Dwight Longenecker's Blog, page 310

My Journey to the Catholic Church

A new feature on the blog begins today!



You may have noticed that over the last few days I have been updating the blog--simplifying the design and making it more interactive with my website and other social media.



The new feature is the ability to purchase audio downloads. The first one is now available in the right sidebar. Click on the image and you will be taken to a page which describes the audio file. When you click to purchase you will go through to PayPal to pay.



You will then receive an email with a password enabling you to download the MP3 audio file. You can listen on your PC, laptop, MP3 player or smart phone.



The first download is an hour long talk I gave telling my conversion story--how I went from an Evangelical home and fundamentalist Bob Jones University to Oxford, the Anglican Church, ordination and finally taking the step to leave it all to become a Catholic.



The second download is part two--in which I tell how I finally ended up coming from being a lay Catholic in England to returning to the USA to be ordained as a Catholic priest.



In future there will be a range of audio files. Watch as this section of the blog expands!

Liturgical Time and Commercial Time

Have you ever noticed how we long for meaning in every aspect of our lives? The Epiphany proclamation on Sunday reminds us how the timeless one came into time to redeem time. The Baptism of the Lord yesterday reminded me that Christ came to begin a new creation. He established a new dispensation. The Baptism story trembles with all the symbols that were present in the creation story: the waters below, the firmament above, the spirit hovering over the waters, the second Adam being pronounced as God's Son, and God saying that he is 'well pleased' as he said in the first creation 'That's good'.



Because the mystery of the incarnation is woven into history, every event--no matter how mundane, is part of the great plan. The providence of God involves every moment of time and through the incarnation every moment of time--every year, every month, every week, every day--all of time is redeemed. The liturgical year is a wonderful 'sacrament' of this truth. We live out that year and every day of that year in a constant awareness of the mystery of the incarnation and the mystery of our redemption.



How crass of the devil, then, to mimic this beautiful and ancient rhythm of time. Have you noticed how the worship of Mammon offers our society a sort of fake and tacky imitation of the liturgical year? I call it "commercial time" instead of liturgical time. Virtually every month there is some sort of "celebration" which is an excuse for the retailers to shuffle their junk around and plaster their stores with new posters and set up new displays to draw us into the monthly round of consumption.



January: New Year. February: Valentines Day. March: St Patrick's Day and Easter. April: Easter. May: Mother's Day. June: Father's Day. July: Independence Day. August: Summer Holidays. September: Back to School. October: Halloween. November: Thanksgiving. December: Christmas.



I'm not being a Scrooge (or at least not much of one) I'm just lamenting the fact that we have replaced true celebration with shopping, true Christian festivals with fake commercialism and the beautiful sense of liturgical time with commercial time.



Here's a New Year's Resolution I mean to keep. I want my parish and my family to celebrate the Christian year with feasts--to combine our hospitality and family events with the feasts and seasons of the year. I mean to be intentional about this, and to prove I'm not a Scrooge--I am planning some serious parties this year.



So watch out.

Carolina Catholicism

Let me tell you, the I-85 corridor in the Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina area is a hot place to be Catholic. Who woulda thought that the Bible Belt would be such a lively place to practice the Catholic faith!



Charlotte has Belmont Abbey and some terrific, orthodox and lively churches. Jump down to Spartanburg and Greenville where we have Great St Mary's and Little St Mary's (OLR) and Prince of Peace. St Anthony's Bookstore, Steve Wood's Family Life Ministry, artist Chris Pelicano, author Joseph Pearce--Catholic radio for South Carolina--and more. Then jump down to Atlanta with Randy Hain and Mike Bickerstaff of Integrated Catholic Life, author and artist husband and wife Jeff and Lorraine Murray. Then there's the Trappist monastery in Conyers--Flannery O'Connor's home.



We need a name for this. Is it called Bible Belt Catholicism? I've got it. You've heard of Cultural Catholicism and Committed Catholicism and Cafeteria Catholicism...this is Carolina Catholicism.



Anyway, the folks at Integrated Catholic Life are laying on a day conference on Saturday, January 28. Atlanta Catholic Business Conference is at St Peter Chanel Church. Here's some info:                                         Keynote: Pat Lencioni


Special Guest: Mother Regina Marie, O.C.D
Guest Speakers:  Dr. William Thierfelder and Becky Eldredge

St. Peter Chanel Catholic Church - McNamee Hall
11330 Woodstock Road, Roswell 30075

Saturday, January 28, 2012, 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Cost: $45; $30 for students




Go here for more information and to register online. I'll be there, and hope to meet some of you other Carolina Catholics!

Chust for Nice

Go here to see a pretty fancy church in Poland...

MSM and the Slaughter of the Innocents

Mark Steyn comments here about the left wing Mainstream Media being so crass and cruel as to mock the death of Rick Santorum's newborn child. He says how the left are all big on "empathy" in order to defend abortion, but they are quite willing to mock Sarah Palin's child who has Downs' Syndrome and the behavior of the Santorums after the death of their child. I wonder if anyone else noticed how sneering they were toward Sarah Palin's daughter being a teenaged mom who kept her baby while at the same time they are full of  "empathy" for teenaged moms who choose to kill their baby.



