De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.

Bishop Robert Barron will give one of the keynote addresses at the Cornerstone Catholic Conference in Tacoma Oct. 20–21. His address will be titled “The Eucharist: Spiritual Food to Sustain Our Witness.” The Cornerstone conference arose in response to this division between “pro-life” Catholics and “social justice” Catholics — this lack of communication and cooperation, sometimes distrust and even disdain. Bishop Barron has given an interview about the forthcoming address in which he laments this false dichotomy. To me, it’s one of the bitter fruits, in some ways, of the post-conciliar period — mind you, not the council; Vatican II is very clear on this . But in the post-conciliar period there was a tendency within Catholicism to fall into these two camps, and I’ve watched that all my life in the church. Call it left-right, liberal-conservative, or, as we see it in the Catholic context often, this: Are you more on the life issues or more on the justice issues? And it’s just a...

Happy New Year to you all! A great blogging start to the year I have to say. Credit where credit is due; @PartTimePilgrim drew my attention to these great posts yesterday morning. So good, I felt I had to share some sort of conspectus with my own readers. First off, you must read this post by CCFather. It is concise, yet contains all the main historical, social and philosophical developmental points of the argument. CCFather correctly identifies that what is missing in broader society is any real concept of what marriage really is. We must address this fundamental point before we can begin to be heard on issues like same sex marriage. It is extremely valuable that he has placed the currently position squarely in its correct temporal context, i.e. that it is not first step 'on a path that we shouldn't take, but rather because..[it constitutes] a further step on a path we have already gone too far along'. @PartTimePilgrim suggests the penultimate paragraph of Be...