Is My Phylactery Showing?

Absp. Fulton Sheen once said that there are likely only a handful of people who truly hate the Church. Most simply hate what they incorrectly believe the Church to be.

I'm in the middle of a paper on the various levels of magisterial authority and the degree of adherence faithful Catholics owe to each level. What struck me (ouch!) as I was rehashing the phrasing extra ecclesiam nula salus was that most people have no real exposure to Catholic dogma or doctrine in its clearest form. What they are exposed to are blunted weapons wielded by people who have a poor understanding of the truth or people who hold the truth without charity or people who are ignorant of the truth and want to pursuade others to accept their biases.

The History Channel is running a show tonight on archaeological evidence for the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. What's rather cool about it is that they've indeed found some evidence for two cities in close proximity to the Dead Sea that were destroyed quite suddenly. Wikipedia has an entry that seems to fairly objective at a first glance. There are a number of other sites that have clearly biased accounts. (Whether they're correct is another issue.

R.R. Reno has this thought in his review of on Phillip Rieff's Charisma:

If we try to give ourselves the gift of grace, we end up with a soulless world without inner constraints, a “cultureless society” populated by clever, technically sophisticated animals whose lives are dominated by the need for survival, the desire for pleasure, and the dark urge to dominate.

My wife will never release a cookbook on low-fat cooking.

Not that I've been around much in the last few months anyway...

I'm wrapping up the last of my course work. While I know one class doesn't seem like much, on top of business travel and regular work, I've been scrambling. Actually, the last two weeks I've spent recovering from the previous three months.

Anyway, I hope to be able to post something substantive once my course work is finished. At very least, I plan to post the papers.

One of our local men, and a parishioner at St. John's Cathedral, John Borbonus, was killed in Iraq last week. I did not know him or his family personally, but I'm saddened by their loss. He sounds like a remarkable young man. You can read about him here.

in case you haven't heard...

Looks like Anita is going to give us the lowdown on the decision soon.

I have no doubt Anita will do a fine job on it, but I do miss Southern Appeal.