The liturgical and theological coherence of ‘Old High’ Easter Eve According to the Church of England’s Common Worship: Times and Seasons provision for Easter, the term “the Easter Liturgy” does not describe the main Eucharist in a parish on Easter Day.[1] No, it is the title given to the Easter Vigil. It is the Vigil…
Sometime in the early 1980s, just about the time Bob Dylan was recording Infidels, a little girl in Shreveport got a plush toy as a gift from her dad. It was vaguely Easter themed—a plump oval, the bottom half a colorful sateen eggshell, the top half a fat, fuzzy chick. It was adorable, just the…
I came across this somewhat humorous description of Heinrich Bullinger (1504-1575) when engaged in some random reading about the Swiss Reformation. The reference is apt because if you look at portraits of Bullinger painted from the 1540s onwards he sports the grandest of all the beards of the Reformation, singularly long and full, spreading out…
When some big loudmouth makes a crack, some I hate Christians rant-attack, I want to beat him to a pulp. Which isn’t Christian. So, I gulp it down and don’t—but dream I did. It’s like when Peter sliced that ear off Malchus as the end drew near and Jesus said, No more of this! Our…
Repeating the same theological debates that have already been hashed out many times in the past—only more intelligently and more eloquently—is bad enough on its own. On top of this, however, we frequently devote ourselves to overly speculative matters that touch little or not at all on everyday faith and practice. One such matter is…
Article IX. Of Original, Or Birth-Sin. ORIGINAL Sin standeth not in the following of Adam (as the Pelagians do vainly talk), but it is the fault and corruption of the nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam, whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is…
Confessing Anglicans are divided on the question whether women’s ordination is in accord with the teaching of Scripture and consistent with the doctrinal heritage of the Church. On the one hand, there is great exegetical disagreement regarding the status of women in pastoral ministry in the New Testament itself. That, certainly, is the really decisive…
For Eugene Gone, I was the bristle in the brittle pines looped fractaling along the highway bends. Mine were raw quills, of goose and porcupine; mine the rock brains; mine the hands that slapped wet prints upon the breaching stones; a tremulous, confessing risk of joy; the silver in the sockets of my bones; the…
“IF women cannot be priests but are allowed to “act” as priests then they are putting the souls of God’s children at risk.”
Eternal Life and Human Happiness in Heaven: Philosophical Problems, Thomistic Solutions. By Christopher M. Brown. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2021. 464 pp. $75 (cloth). A favored strategy among skeptics and atheists to undermine Christianity—albeit less common than the problem of evil—is attempting to poke holes in the Christian understanding of heaven….