Still digging away in the literature review, and being compelled to re-write tons of material as I dig deeper and learn more, constantly having to revise my earlier impressions and interpretations regarding the development of a Catholic understanding of spiritual gifts or "charisms." The idea of "charismatic" theology is more complicated to talk ( Read more... )

I'm having a week where my days last about 45 minutes and then it's over. My financial aid and pay have been activated, so that was good, but otherwise the day was a wash, again. Had to bow out of going to the "Opera in the Park" down by the lake tonight to get in extra reading for the exams and still not enough happened. I'm trying to keep up ( Read more... )

Is anyone this sentimental and geeky? Do you, like I do, so love certain messages you get on your answering machine that you actually save them? That you get a grin listening to them once again every now and then? I actually copied them, after a while, 'cause the saved ones were taking up so much room, onto a tape, and now that had been ( Read more... )

Okay, I'm about to drop, but there's things worth noting over the last few days ( Read more... )

Well, things went very well. I made it to Coffey's class with the Chianti Classico and the stemware, and (because, unlike Barnes' seminar where wine and snacks have beocme a comm0nplace) a small cray of surprise went up. Small, of course, because there are only four of us in the seminar, myself inculded. There was some sipping throughout the ( Read more... )

Had a good evening hanging with Bob Foster tonight, who was in for his fortnightly foray from Rochester. That sentence had entirely too many Fs. My apologies. Having had a more-or-less unobserved birthday on Monday (but freaking cool seminars with Coffey and Barnes, reading Coffey's notable "The Whole Rahner on the Supernatural Existential" ( Read more... )

The theological event of the year at Marquette is tomorrow, when Marquette honours the retirement of one of our own--my advisor, Fr. David Coffey--with giving this year's Père Marquette Lecture. It's a series with considerable history, and it's a nice capstone for Fr. Coffey's career. Given the timing, I'm glad that they hadn't gone after a ( Read more... )

Just got this neat little note from Coffey, on a neat little note from Augustine: I thought they were worth reproducing here.

The text from Augustine [from Sermon 169, xi, 13] at the bottom of p. 166 is translated as follows:
He who made you without you [i.e. without your cooperation] will not justify you without you [i.e. without your cooperation ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

I just learned a distinction that I've been missing for years. I've been using the word "supernatural" incorrectly, along with most of the world. First articulated by Philip the Chancellor in the 13th century--although most credit goes to the fellow who "popularized" the concept, Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologiae--the word does denote what ( Read more... )