A name I recognized from a few John Paul II biographies I've read over the years. It's a reminder that sometimes our lives might seem most significant on the world's stage for things that we do indirectly: we give birth to, we raise, we teach, or we befriend someone who has a visible impact far beyond our own. This, too, smacks of the mysteries ( Read more... )

One of the clear and sensible assessments reported in the book review of Theodore Ziolkowski's Modes of Belief: Secular Surrogates for Lost Religious Belief that I read in the latest issue of Commonweal (as I reported doing on my journey to Montreal) was from a comparison the reviewer made to Charles Taylor's recent masterpiece A Secular Age. (The ( Read more... )

An interesting little article about a book by a friend of John Paul II's. I'm not sure why there's any particular "controversy" here, or if that's being created or amplified by the writers in order to make their story more "news-worthy." I cannot imagine that anyone would too strongly want to say "they weren't really good friends" if she was ( Read more... )

Mom wrote and asked me about what I thought about all the controversy regarding President Obama's addressing the graduating seniors at the University of Notre Dame. I hadn't consciously articulated my thoughts until she asked, but now that I have, I thought that I would just copy it all down here. I would preface my comments by reassuring or ( Read more... )

It has been a quiet weekend of dissertating from my apartment since the libraries both close in the late afternoon through our four-day fall break here at Marquette. But I've been getting a good stretch of work done, going back over my historical section and tightening up the whole thing, making the whole of it flow and fit together in ways it ( Read more... )

One key problem that seems to lurk in many students' minds is this cultural stereotype of what I once heard CNN describe as "the eternal war between science and religion." Now, if you know anything about the history of science, not only do you know that this perceived conflict only goes back to the philosophers who proclaimed their anti-Christian ( Read more... )

Cardinals Discuss Other ChristiansNov 23, 6:36 AM (ET ( Read more... )

Oi. I woke up this morning to find that there was a new document that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) had issued regarding the Second Vatican Council's statement that the Church of Christ "subsists in" the Catholic Church. Nicole Winfield, one of the regular AP reporters I read covering the Vatican, has a story out on it that ( Read more... )

Well, good. John Paul II changed papal election rules in 1996 to allow a switch to a simple majority being required for election instead of a two-thirds majority if the conclave had failed to elect a Pope after 13 days. This was seen by ecclesiologists - those who study the nature and work of the Church - as a change capable of being abused. We ( Read more... )

The last few weeks saw two dissertation defenses for friends in the program that were kinda kick-ass. I got to see a little of their development along the way, hearing Kari-Shane toss around her ideas and being part of a patristics group Barnes put together to help Bogdan brainstorm out a structure to his work. I thought I'd put the abstracts ( Read more... )