There is a certain term in Japanese whose history I very much dislike: shikataganai ā āIt can’t be helped.ā Now such a concept is not completely alien to Western thought, we often remark how there is ānothing one can doā in certain situations, but the difference is that shikataganai reflects the fatalistic ethos of Japan that the modern West has never quiteā¦
My thoughts below are in response to this fine review article by Fr. David Bissias directed at a recent screed article by Valerie Karras ostensibly seemingly to justify some form of womenās ordination. Iāve read through Fr. Davidās article, and now wish I had Karrasās as well. But in reality I donāt need it, for my thoughts are actually in response toā¦
The following article was originally published on the Roads from Emmaus weblog in March of 2011. It has been revised for this publication. An encounter by my wife with a Unitarian Universalist has set me thinking again upon what I believe is one of the great Christian evangelistic questions of our time: We now have to make the case for dogma. Weā¦
One of the things that struck me during the Chick-Fil-A debacle couple of weeks ago was a curious theme I perceived in the inundation of negative comments I saw on social media regarding the statements made by Chick-Fil-A COO Dan Cathy, who came out (no pun intended… no, really) in favor of “the biblical definition of the family unit.” What was thatā¦
The following article was originally published on the Roads from Emmaus weblog in March of 2011. It’s been revised for this publication. I sometimes encounter folks who tell me that they are “spiritual but not religious” (SBNR). I wish I asked more often what exactly that is supposed to mean, though I am usually held back from asking by a strong suspicionā¦
A fellow pro-life friend of mine recently sent me a post by the theologically and politically liberal Christian writer Fred “Slactivist” Clark in favor of abortion titled The ābiblical viewā thatās younger than the Happy Meal. It begins this way: In 1979, McDonaldās introduced the Happy Meal. Sometime after that, it was decided that the Bible teaches that human life begins atā¦
The following article was originally published on the Roads from Emmaus weblog in February of 2012. I spotted this image on Facebook today, and it puts forth a commonly accepted ethic, which I’ve dubbed here the Eminem Ethic. Essentially, various categories of race, sexual desire, physical appearance, and economic status don’t matter when it comes to winning his kindness. What matters isā¦
