More Teen Pregnancy

I've been saying this for a while.

Let’s Have More Teen Pregnancy

Most of us blanch at the thought of our children marrying under the age of 25, much less under 20. The immediate reaction is: "They're too immature." We expect teenagers to be self-centered and impulsive, incapable of shouldering the responsibilities of adulthood. But it wasn't always that way; through much of history, teen marriage and childbearing was the norm. Most of us would find our family trees dotted with many teen marriages.

Porcupine Tree

New video from Porcupine Tree's new live DVD. I'll be wanting this for my birthday.

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=759559988&n=2


PS: Dave H., if you don't know this band, you'll want to buy In Absentia and Deadwing.

My Contribution to the Thoughtful Critiques of the DaVinci Code in the Blogosphere

Why Do I Get Involved?

Chad addresses:

SPUD'S Concerns About the Roman Catholic Church

More amateurish, cage-stage Catholic apologetics brought to you by Chad Is Not Enough.
(offered free of charge for limited time)

Warsteiner

Warsteiner [VAHR- shtine-er]. One of my favorite beers. Enjoying one now.

You procrastinators know what's up! I'm posting about beer? Next I'll be doing housework or organizing old bills. Anything but what I should be doing.

*sigh* Back to school work.

maybe.

Astronomical Laziness

I'm convinced that online college courses were invented by Satan to bring procrastinators like myself to new, terrible heights of idiocy.

You can literally put off a whole class until the last night if you wanted. I was almost that bad.

I've stood in front of this clock in Prague, Czech Republic. It's nice.

You Know It's Friday

When you go here.

High Score ~ 1000

Veiled Attempt At Insightful Commentary

The comments from my Kneeler post got me thinking all 'bout veils.

I grew up thinking that the veil in the Old Testament temple "separated" God and man. Then the New Covenant came, Jesus tore the veil, and now we have direct access to God.

Well, not exactly. We go to God the Father through Christ the Son. We haven't been given the ability to stare unceasingly on the unfiltered glory of God like the cherubim & other heavenly hosts. Someday.

But let's get a little symbological up in here:

Maybe Christ is the veil. And He was torn in two (broken for you).

Chew on that (literally).






Edit: An optional title for this post:

He didn't veil, he just gave us happy accidents.

Get it? I got that from my Good, Clean, Aristotelian Jokes! book.

The Mass for Protestants

I Enjoyed listening to Greg Krehbiel's Explaining the mass to a Protestant audio series yesterday. Download the mp3's and check it out.

I don’t pretend to be able to explain the mass to Catholics, who know it better than I do. Of course I’m happy if Catholics get anything out of these talks, but what I’m really trying to do here is explain all those wacky Catholic beliefs and practices from an Evangelical perspective in a way that Evangelicals can understand. So if you know any Protestants who might be interested in hearing any of this, please forward the links. I hope the messages are instructional and not confrontational or threatening in any way.

Brog Roe

I figured out how to set aside a public folder in my Bloglines account to publish here on Blogger. So now I have a much longer blogroll, including my really great blogs that I read every hour and also some written by friends. Of course, this is a lot easier than copy-and-pasting html and manually putting in links to blogs I like.

Hopefully I didn't leave anyone out.

Whine if I did.

Free Martignoni

Free Catholic Apologetics downloads from John Martignoni.

Get them while the man still has some bandwidth left.

Kneeler My God to Thee

A little over a week ago we celebrated my son's first birthday (pics coming soon). My parents came to town for the weekend, bringing with them gifts, smiles, hugs, and also concern, for their son is becoming catholic.

Much to my mom's chagrin, we didn't have time to discuss my conversion in detail. But on Saturday night, I invited them to come to Mass with me the following morning. Currently I go to Mass at 9 a.m. downtown, and then take my wife to her protestant service at 10:30. So, I jokingly asked my parents which one they'd like to attend, and if they'd prefer "worshipping Mary or worshipping the Bible". I'm not sure if they got my joke, but they and I went to both.

My parents had been to a small handful of Catholic Masses in their lifetime and have had some contact with those that run the Newman Center in their hometown. But on the ride there to church, I did try to give them a crash course and prepare them for the fact that I would be genuflecting, signing the cross, not talking, and that none of us would be receiving communion.

My dad brought in his large, leather-bound NAS Ryrie Study Bible in with him. He laughed and joked: "should I not bring this in?" I told him the missalette would contain all the readings, but that it was fine if he wanted to bring it in and stand out as a capital P Protestant.

The liturgy and homily was typical for Good Counsel; that is to say, it was excellent. My parents were impressed by the choir and the deep and reverent voice of Monsignor Blacet. The hymns that they knew, they belted. They stood and sat and tried to follow along. They chose not to kneel. This last choice was a painful one.

After the Agnus Dei I move my kneeler to the floor and promptly assume the posture of prayerful adoration. It is only a split second before mom grabs my arm tightly and gasps in pain. The kneeler had crunched down on her foot! It is all she can do to not cry out in the quiet sanctuary.

