Dwight Longenecker's Blog, page 109

Philosophy and Fat Folks on Welfare

I suppose that headline grabbed a few readers. It’s a serious topic though, and this article in the Daily Telegraph profiles a mother and daughter who weigh over 600 pounds between them. A mother and daughter who get £34,000 ( $51,000.00) a year in handouts because they are too fat to work say they’d rather be [Read More...]

Want to Be a Writer? Don’t Give Up Your Day Job

Carol is a friend of mine in England who had a good writing gig. She churned out romance novels under an assumed name. She produced four a year and she was good at it. Many people have romantic ideas about writers. They assume we live in a garret surrounded by piles of books, writing novels [Read More...]

Pope Francis the Hindu?

View image | gettyimages.com So Pope Francis was wrapped in a Hindu prayer shaw? I expect before too long he will  have stones thrown at him by angry and frightened Catholics for compromising the faith. They’ll use the picture from now to eternity along with the one of Pope St John Paul II kissing the [Read More...]

Apologetics 101

Whenever I am involved in conversations with non-Catholic Christians I go straight to the authority question. If that question is not resolved then every other discussion is only matter of swapping opinions. It is important, therefore to be clear on the basics of the Catholic understanding of authority. It is rooted in the fact that [Read More...]

Fighting Fundamentalism

View image | gettyimages.com How do you fight fundamentalism? An article in London’s Daily Telegraph reports that a British government attempt to stop young Muslims from being turned into jihadist radicals is not working. Baroness Manningham Buller, who was the director general of the Security Service at the time of the 7/7 bombings, said the [Read More...]

The Puri-Fire

I was talking with a man I’ll call Henry today who lost his wife just before Christmas. She was only in her early sixties and had premature dementia. It was a terrible disease. Horrible to see an intelligent, active, prayerful woman laid low, and terrible to see the suffering of her husband and family as [Read More...]

Black People Aren’t Real…

…this would seem to be the message the world’s media is trumpeting in the wake of the silence over 2,000 slaughtered by the Boko Haram in Nigeria. London’s Guardian paper asks why the massacre in Baga has been ignored. France spent the weekend coming to terms with last week’s terror attacks in Paristhat left 17 dead. The [Read More...]

Pause for Prayer

To be led by God’s patient love into this attitude of unconditional self surrender is painful, but there is no avoiding it for anyone who seriously wants to pray. It requires no special conditions or peculiar way of life. The ordinary experience of work, daily hardships and living with people is the field of obedience [Read More...]

English Snobs and Yobs

There’s an amusing article here in today’s Daily Telegraph by an Englishman chortling away at Americans’ ignorance about Britain. The author does a pretty good job of tossing off the usual snooty English comments about Americans. British visitors to America often report how shocked they are to discover how little is known about their country. [Read More...]

Kansas City Sees First Female Catholic Priest?

The headline is linked to this article online about Georgia Walker who claims to be a Catholic priest. You can go here for a very entertaining picture gallery of the “ordination” If they are not aware of it already, folks should  realize that Georgia Walker in Kansas is as  much a Catholic priest as David Bawden is Pope Michael [Read More...]