St. Paul of the Cross, Bl. Dominic Barberi, and Ven. John Henry Card. Newman, ora pro nobis

The Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, William Cardinal Levada, together with the Secretary for the Congregation for Divine Worship, Abp. Augustine DiNoia, OP, announced the forthcoming Apostolic Constitution directed toward the establishment of permanent Personal Ordinariates for Anglican Christians to be brought into full, visible communion with the successor to [...]

Try again

TF takes pains to try to respond to my criticism, and fails. 
He says I am confused about his argument. Let us see. His post was titled “What did the Early Church think of Prayer for the Dead?” [emphasis mine]. He cites Lactantius talking about 1) pagan rituals, 2) worshipping images of dead men, 3) reverencing [...]

Response to TF on Lactantius

St. Jerome, whom you enjoy quoting when the occasion suits, said of Lactantius, “If only Lactantius, almost a river of Ciceronian eloquence, had been able to uphold our cause with the same facility with which he overturns that of our adversaries!” Lactantius was not a good theologian; indeed, he was, in the words of those [...]

A continuation of a brief discussion

 which was begun at Reginald de Piperno’s The Supplement, here. My next response follows:
 Very well. But perhaps you could actually clarify? Because it seems that your position amounts to:
1. All that is necessary for salvation is clearly revealed in Scripture.
2. The list of all that is necessary for salvation is not clearly revealed in Scripture.
#2 could [...]

Between the two evenings

As so often happens, I have been provided with a springboard for my planned posts on the Atonement by another blogger, and in this case, another blogger’s combox. So, with a wink and a nod to TF and his interlocutor, John, I shall begin.
Exodus 12 in almost any English translation, particularly at verse 6, is somewhat misleading [...]

A parable of sorts

Once a man was walking his usual route to work. He worked at a mid-sized law firm in Ohio. He wanted to help bus drivers get better pay and benefits. Unfortunately, there was a bus line which crossed the crosswalk he used every day at the same time, since he was a punctilious soul. He [...]

An infinity of act

Having read much lately around the web concerning presuppositionalism, scripturalism, evidentialism, justified true belief, Gettier problems, undefeatbility, and so on, I thought I’d take a moment to hearken back to the priority of ontology vis-a-vis epistemology.
St. Thomas, following Aristotle, teaches that the intelligible being, the intelligible reality, existing in sense objects is the first object [...]

Someone’s missing a rather large point (again)

TF recently posted this. Relying on secular media accounts while not utilizing good critical thinking skills seems to have recurred as a theme.
There is a large measure of infection of enlightenment and protestant weltanschauung in modern Catholicism because the same enemy who attacked the Church to subvert it with doctrinal chaos is still attacking it for the [...]

The Divine Lamp shines again

Dim Bulb posts a great sermon of St. Thomas Aquinas in anticipation of Pentecost. I am going to revise the sidebar link to direct readers to his most recent website. Make sure you peruse DB’s stuff: it’s a goldmine, folks.

Irony of ironies

This made me chuckle. Because what Madrid did is totally different from, you know, establishing a blog on the internet and publishing on controversial topics and then requiring registration, heavily screening, and refusing to publish a significant amount of critical comments from numerous readers while choosing to remain pseudonymous and refusing to provide credentials. It’s [...]