoxy

Especially when Fordham Theology has been in the news lately for very bad reasons... Theology Chairman’s Same-Sex Wedding Begins ‘Flood’ of Challenges to Catholic Identity

Is There an Icon That is Smaller?

Saint Andrew Orthodox Church, Patras, Greece

Finding God in Prayer

Patriarch John X to Visit SVS

Hellenic College/Holy Cross Presidential Letter

An Interview with Metropolitan Kallistos

In which he talks about Metropolitan Anthony Bloom.

Pravmir: Metropolitan Kallistos: No other Orthodox Has Had That Extent of Influence on the Popular Level
So what interested him was not systems, but persons and their meeting. Not God as a philosophical idea, not God as somehow an explanation for the order that we find in the world round us. I don’t think he spoke much about that. But about the need to meet God personally in our own lives.
Xenia Luchenko, Michael Sarni

Source: http://www.pravmir.com/metropolitan-kallistos-no-other-orthodox-has-had-that-extent-of-influence-on-the-popular-level/#ixzz3gMAGahZZ

Eastern Christian Books: Heroic and Holy Ukrainian Churchmen of the 20th Century

Eastern Christian Books: Heroic and Holy Ukrainian Churchmen of the 20th Century

Radio Notre Dame: Ecclesia Magazine

July 8, 2015

Émission du Mercredi 08 juillet 2015
10 ans après la mort de Louis Bouyer, regard sur l'actualité et la fécondité du théologien, à l'occasion d'un colloque qui lui était consacré les 10 et 11 octobre à l'Institut Catholique de Paris et aux Bernardins

10 ans après la mort de Louis Bouyer, regard sur l'actualité et la fécondité du théologien, à l'occasion d'un colloque qui lui était consacré les 10 et 11 octobre à l'Institut Catholique de Paris et aux Bernardins. Avec :

Patrick PRETOT, bénédictin, enseignant au Théologicum à l'Institut catholique de Paris et directeur de la revue La Maison-Dieu et Jean DUCHESNE, directeur administratif de l'Académie Catholique de France et exécuteur littéraire du Père Louis Bouyer.

podcast

Metropolitan Kallistos on Theology

An older lecture:

How should we study Theology? by Kallistos Ware at SPU from J norm on Vimeo.

Bicentenary of Don Bosco's Birth

What Would Byzantine Christians Have Added?

Beatification Next?

What’s Changed? A Comparison of Self- and Divine-Referential Pronoun Usage in Hymns Written Pre- and Post-Vatican II by J.E. Sigler


(via Insight Scoop)

АФОНСКИЕ ОТКРЫТКИ

A Rather Modern Icon?

St. Volodomyr

NLM: St Vladimir the Great by Gregory DiPippo

In which he recounts:

The ancient Slavic chronicles record a famous episode that, when investigating which religion he and his people ought to embrace, Vladimir judged Islam altogether undesirable because of the prohibition on drinking alcohol, saying “Drinking is the joy of all Rus’. We cannot exist without that pleasure.” The envoys sent by him to visit the temples of various neighboring peoples reported that the Bulgar Muslim “bows, sits down, looks hither and thither like one possessed, and there is no happiness among them, but instead only sorrow and a dreadful stench. Their religion is not good.” Their report of the Latin Rite among the Germans was that “we beheld no glory there.” But they described the Divine Liturgy celebrated on a great feast in Constantinople in these terms: “(T)he Greeks led us to the edifices where they worship their God, and we knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth. For on earth there is no such splendor or such beauty, and we are at a loss how to describe it. We know only that God dwells there among men, and their service is fairer than the ceremonies of other nations. For we cannot forget that beauty… If the Greek faith were evil, it would not have been adopted by your grandmother Olga, who was wiser than all other men.”

Attention, Latin traditionalists: the Byzantine rite, not the Roman.

Eastern Christian Books: The Greek New Testament

Eastern Christian Books: The Greek New Testament

Fr. Gignac's book (no CUA Press page yet) should be a good resource for those wishing to learn koine Greek.

Meanwhile, at CUA...

Icon of St. Bonaventure

At Mr. Janaro's blog - Saint Bonaventure's Journey.

Another Attempt to Reconcile DH

Vatican II Followed Ottaviani on Church and State by Joseph G. Trabbic

What is the "Penitential Way"?

Chiesa: Synod. The Preparatory Document’s Arabian Phoenix
by by Sandro Magister

Everybody says there is one, what it is nobody knows. It is the “penitential way” to communion for the divorced and remarried. The Dominican theologian Thomas Michelet lays bare the contradictions

And how is the notion of "penance" here related to metanoia?

