Coucoumellisms

  But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes.  ‘Friend,’ he asked, ‘how did you get in here without wedding clothes?’ The man was speechless.  Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand and  foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will  be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’   (Matt 22:11-13)   I came across another version of the "Which of These Made a Vow of Poverty?" memes on facebook the other day, and I re-posted it with my own commentary, but I'd like to add a few things; one was pointed out by a friend, and the other I came across while reading Bible stories to my two youngest. WHAT is the point of this meme? That it is morally wrong to wear ceremonial robes to a ceremony? So what now? We can't wear wedding dresses to a wedding? We can't wear graduation robes to a graduation? Military personnel ...

I've been reading Plato's The Republic, among other things, and listening to the priest's homily on today's gospel brought a few of these things together. Christ and the adulteress - 1653 - Nicolas Poussin The scribes and Pharisees bring an adulteress before Jesus, in order to condemn her.  Instead of condemning her, Jesus says, " Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her. "  When everyone has left, Jesus asks her " Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you? " She replies, " No one, sir. " Then Jesus says, " Neither do I condemn you. Go, (and) from now on do not sin any more. " The point of the priest's homily was that Jesus did not come to condemn us, but as a physician come to heal the sick, he comes to save us from our sins.  He comes to make us holy and just people. In his talk on the importance of apologetics , John Njoroge asks the questions: Why is Christianity no...

I've discontinued my book and had the rights returned to me. "You own the unformatted text only, and you can do as you choose with that alone. PublishAmerica continues to own the ISBN number, the cover design, and the layout design of the text. Any use of any of these items would be a serious and very clear case of infringement. Therefore, you can use the same design only if we transfer the rights to you, or to your new publishing company. If you would like to use the cover or layout design, we would transfer the rights to your cover design and/or text layout, and provide you with high resolution pdf files of each. The cover design would cost $500, and/or the text layout would cost $250." Umm yeah, about the cover design?  I hated it.  You can keep it and good riddance.  I imagine I can always get another ISBN if ever I publish the book with a real publisher and I doubt that I will need the layout design.  Not tha...

Imagine this scenario for a minute: You ordain a straight priest.  You ask him to take vows of obedience, chastity and celibacy.  Then you put him in a women's monastery for the rest of his life, where he will be sharing meals, activities, common rooms and bathrooms with all kinds of women, many of them young and attractive.  Does expecting him to remain chaste and celibate while spending most of his time with women sound a little far-fetched? But then can one expect the same of a gay priest who spends most of his time in a community with other men, some of them also gay, and many of whom are quite attractive? For a man who has no desire at all for marriage with a woman, to be asked to give up marriage and live all his life with men he is attracted to is either an excruciating, intolerable, practically impossible sacrifice in the case where he does remain faithful to his vows of celibacy and chastity, or it is not a sacrifice at all. Can a gay priest ever really und...

Today's reading recounts part of the story of Joseph: Book of Genesis 37:3-4.12-13a.17b-28. Israel loved Joseph best of all his sons, for he was the child of his old age; and he had made him a long tunic. When his brothers saw that their father loved him best of all his sons, they hated him so much that they would not even greet him. One day, when his brothers had gone to pasture their father's flocks at Shechem, Israel said to Joseph, "Your brothers, you know, are tending our flocks at Shechem. Get ready; I will send you to them." "I am ready," Joseph answered. They noticed him from a distance, and before he came up to them, they plotted to kill him. They said to one another: "Here comes that master dreamer! Come on, let us kill him and throw him into one of the cisterns here; we could say that a wild beast devoured him. We shall then see what comes of his dreams." When Reuben heard this, he tried to save him from their hands, saying: ...