Dwight Longenecker's Blog, page 108

Satan and the Banality of Evil

  An article in the Daily Telegraph reports on a new film being made about the man who televised the trial of Nazi death camp criminal Adolph Eichmann. Eichmann was the chief organizer of Hitler’s “final solution” to exterminate the Jews. As the Nazis began the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, their Jewish policy changed [Read More...]

Pope Francis in the Phillipines

View image | gettyimages.com The Daily Telegraph has a great photo gallery of the Pope in the Phillipines. Go here What I love about these big papal visits hit me when I learned that they are called “Apostolic Visits” This is the successor of Peter and Paul doing what Peter and Paul did. They travelled. [Read More...]

Ten Reasons Why I Am Grateful for Atheists

Not long ago I was engaged in an email conversation with an atheist. He wrote to me out of the blue responding to a blog post I had written. He seemed friendly enough so I went along with the conversation, first assuring him that I don’t argue with anybody online. Arguments are out. Discussions are [Read More...]

Bruno the Bald

In attempting to collect a pantheon of bald headed saints we have come across the difficulty of the tonsure. Was the saint really bald headed or was his head shaved? A reader sent me this splendid photo of St Bruno–the founder of the Carthusian order, but we are uncertain if he is really bald or [Read More...]

Is This a Miraculous Image of the Divine Mercy?

This article reports a miraculous image of the Divine Mercy in the Northern Lights. Is this really what it is or we seeing things? This phenomenon is called pareidolia. Go here to check it out. It is the ability to “see things” or hear things that aren’t really there. Typical examples are seeing things in [Read More...]

No Mary? No Jesus

This week’s article for Aleteia highlights the Holy Father’s homily for the solemnity of Mary, Mother of God In his homily for the Solemnity of the Mother of God on New Year’s Day Pope Francis made the very clear point that we cannot have Jesus without Mary.  The Pope taught, “The two were together, just [Read More...]

Myth and Magic in the Mundane

My article this week for the Imaginative Conservative discusses the way the ancient myths were embodied in the history of the Hebrew people What very few have stopped to realize is that in the midst pagans telling fantastical stories of star gods visiting earth and titanic struggles between the deities of their pantheons, the same [Read More...]

Dialogue with the Devil

Some time ago a blogger wrote an “open letter” to me inviting me to engage in discussion on a topic where we disagreed. To avoid specifics and get down to the core issues, let’s say the topic was the pastoral care  of remarried divorced people in church. So I went to the blog and read the [Read More...]

Atheism or Catholicism – You Choose

I’ve got this gadget on my home page that generates quotable quotes. You don’t know what you’re going to get next. Some are funny, some wise, some rude, some silly, some stupid. My favorite silly one is from Groucho Marx: “Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.” Geddit? Anyway, there’s one from [Read More...]

Pope to Canonize Another Bald Headed Saint

Pope Francis announced that he plans to canonize the Franciscan missionary to California Junipero Serra It thrills my heart to learn that he is to make a saint of another bald headed person. St Junipero Serra joins St Francis de Sales, St John of the Cross, St Maximillian Kolbe, St Paul, and the prophet Elisha. [Read More...]