Ninth Annual Summer Patristic Studies

As It Should Be

St. Nicholas of Japan on Buddhism

St. Nicholas of Japan on Buddhism by Deacon Giorgi Maximov (print)

A New Understanding of Anselm

Silverio Rebelo, Le Sacrifice du Christ chez Saint Anselm de Cantorbery, Le noveau visage du Cur Deus Homo, Irenikon, LXXXVII, 2014, 5-46

Summary of Silverio Rebelo:
"The Sacrifice of Christ according to Saint Anselm of Canterbury - A New Look at the Cur Deus Homo." According to the current interpretation of the Cur Deus Homo, Anselm explained the redemptive function of the sacrifice of the Cross in accordance with the basic perspective of the theory of vicarious satisfaction, the classic design of a legal-term replacement of the work of Christ. However, a closer examination reveals a theology of redemption of a very different type, deeply rooted in the patristic tradition, whose basic idea is that the sacrifice of Christ is a life-giving event. According to this interpretation of the mediation of Christ, faith allows believers to share in the perfection of his obedience unto death, which becomes the basis of their life of obedience to God. This leads to a veritable revolution in the understanding of the relationship between God and humanity: the sacrifice of Christ is not a condition of the grace of God for humankind, but a work that renews their way of living, and is an expression [of] God's unconditional will to save."

The article contains a discussion of merit in CDH 2.19 - is this the source of Aquinas's teaching on merit re: Christ's redemptive work in ST III? Or is it mediated by other sources? From a completely unrelated work? Wholly "original"?

The dominant understanding of Anselm's teaching among Latins, transmitted in academic settings, is probably familiar to those who have studied Latin theories of atonement. It is a representation put forth even by Joseph Ratzinger and Louis Bouyer. I assume that both read Anselm's CDH, either in Latin or in translation, so that their representation is confirmed by their reading of the primary source and not based solely on secondary sources. So why did the theological giants of yesteryear fail to get Anselm right (assuming this revised understanding of Cur Deus Homo is the correct one)? Did they lack access to the requisite scholarship for properly understanding how the terms satisfaction and honor were being used by Anselm, definitions that could not be uncovered until they were situated within the historical and theological culture in which they were used? Was it a problem of translation (and the interpretation that precedes translation)?

Carl Olson on Deification

His response to a perhaps well-meaning but rather ignorant Latin (or a troll):

Not only is it not new, divinization is a key concept in the New Testament, in both implicit and more obvious forms. In addition, it is a huge, huge theme in the entirety of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The most obvious example is par. 460:

The Word became flesh to make us “partakers of the divine nature”: “For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God.” “For the Son of God became man so that we might become God.” “The only–begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods.”

Another great example is in the section on "grace":

Grace is a participation in the life of God. It introduces us into the intimacy of Trinitarian life: by Baptism the Christian participates in the grace of Christ, the Head of his Body. As an “adopted son” he can henceforth call God “Father,” in union with the only Son. He receives the life of the Spirit who breathes charity into him and who forms the Church.

Taking cues from the CCC, I think it is usually best to describe divinization as partaking in the divine nature (cf. 2 Pet. 1:4), or being made children of God, drawing on the teaching of the Apostle John: "See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are..." (1 Jn. 3:1).

But this isn't simply a matter of "mystical theology"; it is Catholicism 101. Which is probably why it is mentioned explicitly in the very first line of the CCC: "God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. ..." Which continues by stating: "To accomplish this, when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son as Redeemer and Savior. In his Son and through him, he invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed life."

In the Eastern Churches (both Catholic and Orthodox) the theme of divinization is very clear and upfront, especially in the Divine Liturgy. And yet Eastern Christians, in my experience, don't fall into pantheism or monism or polytheism, in large part because the reality of divinization is clearly articulated within an Incarnational and Trinitarian framework, in which the distinction between God and man is very confused [sic -- I suspect this is a typo], even while the union of God and man in the Person of Jesus Christ is continually proclaimed and articulated. One problem, it seems to me, is that far too many Catholics view Catholicism as a religion of morality and works rather than appreciating that those things flow first from the reality of Who God is and what he calls us to be.

I say it is a theme that needs to be emphasized far, far more often, which is why I am the co-editor, with Fr. David V. Meconi, SJ (editor of HPR), of a detailed study of divinization that will be published by Ignatius Press early next year, and will include chapters by Dr. Ortiz, Dr. Fagerberg, Fr. Hofer, and several others, with a Foreword by Dr. Scott Hahn.

