Dwight Longenecker's Blog, page 47

Women at Home in the Church

I remember a curmudgeonly priest once shocking me by saying, “Women have a place in the church…on their knees…either scrubbing the floor or praying.” Errm. Maybe or maybe not. In fact, although ordination is reserved to men in the Catholic Church, my article for Aletia this week shows that ministry of women in the Catholic [Read More...]

Are You Afflicted with Father Freelance?

One hears rumbles and grumbles from time to time about priests who think they know better than the church and treat the liturgy like a suggestion rather than a script. You know the sort of priest who feels that he has to improve the language of the liturgy by “making it more understandable” Others are [Read More...]

Ten Reasons Why Catholics Don’t Evangelize

At a priest’s conference not long ago the speaker quoted some statistics. Christians of different traditions were asked percentage wise how important evangelization was to their understanding of the Christian faith. Mainline Protestants answered 60%. Evangelical Christians answered 85%. Catholics said 3%. We Catholics skate around this one muttering catch phrases like “The New Evangelization” [Read More...]

A Memo from Hell

Memo: from: His Eminence, Thornblade, DMn President and Director of Communications Department of Infernal Security Re-Education Division   to: Heads of Department – Bowelbages University CONFIDENTIAL Diabolical Doctors, It has come to our attention that there has been a dangerous lapse in security. Our surveillance systems have been compromised, and transcripts of lectures and conversations [Read More...]

Understanding the Power of Prayer

My latest blog post for National Catholic Register discusses the inner dynamic of prayer: What is it and why does it work? When we pray for specific things we are putting it all into God’s hands. We may say, “Give us this day our daily bread” but we also say, “Thy will be done on [Read More...]

New Anglican Schism = Old Protestantism

You remember the three “R’s” of “Readin’ Writin’ and “Rithmatic”? Consider three “R’s” that are tearing apart global Anglicanism: Relevance, Relativism and Revolution. Edward Pentin writes here about the formal schism that faces the worldwide Anglican Communion. To put it briefly, the modernists in the Anglican Church are facing a widespread walkout by those who [Read More...]

Who Is Tom Bombadil?

My latest post for The Imaginative Conservative website asks who the mysterious character Tom Bombadil from Lord of the Rings is supposed to be or represent… One of the mysteries of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings is the character of Tom Bombadil. Who is this odd, hill-leaping, silly-song-singing, farmer in the dell? Is this cavorting, yellow-booted [Read More...]

Ten Tricks of the Devil to Watch Out For

Satan is a snake. Remember that. He is a liar and the Father of Lies. He is at work in your life trying to tempt you into sin and to draw you away from God, but he is also at work in the world, trying to deceive you, confuse you. He wants you to lose [Read More...]

Can You Be a Happy Traddy?

An article by Steve Skojec has surfaced on social media in which he argues that traditionalist Catholics need to be happy, joyful folks so that everyone realizes what a great treasure they have in the Tridentine Mass. He criticizes traditionalist Catholics of an extreme sort, explaining what it was like when he started to attend [Read More...]

When Action is the Only Argument

The crisis began when I realized that teenaged boys were looking at hard core pornography on their cell phones. It continued when I read that most Christian young people don’t get the argument against same sex marriage. The crisis got worse when I realized that a majority of American Catholics don’t actually believe the basics [Read More...]