Thomas Hibbs at NRO has an article on The enduring significance of A Canticle for Leibowitz. As a SF fan I still can’t believe I never read this great book until earlier this year.
Christine at The World IMHO has some photos from the Eucharistic Congress in Charlotte. I especially enjoyed the story behind the picture of the man next to his wheelchair.
A new blog- Brother Christosananda, Sinner – has an very interesting post on Why the Muslim World Can’t Think Straight.
Excellent post over at Feminine Genius on the sad story of the killing of the Amish girls. She talks about the weight of purity and there is some aspects of this story that remind me of the story of Saint Maria Goretti and the conversion of her killer Alessandro Serenelli.
Canonist Ed Peters has put together an Excommunication Blotter which tracks those cases that have arisen since the 1983 Code of Canon Law was instituted. An excellent resource on cases of actual excommunication and those that were inferred by the media, but never occurred. It is also interesting that in most cases these excommunication were done by the local ordinary.
A free music download of Beth Nielsen Chapman’s "Dona Nobis Pacem" is Song of the Month from the Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity.
Detective Tom Bombadil is on the case at Holy Ghost Conspiracies which looks like a promising new parody blog.
Dwight Longenecker’s blog has turned out as beautifully as I expected and today he has a great personal story on Guardian Angels.
Dappled Things, a Catholic literary magazine has it new issue out Mary, Queen of Angels 2006. I have read their previous issues and the content is excellent.
Dawn Eden on the homily she experienced yesterday.
I went to the 7:30 Mass last night at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola and was treated to a homily by the Rev. Mark Hallinan S.J. on the gifts the Holy Spirit has poured onto the Church in the wake of Vatican II. The pews were filled with women, outnumbering men by more than 5 to 1. I found out why.
Father Hallinan described how this same Holy Spirit that made the Church put its Mass in parishioners’ native tongues could well call upon the Church to reexamine its celibacy rule — after all, he said, why shouldn’t it allow married priests?
The Jesuit then namechecked those priests who had influenced his call to the priesthood — but another great influence upon him was his mother, he said, a point which led into a call for the ordination of women. Isn’t it a tragedy, he suggested, when a woman who is called by the Holy Spirit has to leave her church in order to follow that call?
In other words, in Father Hallinan’s view, the Holy Spirit calls certain women to leave the Church. Put another way, it calls the women to a vocation which it has not authorized those in the Vatican to enable. What a pathetic thing the Holy Spirit must be, in Father Hallinan’s view, that it has only enough power to sway the odd female here and there — and has such weak and occasional influence over the Magisterium. Perhaps those groovy feel-good gamma rays emanating from Father Halloran’s hippie-dippie vision of the Holy Spirit just aren’t strong enough. Or perhaps they are, only they can’t get through, because the cardinals’ hats are lined with tin foil.
One thing on which I do agree with the Jesuit: I can see why a woman might believe that she was moved by the Holy Spirit to be a Catholic priest. After all, who wouldn’t want a job where you can tell hundreds of women whatever you please — and not have to listen to some old man in Rome?