She was not badly hurt, but continued to cry through the Mass and was still upset for much of the time at my wife's church afterwards. The pain of the kneeler brought home the pain of her son becoming catholic.

Overall it was a good experience. My dad asked me what was "behind the curtain" on the high altar. I said "It's called the tabernacle, and it's where the consecrated Host is reserved. That's why I genuflect when passing it." Seeing that this might not be the clearest explanation, I rephrased: " Umm. We believe Jesus is in there." After that ecumenical smorgasbord of a Sunday morning, mom apologized for being so emotional, but I understood. I thanked my parents for coming with me to Mass and mom said, "We wouldn't have it any other way."

Let Him Eat Cake!

Brendan likes cake.

Never Too Young To Learn Sola Scriptura

Somebody get this kid a Baltimore Catechism.

And Let Him Rub Cake Upon Himself!

 

Debate

Listening to the debate between Sungenis and Zins on the necessity of the sacraments.

Zins was destroyed.

But I'm biased.

I know.

Great post.

In Their Natural Habitat

"Look Honey, Evangelicals!"


"Oh, aren't they just precious! Even trying to define heresy! How cute!"




Just kiddin around. I like Scot McKnight's blog.

Some gems from the combox:

I understand a heresy to be any doctrine that denies the core teachings of the New Testament. Comment by Jack holt

Perhaps a list of these core teachings is found in 2 Core-inthians? I must have missed them, since my wonderful pastor has been exegeting his ass off in Romans for the last 16 years. I'm sure we'll get there eventually.

Further, I have read in those “what-is-a-cult” books that cults usually appeal to a “Scripture and (__________ fill in the blank)” philosophy. Comment by Tony

Oh! Is this anything like the "Scripture and what-is-a-cult-book" philosophy? Or the "Scripture and A Really Good Commentary" philosophy?

Pagan Routes

Doesn't honoring Mary and giving her titles like "Mother of God" and "Queen of Heaven" basically come from Paganism?

I don't put much stock in the pagan roots arguments. The same type of insinuations are used by atheists and secular humanists against Christianity in general:

You know all those pre-Christian pagan myths that involve a "son of god" saving his people?

What do we say to these charges? We say that the truth of Christianity is written into creation itself (e.g. seeds have to die to bear fruit) and parts of the truth show up in all types of circumstances and cultures and world religions, albeit in distorted and shadowy forms.

For further reading:
Mother of God
Queen of Heaven

LarkNoise

Gotta love this new LarkNews Article:

Ridley, who has never left the state of Florida, began calling 800 numbers of major companies for hours a day to evangelize customer service representatives in foreign nations. She pretends to have a problem, and while following the representative's instructions she says things like, "Thank you, Jesus, for this day" loudly enough for the rep to hear. When her "problem" gets solved she begins praising God openly and immediately launches into her testimony.

I've actually heard several evangelicals in my lifetime recommend witnessing to telephone salespeople. If you're one of these salespeople and would like to avoid calling fervent evangelicals, sign up for government protection at www.YoureNotCalled.com

Wikipedia Made Me Catholic

Like reading a train wreck. . .

Old German Baptist Brethren

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Old German Baptist Brethren (OGBB) descend from a pietist movement in Schwarzenau, Germany in 1708, when Alexander Mack founded a community with 8 believers. They are one of seven Brethren groups that trace themselves to that original founding body. These are historically part of the German Baptists or Church of the Brethren rather than English Baptists. Other names by which they are identified are Dunkers, Dunkards, Tunkers, and Täufer, all relating to their practice of baptism by immersion. Because of persecution, many Brethren emigrated to America.

The first American congregation was founded near Germantown, Pennsylvania in 1719. Originally known as Neue Täufer (new Baptists), in America they used the name "German Baptist" and officially adopted the title German Baptist Brethren at their Annual Meeting in 1871. The Old German Baptist Brethren represent a conservative faction that would not tolerate certain modern innovations of the 19th century. In 1881, they broke away from the main body in order to maintain older customs, dress, and forms of worship. OGBB is noted for several ordinances like baptism, feet washing, the love feast, communion of the bread and cup, the holy kiss, and anointing of the sick with oil. Baptism is by trine forward immersion in running water. They hold an Annual Meeting associated with Pentecost, and cooperate in publishing The Vindicator. According to the Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches (1999), the Old German Baptist Brethren had 5832 members in 57 churches in 1998.

The advance of modernity is connected to two early 20th century divisions among the Old German Baptists. In 1913 a group broke away and formed the Old Brethren. They were more favorable to the use of automobiles and other innovations. They also believed the Annual Meeting should be chiefly spiritual in nature, and placed less stress on its authority than did the parent body. Their membership is under 150. As the original Old German Baptist Brethren body became more accepting of automobiles, another group withdrew in 1921 to become the Old Order German Baptist Brethren. They do not use automobiles.

There are several different Brethren groups that are not related to the Schwarzenau movement, such as the Plymouth Brethren that arose in England and Ireland early in the 19th century through the labors of Edward Cronin and John Nelson Darby.