Recent content by jamiec

All things are ordained by God’s Providence. Whether creatures decide to do good or evil, is within their own power to choose. BTW, Nero was Emperor from 54 to 68.

Where can I find the complete essay ? "For those Christians who insist on promoting and celebrating the writings of J. R. R. Tolkien as a rich tapestry of Christian allegory and symbolism that powerfully informs their faith, some sobering facts need to be seriously considered. The sad truth is...

I like some episodes of ST - but I prefer Star Wars (without that trilogy).

Pot, meet kettle.

"Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state, presented a book by Vatican expert Ignazio Ingrao on the “Five Questions That Agitate the Church” on April 24. In his speech, he outlined Pope Francis’ reform efforts as a path that cannot be reversed, for which there should be a...

Is it as old as Armenia, though ?

IMHO, they were Jewish Christians in Jerusalem during the Jewish War of 66-73. They are sealed (1) as God’s own people (2) because the Jews saved from destruction in Ezekiel 9.4 are sealed (3) because the “mark of the beast” that people always talk about is a blasphemous parody, by the...

I don't see these differences as problems. I think they show only that the Evangelists edited the materials available to them, and that the Evangelists had different theologies and different audiences & different purposes. I think these differences are a very good thing, & tell us far more...

"Within Catholicism and similar organizations Mary appears to be an integral part of their liturgy while seemingly to be raising her to a level of a fourth member of the Christian hierarchy." That is false. False and nonsensical, as a description of Catholicism, and equally false and...

No. Absolutely not. Apologetics is a species of Theology. And Theology is, among other things, an exercise of the virtue of faith. And only human persons, living in this world, on the way to their heavenly home, are capable of exercising the virtue - which is a God-given habit of the soul - of...

Respectability is of no importance. Whether matters, is whether it is good, or not. And it is not. The Apostles paid no attention to respectability. Lots of nonsense is respectable - that does not make it any less nonsensical. A lie accepted as true by the whole universe, would still be a lie...

The story looks very much like the application, to that Saint, of a motif applied to many Saints, in which the Saint either killed a dragon or other great worm, or tamed either it, or some other beast. Saints took on folkoric or legendary traits: monster-slayers, monster-subduers, friends of...

Which is lovely for (parts of) the USA. But it tells one nothing about how the Church is doing in any of the 190+ other countries in the world. The non-stop focus on the USA alone in online fora - even in Catholic ones, which one would expect to be to be free of USA-centredness, because...

I am far more interested in knowing how many people have have left the Church, rather than moved from one diocese to another. The Church seems to reckon all on its books as Catholics, regardless of whether they have changed religion, or lapsed, or absented themselves in some other way. How many...

That is not an abuse of Fiducia Supplicans - that is an example of how it is meant to be used. Which reflects extremely badly on Bergoglio and the other enablers of this garbage. Bergoglio is a disgrace to the Papacy. At least other morally worthless occupants of the See of Peter did not allow...