Edit> The corrected paragraph:

In the Eastern Churches (both Catholic and Orthodox) the theme of divinization is very clear and upfront, especially in the Divine Liturgy. And yet Eastern Christians, in my experience, don't fall into pantheism or monism or polytheism, in large part because the reality of divinization is clearly articulated within an Incarnational and Trinitarian framework, in which the distinction between God and man is not confused, even while the union of God and man in the Person of Jesus Christ is continually proclaimed and articulated. One problem, it seems to me, is that far too many Catholics view Catholicism as a religion of morality and works rather than appreciating that those things flow first from the reality of Who God is and what he calls us to be.

Catholic Academia Run Amok

In more sane times, would we give much attention to those who had just left their apprenticeship? One person's networking is another person's conspiracy. Given the age limits, it could never be a professional guild, but should there be one for academic theologians?

New Wine, New Wineskins
Young Catholic Moral Theologians
2015 Symposium

The blog to which members of the above organization contribute, along with others, still publishes heterodox pieces like this: On Naming God: Gendered God-Talk in Laudato Si’ by Emily Reimer-Barry, who is apparently a member of good standing in Catholic Theological Society of America and the Society of Christian Ethics.

If you don't police your own, don't complain if your own orthodoxy is called into question (or more importantly, your ability to stand up for it -- that is to say, your credibility and character). Guilt by association? "We're just trying to make a living." Or, "We don't have tenure yet, so we can't doing anything about it?" Rationalizations for cowardice?

If the extremists at Mount Athos saw this article, it would be more evidence why pan-ecumenism is a heresy, since the Latins have fallen into heresy and their bishops do nothing about it or support it. If they do nothing, they show themselves to be emasculated academics hiding behind academic freedom and false charity (aka niceness) who have no moral standing to lecture on moral theology. Return the teaching of theology to saints.

Sister Vassa, Spirituality and Organized Religion

Related:

The Lake Garda Statement

Rorate Caeli

What version of the Catholic Third Way do they posit between liberalism/capitalism and socialism/collectivism? Hard to say, since they don't say much about it, or the errors to which they are opposed (though some of the signatories have done so in their books). How many of them have tried to run a farm that is as closed an ecological system as possible? Or have examined the foundation of Western economies, cheap energy? Maybe if they had a sufficient knowledge of economics and politics they would not be inveighing against "sustainable development" as if the only understanding of sustainable development was being given by secular humanists who seek population control.

Michael Davies Memorial Lecture

Rorate Caeli: Exclusive for Rorate: Michael Davies Memorial Lecture by Roberto de Mattei - "From the Second Vatican Council to the Synod: The Teaching of Michael Davies"

Fr. Andrew Louth: Love in Dionysios the Areopagite and Maximos the Confessor

Let Us Not Confuse the Goal of the Modern Nation-State with the Common Good, Either

A problem that has yet to be addressed by the bishop of Rome, who remains unaware of it. To make the goal of the modern nation-state the common good, as it is understood in the best of classical and medieval thought, is to justify statism and trespass the limits of political authority. (Because the limits of scale are thereby ignored and justice, which depends upon scale, violated.)

Pope: Let us not “confuse the ‘common good’ with ‘prosperity’”

And the Assyrian Church?

Patriarch Louis Raphael I Sako: The unity of the Church of the East
The Church of the East: There can be only one (Pro Unione)
Chaldean Patriarch gambles on re-establishing “Church of the East”

And a response by Bishop Mar Awa Royel of the Assyrian Church of California: Authenticity in Unity: A Personal Reflection on Present-Day Questions Concerning the Unity of the Church of the East

Cardinal Herranz on Bishop Alvaro del Portillo

Bishop Alvaro del Portillo and the Second Vatican Council by His Eminence Cardinal Julián Herranz

Interview with Fr. Andrew Louth

John Senior on the Thomistic Revival

A good counterpoint to Dr. Dennis McInerny's essay. From The Restoration of Christian Culture:

