Dwight Longenecker's Blog, page 57

Obedience? What Me?

Over at The Suburban Hermit is a post on the vow of obedience. In the present world the suggestion of obedience is met with incomprehension. That one should submit one’s entire will to another individual is not only a social error, but an anti-social horror. Obedience is a blasphemy in a world of individual freedom, [Read More...]

Do Beautiful Churches Produce Beautiful Priests?

My latest blog post for National Catholic Register wonders if there is a connection between architecture, prayer and priests. I know a young priest who was brought up as a Baptist. He went into a beautiful old Catholic Church during the liturgy. This was a classic neo-Gothic church with stained glass windows and a beautiful [Read More...]

The Oldest Hymn to Mary

One of the things that maddens and amuses me about Protestants is something called “primitivism”. I’ve written about it here. “Primitivism” is the ambition to return the church to the simplest form as it was in the “early church”. The little fundamentalist church in which I grew up worked on this assumption. They were going [Read More...]

Today at Suburban Hermit

Have you checked out my new blog yet? I’ve taken the opportunity to create a blog free from ads and flashing lights and the distractions of Patheos. It focusses on monastic spirituality, book reviews, prayer, work and reading. Today at Suburban Hermit is the biography of St Benedict from my book St Benedict and St Therese-The [Read More...]

The Catholic Roots of England

I was watching the service of Evensong from Westminster Abbey the other night that took place during Benedict XVI’s visit to England. It was all very splendid and you could tell Benedict was impressed with the Anglican music and ceremonial. His speech emphasized, however, the Catholic roots of both Westminster Abbey and England itself. In [Read More...]

Is the Pope Out of Control?

Damian Thompson aka “the blood crazed ferret” launches a scathing attack on Pope Francis here at the UK’s Spectator. After the latest disastrous interview with ninety one Italian journalist Antonio Scalfari, Thompson argues that the Pope is unpredictable, out of his depth and a dangerous loose cannon. Last Sunday, the Italian newspaper La Repubblica carried an article by [Read More...]

Arians, Aliens and Body Snatchers

Do you remember that creepy movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers? Some kind of alien bug invades earth and takes over people’s bodies replacing them with soul-less replicas. The horrible thing about the film is that the aliens are not huge hybrid insectoid lobster monsters, but just as ordinary as the guy and girl next [Read More...]

Is Communion with Lutherans on the Way?

The ecumenical teams for Lutherans and Catholics have been hard at it and produced a new document on Church, Eucharist and Ministry called Declaration on the Way. It’s all full of enthusiastic and optimistic language about how Lutherans and Catholics are all starting to agree after 500 years. I hate to be a party pooper, [Read More...]

Welcome to My Hermitage

For some time now I have been feeling the need to have another outlet for more personal stuff. So today I launch my new blog: The Suburban Hermit. This blog will be notes on reading, prayer and work. As a Benedictine oblate I try to follow the threefold vows of obedience, stability and conversion of life [Read More...]

The Devil and the Democrats

WaPo reports here on a new survey that informs us that the largest religious grouping among registered Democrats is “None” Yes, that’s “None” not “Nun”. In other words, the Democrats are the party of the godless. People who do not identify with any organized religion (aka the “nones”) comprise the largest chunk of self-identified Democrats [Read More...]