Dwight Longenecker's Blog, page 140

The Ebola Virus – Apocaplyse Now?

The outbreak of the deadly  Ebola virus in West Africa summons up fear of an apocalyptic style plague.  For the first time the virus is showing up in urban areas where isolation and identification is much more difficult. The virus, for which there is no cure, has a mortality rate of about 50%-90%. CBS reports that [Read More...]

Did I Experience a Miraculous Multiplication of Food?

When I was a young Anglican minister I lived in an apartment with my younger brother. I complained to him one day that when I was a theology student I lived by faith. I really had no money and was living from hand to mouth with the little I could earn while I studied. Now [Read More...]

Let Me Out of My Cage!

One of the joys of being a Catholic is that we should be able to open up to the strength of many different Christian traditions. When somebody leaves the Catholic church looking for some other spiritual good we have failed them because all the good things in all the other religions and all the other [Read More...]

To Androgyny and Beyond!

This article from the New York Times reports on the growing gender confusion in the younger generation. To summarize L.G.B.T (Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sexual, Transgender) is not broad enough to express people’s sexual proclivities. At a student meeting at one college someone stood up to express their (you’re not allowed to say ‘his’ or ‘her’ anymore) frustrations. [Read More...]

All We Are Saying is Give Peace a Chance…

The Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments has decided that we should not move the Sign of Peace. It was suggested that it was more appropriate for the sign of peace to be exchanged before the offertory. This is where it is in the Anglican liturgy, and it makes sense to me. [Read More...]

History and Heresy

“To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant” wrote Bl. John Henry Newman. As part of my research for a book on married priests I am reading Christian Cochini’s tome Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy. It’s a masterful piece of scholarship which examines the early church’s views on marriage for the clergy. As [Read More...]

Honey or Vinegar?

My combox this week has been filled this week with self righteous, negative and sour comments from a certain type of Catholic. How some people love to throw anathemas at the heretics, condemn people and take a lofty tone correcting everyone in sight. If you don’t believe me just jump over to the combox and [Read More...]

Can the Convergence Movement Converge with the Ordinariate?

Bishop Tony Palmer–the friend of Pope Francis who died last week in a motorcycle crash–was representative of a new movement in non Catholic Christian circles called the “convergence church movement”. What is “convergence church” and why does it matter? The convergence movement must be distinguished from two other similar sounding Protestant church movements. “Convergence Christianity” [Read More...]

Spare Me the Severed Heads

Holy Deacon Kandra doesn’t appreciate pictures of severed heads, videos of murders and clips of Iraqis being herded off for extermination. He posts on Facebook One more time, for those who missed it: you post on Facebook pictures of decapitated heads, or videos of people being murdered, or the bloody aftermath of an execution, you [Read More...]

The Rise of Conservative Cafeteria Catholicism

When Benedict XVI and John Paul II were pope the conservative Catholics loved to throw around the phrase “cafeteria Catholic” as a term of derision. It’s a name I used a fair bit to parody those Catholics who would pick and choose what bits of Catholicism they liked and rejected the bits they didn’t like. [Read More...]