A few uncommon and relatively unknown, and old, theologians still study and teach St. Thomas, but he is no longer received as the Common Doctor of the Church. The Summa Theologiae, St. Thomas himself says in the Prologue, is a book "for beginners"; but we have few real beginners anymore. Our schools and colleges turn out advanced technicians in what are called the arts and sciences, but none has the ordinary prerequisites to traditional philosophical and theological study, none with the famous mens sana in corpore sano of the ancients, that is, disciplined in the perception, memory and imagination of reality. To compensate for our failures, seminaries in the decades preceding Vatican II tabulated maxims based upon the Summa as texts for easily testable courses run on principles remotely traceable to Descartes, full of method, and having little to do with reality, less of memory and nothing of imagination or the spirit of St. Thomas. In the great Catholic universities at Rome and elsewhere, the grand old Dominican and Jesuit masters went on lecturing in Latin to students, many from America, who had to get laugh-signals from the graduate assistants when the master cracked a joke because none knew Latin well enough to tell a joke from a scholastic formula. It is hardly surprising that in such universities scholastic formulas became jokes. The only unusual skill you had to master at the Roman colleges, they say, was to read the easy Latin upside down because on oral examinations the professor would read aloud a question from the manual--holding it right there in front of him. If you had the trick of reading upside down you could give the answer word for word to pass with high distinction. Through a gross misunderstanding of docility, students sat on their disengaged intelligences through hours of what to them was gibberish, at the end of which they received gilded Italianate certificates in Canon Law and Theology certifying in reality an education in outlines, "ponies," and tests whose questions had been leaked in advance with answers right in front of them. And with these doctorates, as professors, rectors, and bishops, their graduates occupied positions of authority in Catholic universities and seminaries. Of course there were exceptions, but I think, brutal as it seems, this is a fair description of the general situation.

The results are still visible among the thinning ranks of priests formed before the Council. How else could the postconciliar failure have occurred? I heard a beloved example some weeks ago, whom I shouldn't disparage in any other way -- a good man of the type of whom in terms of piety it is said in the Common for Confessors, Euge serve bone, in modico fidelis! But, explaining the Eucharist to a parishioner who had been scandalized by uninstructed children secreting instead of consuming consecrated Hosts, he said, "Oh, St. Thomas teaches that only the accidents can be touched anyway, not the Body of Christ, which is the substance."

It is better, as Socrates repeatedly said, not to know and know you don't than not to know and think you do.... Theology and philosophy are difficult, exacting sciences; there are few vocations to such studies in any given generation; and even for those with special gifts of intelligence and will, there are still twelve years of prerequisites in elementary and high school.

John Senior, The Restoration of Christian Culture (Norfolk, VA: IHS Press, 2008) 73-5.

I think Dr. Senior is probably correct in his presentation of the historical and cultural factors that made Leo XIII's project mostly a non-starter. That period of the the history of the Latin churches deserves a more extensive, scholarly treatment.

Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church in Stamford, CT

website

Benedict XVI on Sacred Music and the Liturgy

Benedict and Francis, a Choir of Two Voices by Sandro Magister

In Paraguay, great music for Pope Francis: that of the Jesuits of the “Reducciones.” And from Castel Gandolfo, Benedict XVI gives an exceptional listener’s guide

A Charitable Reading

An Extraordinary turn of events by Joseph Shaw

Francis is confounding those who presented him as an enemy of traditionalism. The movement is actually flourishing thanks to his ‘live and let live’ attitude

Liturgy and Theosis

Divinization, Liturgy, and Evangelization
July 08, 2015
A new volume of essays shows how the proper context for thinking about divinization is the liturgy, for God has chosen the liturgy as the primary locus for communicating his divine life
Dr. Jared Ortiz

(via Insight Scoop)

Dennis McInerny on the Thomistic Renewal

THE RISE & FALL OF THE THOMISTIC RENEWAL — PART I: "The Revivification of Sound Christian Philosophy" (July 7, 2015)

THE RISE & FALL OF THE THOMISTIC RENEWAL — PART II: "A Revival Cut Short" (July 7, 2015)

(via Pertinacious Papist)

St. John the Forerunner

The Life of St. John the Baptist
From "The Lives of the Saints and Several Lectures and Sermons" compiled and translated by St. Sebastian Dabovich
The Nativity of Saint John the Baptist by St. John Maximovitch

Two Indispensable Channels

Psalm 67

Metropolitan Hilarion Meets with Patriarch Bartholomew

John Chryssavgis on Laudato Si'

An Eastern Orthodox Perspective on Laudato Si
A Personal Response, An Ecumenical Reflection by John Chryssavgis

The 17th Century Chinese “Biretta”

What could have been, the continued development of a Chinese variant of the Roman rite. What would we make of a woman wearing a biretta? (Though there are some who do wear the doctoral version with four peaks, as opposed to the priestly one with three.) Inappropriate? Presumptuous? Even if it is in accord with their rank, but that is the question - should they have been elevated to it in the first place?

The egalitarians will say yes, but they ignore the place of the school in broader political community; and many of these universities do not exist as a part of a political community, as those population centers are no longer political communities. When the industrial age ends, so will the misallocation of resources in academia.

