Mark P. Shea's Blog, page 1377

Just because Scripture is inerrant...

...doesn't mean you are. Likewise, just because you disagree with the Church on some point doesn't mean you are a prophet sent by God to correct the Church. It could just be that you are a loudmouth with a Bible. That goes, not only for Fundamentalists who are sure they've disproven the priesthood by citing "call no man Father", but even for Catholics who think they are the first person to notice that Jesus never said anything about abortion, gay marriage, or nuking Hiroshima, so that makes them alright.

Warning!

This post has extremely high levels of nerd toxicity. That's because it contains a link to Gene Roddenberry's pitch letter for Star Trek. The letter even contains a "baffle 'em with BS" appeal to the Drake Equation, just to make the execs' eyes glaze over before Roddenberry returns to saying. "so anyway, there's lots of opportunities for jiggle and fisticuffs" and then proceeds to lay out some future story ideas. Fun stuff, especially when you see how an original concept wound up evolving into an actual episode. Also: Captain April? What's up with that?

St. Thomas...

...is proving very handy to brain researchers working on the mind/body problem. The old boy has staying power. Who knew that somebody 900 years stupider than Richard Dawkins could be so smart?

Gay Brownshirts on the March

Next target: Chick-Fil-A. Their crime: being run by Evangelicals who believe what Christianity has always taught about the nature of marriage. They've done nothing to gay. They merely believe differently and must therefore be punished for Ungoodthink

Tolerance is not Enough. You. MUST. Approve or the Brownshirts will crush you. Gay marriage is a persecuting faith that aims to use the law to silence all opposition.

Kevin O'Brien and Sherry Weddell...

...continue the discussion about Making Disciples. Join in!

Fr. Tom Euteneuer St. Blog's Gossip Storm

A priest fails yet again. Till anybody knows anything beyond vague hints, the sound response is prayer for all concerned, especially victims.

The good news is the guy was pulled out of circulation.

Glimpse inside a very small bubble

So some guy robbed some TV evangelist (Mike Murdoch? Never heard of him) and is hawking a book about it. What interests me is how this guy a) plays the penitent in order to hook you on the "Oooh! Give me more salacious details" thing, b) seems to seriously believe that it's new to normal people that TV Evangelists are not exactly trustworthy, and c) has this intense conviction that this particular two bit showman, whoever he is, presents an immense threat to Christianity. In a way, these guys feel like peas in pod, both hawking a saving message as though civilization stands or falls with them. It's a peculiarly American subculture.

Fr. Dwight...

on the smoke of Satan.

I don't disagree with a word of it. However, as an aside, I recall somebody noting a few years back that it is curious that this toss-off phrase of Paul VI has acquired, for a certain subculture in the Church, all the force and weight of an infallible pronouncement, while actual magisterial teaching from Paul VI is often blown off as worthless. I wonder if anybody has ever made a study of how it is Catholics navigate such matters. The notion that Catholics actually order their thinking according to stuff the Pope teaches seems to me to be hopelessly naive. It appears much more accurate to see the average Catholic incorporates bits and pieces of what the Pope or the Magisterium teaches into the their thinking, often because it buttresses what he already wanted to believe.

I wonder how much I do that?

New Moral Theory Gains Ground

Let's play Simon Peter Says!

538 Followers!

Today my suckups and toadies, we rejoice! For the combox comments are in descending order again. It turns out that there's a little button labeled "Enable Echo Live" which mentions absolutely nothing about re-arranging the order of the comments. Unclick that feature and wondrous things happen, like normal descending order comments.

Grog and fewer torments all around!

That is all!