Robert Royal also comments over at The Catholic Thing. It reminds me of another feast in the Christmas Season which did not get enough attention. Each year we celebrate the Slaughter of the Innocents on December 28. This feast, it seems to me, ought to be used more by the Pro Life Movement as a national day of prayer and reparation for the crimes against the unborn in our land. We're a nation of little Herods--willing to slaughter the little ones who threaten our prosperity and power.



Later this month I'll be in Washington for the March for Life, and will join thousands of others in the campaign against the slaughter of the innocents in our land. I'll be blogging and tweeting from the MFL, and hope you'll follow me there and I hope to meet many of you if I get the chance.



In the meantime, ponder how the liberal media would have reacted to the news in Judea around 4BC: Todd Unctuous would have written something like, "Have you heard some snotty nosed farm workers came in from the hills to Bethlehem the other night? Geesh, what were they smoking? They come shuffling down with stories about "angelic hosts of heaven" appearing to them. Not likely. Haven't they ever heard of group hallucination? Then they turn up at a little shed where a homeless couple are camping out for the night. The unwed mother is being looked after by this old guy, and that's kind of creepy in itself. What's he after??? She gives birth (the anti aborts would say she 'chose life') and all I can see is that there is another squawking mouth to feed, and who's going to pay for that I ask you? The taxpayer as usual...Not only that, not long after these three aristocrats show up looking for 'the King of the Jews'. Quite sensibly they go to Herod's palace.




We have to admit that Herod is not everyone's cup of tea, but hey, nobody's perfect! At least he's a strong ruler. He's canny. He's nobody's fool. We can respect that in a ruler. He's calm under fire. He has the backbone to make tough choices for the sake of peace. These three foreigners tell him a new king of the Jews has been born and Herod takes the tough, but sensible decision. There's no room for two kings, so he weeds them out. You can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs, and if we can avoid a civil war or a rebellion a few years down the line--who's complaining--anyhow, what about the famines we've been having? Those children were likely to grow up in poverty and misery. And the women? Why should those women be punished by having a child? They'll look back on it in a few years and realize that Herod did them (and all of us) a favor."

Grieving for Christmas

When I lived in England an unemployed fellow down the road from us in a little town in Wiltshire made the national headlines because he celebrated Christmas every day of the year. The decorations were up all year round. He played Christmas carols and had turkey and stuffing and all the trimmings and gave little presents and opened the Christmas Cracker. He watched old Christmas movies and sat down every afternoon to Christmas cake and a cup of tea and dozed on the couch. That's right--every day of the year.



It was one of those charming English eccentricities that made living in England maddening and delightful--like their national game lasting for four days, and after twenty five years in the damp land I still didn't understand it, or the way all their comedians think it's funny to dress up like women--and it is actually quite funny.




Well I sympathize with that lover of Christmas because suddenly it is Epiphany and the Baptism of Christ and the Christmas tree is down and it's Ordinary Time tomorrow and it's a Monday and it's business as usual. Once again I am grieving for Christmas. What I dislike about the Christmas Season is that it is too short and there is just too much liturgical richness crammed into it. It's like Christmas fruitcake--too much of it and too much goodness all mixed together.



Here's what I mean: especially this year with Christmas on a Sunday I feel liturgically cheated. We had Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and the Sunday after Christmas, but there was so much to celebrate and so much to contemplate. There was St Stephen's Day, the St John--both of them chock full of new angles on the mystery of the Incarnation. Then there was the Feast of the Holy Innocents, and the Holy Family and the Mother of God. Then Epiphany (can't keep in on the proper day so it was transferred) and that bumped the Baptism of Christ from a Sunday too.




So, this morning I am missing Christmas. The celebration of the mystery of the Incarnation seems to have come and gone, and I'm resolved to keep Christmas alive, like the guy in Wiltshire. I'm not going to keep the decorations up and eat turkey every day. Instead, I am resolved to live the mystery of the incarnation in a fuller and richer way within the mystery of liturgical time. This is one of the reasons for the Epiphany proclamation--to be remind that within the mystery of time the mystery of the incarnation became true. 





The eternal stepped into time, and so time is forever sanctified, and it is by conforming our lives more and more to the rhythm of time that time and therefore our lives (for what is our life but a sequence of moments in time?) are consecrated and our conformity to Christ is furthered.




So, as a New Year's resolution, why not endeavor with me to this year more liturgically? Celebrate the feasts and seasons and so draw nearer in time to the timeless.

Journey of the Magi

The internet is a pretty marvelous thingamabob isn't it? Here's a recording of T.S.Eliot reading his poem The Journey of the Magi. Enjoy!

Memling Adoration

Click to enlarge

Epiphany

Santorum vs the Meat Grinder

Brent Bozell comments here on the fact that he will now face 'intense scrutiny' of the mainstream media--who will give their own candidates a pass on most things. He points out the double standard in the mainstream media. Why is it extreme to be against artificial contraception, but not extreme to hand it out to 12 year olds in school? Why is it extreme to be opposed to abortion, but not extreme to be in favor of government funds for partial birth abortion--and other such common sense questions...