"That said, rumor has it that the Hong Kong Archdiocese is considering reviving the tradition. Wouldn’t that be wonderful!"

Given the loss of the cultural significance of (traditional) hats to Chinese people, why bother? If there were a group of Christian monks who adapted such hats for monastic life, that would be one thing, since a monastery could be a place for the development of a Chinese form of Christianity, but in a fairly Westernized and 'modernized' city like Hong Kong? The Latin diocese of Hong Kong should focus more attention on catechesis.

Honorary Doctorate for Benedict XVI

Photos
Album 1, 2, 3

Michael Pakaluk – First Comes Friendship?

Cardinal Kasper Still At It

What Jesus Would Say If He Were a Synod Father by Sandro Magister

He too would grant divorce “for hardness of heart.” As in the time of Moses. This is how the monk Innocenzo Gargano reinterprets the words of Jesus on marriage. New developments in the discussion

St. Silouan the Athonite on Love of Neighbor

A Controversial Canonization for Catholics

Not just Latins, but Byzantine Catholics as well.

Axion Estin

Fr. Bouyer on Archbishop Lefebvre

The original was written in 1978, the translation is by John Pepino: "The Catholic Church in Crisis"

"The Capacious Mind of St Thomas Aquinas," Kevin Flannery, SJ

The Orthodox Response to Obergefell v Hodges

A Reminder to Myself

Keynote Address of Metropolitan Kallistos at HCHC

Perhaps video will become available later.

Something else with Metropolitan Kallistos:

Pre-Communion Prayer

I've never come across it before, not in any of the Slavic churches I've visited. The prayer was composed by St. John Chrysostom.

Prayers in Preparation for Holy Communion

St. Ignatius Brianchaninov on Taking up the Cross

Fr. Stavros Sermon: Whose Laws are your following? God’s Laws or Man’s Laws?

St. John Greek Orthodox Church in Tampa

Eastern Christian Books: From Rome to Byzantium

Eastern Christian Books: From Rome to Byzantium

CWR Blog: Lessons From the Christian East
The twentieth anniversary of St. Pope John Paul II apostolic letter "Orientale Lumen" is an occasion to reflect on what can be learned from Eastern Catholics
Dr. Adam A. J. DeVille

Dr. Paul McPartlan - "The Church: Towards a Common Vision"

Fr. Timothy Gallagher to Give Two-Day Mission in Santa Cruz

(event)
So Fr. Gallagher has a FB page as well.

A Crisis of Saints

Fr. Nicholas Asks a Question

Nicholas Denysenko: Mary as the Healer of Schism

His talents could be put to better use at a blog other than Pray Tell, but what other blogs about liturgy are there, other than Latin traditionalists ones? There is nothing in the middle, something in the middle that can acknowledge the Latin traditionalists and yet uphold the vision of the best of the 20th century Roman-rite liturgical movement. (Pray Tell is not "centrist.")

Never Thought I'd Post Something from Commonweal

With approval... there may be something worthy from time to time but it's just not worth the effort to scout it out. Slap Them Sooner: Confirmation & First Communion, Together by Rita Ferrone (via Pray Tell)

Because of two recent posts, both by Thomas Berg, I've removed Mirror of Justice from my blog list that is to the side. I may check on it from time to time for legal commentary and announcements and such, but because of the heterodoxy and liberalism of at least one contributor, and the tacit approval of the others, it no longer deserves an endorsement here. It warrants no more attention or consideration based on authority than any popular heterodox or poorly-reasoned Roman Catholic blogs and websites. The sooner the internet goes away, the better.

Dom Yves Chauveau, OSB and Rev. Father Denis Coiffet Pass

Rorate Caeli: Good and faithful servants! May they rest in peace!

Kyrie eleison.

Video: Francis Visits Benedict

Cardinal Parolin on Laudato Si'

Related:

The Martins: Saints of the Synod

Would There Be

a Catholic Charismatic movement if the Roman-rite churches had a better teaching of the role of the Holy Spirit in divine adoption and theosis?

Edit.

K. V. Turley Reviews The Smile of a Ragpicker

The Surprising Riches of the Ragpicker
Fr. Paul Glynn's "The Smile of a Ragpicker: The Life of Satoko Kitahara" is an excellent biography of a figure deserving to be better known in the West

Msgr. Paul McPartlan: Christ our Light: Lumen Gentium and the Program of Vatican II

More Photos of St. Sava Cathedral

Video on St. John Maximovitch

Alhambra, Labor Day Weekend

St. Steven's Serbian Orthodox Cathedral

Amin.