Dwight Longenecker's Blog, page 203

Poirot is a Christian

Did you know that David Suchet, who plays the detective Hercule Poirot, is a convert to Christianity? In this interview he recounts his conversion: He was brought up a non-orthodox Jew but had been dabbling in new age philosophies. At the end of a day’s filming, Suchet picked up the Bible in his hotel room [Read More...]

Smeagol

Speaking of wrecking the Shire…is that sneaky fellow still about?

On the Scouring of the Shire

Now at the end of re-reading The Lord of the Rings, it occurs to me that I should have blogged my way through. There were so many details seen now and seen in more clarity where Tolkien’s Catholic imagination shines through. I’m going to back again to glean from the chapter in The Return of the King [Read More...]

Loving Detachment

The Anchoress muses here about the mystery of human love and how it reflects Divine Love. when our relationships are healthy and honest and authentic — we cannot help but model God to each other. The crunch point is the realization that in a true love you give up the other person, you do not [Read More...]

Build Self Esteem – Say “I am a Sinner”

I was doing some research on the self help industry and listened to some tapes by a guy who said his recipe for self esteem was to look in the mirror and repeat like a mantra, “I like myself, I like myself, I like myself.” I thought if he needed that much convincing then building [Read More...]

You Never Know Who’s Reading

Well, this is pretty cool! I just received this email from  Joe Zwilling from the Archdiocese of NY: Father Longenecker: Cardinal Dolan has asked me to forward the following message from him to you… Father Longenecker: Someone just passed on to me your excellent “Three Popes and the Wizard of Oz.”  Right on target! I had earlier done [Read More...]

One Stop Catholic Drive Thru

The ancient idea of a parish community was that it was coterminous with the geographical parish. Village people lived around the village church and the community of families also comprised the community of faith. No more. At least not in America. Instead, with the suburban motorcar-driven society we church shop. Furthermore, there are plenty of [Read More...]

Classroom Management for Chaos

Well not chaos exactly. Christian LeBlanc is a fantastically creative sixth grade catechist at St Mary’s. He blogs at Smaller Manhattans and is the author of The Bible Tells Me So–a great Bible based catechetical resource which is being snatched up by enthusiastic catechists across the country. Jennifer Fitz is also a South Carolina Catholic [Read More...]

All Saints Day at Our Lady of the Rosary

For the last few years at my parish of Our Lady of the Rosary we have had a wonderful All Saints Day liturgy. Holy Deacon Richard Ballard has a fine collection of relics, so we set up stations around our humble little church with first class relics and image of each saint with a candle [Read More...]

The Portly Prophet

Here is my recent article for Aleteia on G.K.Chesterton. Some people like my friend, Dale Ahlquist – President of the American Chesterton Society – will gobble up everything by Chesterton and love every quip and every question. However, I think most people (like me) vacillate between admiration and annoyance. Some consider his puns to be punishment, his alliteration ludicrous and [Read More...]