The Arrow's Path

 Dr. Malcolm Guite has an excellent reflection on the first of the Advent "O" Antiphons.

  I received a question in a Facebook group I administrate that was a very heartfelt question. It was a very personal matter, so we as the Admins thought it best to respond. To protect this person’s anonymity (the group has several 1000 members), I am going to slighty redact the question and post it with this person’s pictures of her Day by Day Scripture Calendar. My answer will be in the comments: -------------------------------------------------------------------------- The question that was posted: Help. I need some guidance as I am a child of adultery. I feel like I will never be accepted by God. Bible in a Year Day 304 The Wisdom of Solomon Chapter Three and Four says This: _______________________________________________________________ My response is this: First of all, let’s put this passage into perspective in a couple of ways. The Wisdom of Solomon was written in Greek by someone who had for various reasons left the Holy Land and was living in Alexandria, Egypt. Ther...

 

I was listening to a podcast the other day on HistoryHit about Christmas at the court of Henry VIII. It was jolly interesting, as most of Dan Snow's history presentations are. Henry VIII was such a larger than life king who had a profound impact on the history of the world. His dissolution of the monasteries was truly a great crime against Christianity in England, but regardless of what one thinks of him and his policies, one cannot argue his fingerprints that are still in evidence on the world (particularly England) to this very day. While I did not quite agree with all the points this historian made, particularly about the so called pagan origins of Christmas (which I think is a bunch of ahistorical tommy rot that has virtually no primary evidence to back it up), the historian did know her stuff about what went on in the Christmas court of Henry VIII. He would spend millions of British pounds on Christmas court celebrations every year. One year in particular the historian noted ...

 The Catholic view on why IVF and why it's wrong... a very good video by Fr. Ted Pacholczyk of the Catholic National Bioethics Center. Also a good podcast where he discussed some of the issues here:

The real economic numbers magically start appearing after the election. This from the Congressional Budget Office on economic factors because of illegal immigration: "Wage growth of people in the United States who are not part of the surge—primarily U.S. citizens—decreases slightly through 2026 before increasing thereafter because of the increase in productivity." Next magic trick: I guarantee the hiring and employment numbers from the last quarter will magically be revised down at the next Fed update.

Today is the observed feast of the Immaculate Conception. It should have fallen on December 8th, which fell on a Sunday this year. A little insider baseball from someone who works in a parish office. The Vatican office in charge of things like this made a relatively recent clarification that the Church really should make every effort to follow all 4 Sundays of Advent, so Advent Sundays should trump other days of obligation like what is being observed today (which technically should have been yesterday). As I understand from the Chancery office in my diocese, the practice for the last 20+ years or so more has been that the Immaculate Conception would trump the Advent Sunday propers if it fell on a Sunday, but the Vatican ruled (just in the last few months) this has been an incorrect application of this over that. This had the priests here running the local Catholic schools in a tizzy because our Diocesan policy is Solemnities were supposedly religious holidays where schools we...