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May 21

Caspar David Friedrich, The Wanderer Above the Fog, 1818 (Kunsthalle Hamburg)
4 Comments

If Masses Were Men…

I went to my second ever Latin Mass.

And I’m pleased to report that it was slightly less disorientating than the first time. (See My First Latin Mass for all the disorientating weirdness.) But it was still ten different types of weird, and I still didn’t know what was going on. Apparently, this is a very normal response.

But oh my, it was beautiful. The music was to die for, the vestments were gorgeous, and the only glow was a golden one from flickering candles, and not a blue one from a malfunctioning power-point. (Not that I speak from personal experience…) It was just objectively, certifiably, stick-it-in-a-museum-and-charge-an-entrance-fee beautiful.

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May 20

Pietro Perugino, The Annunciation, 1497

True Myths, or why I have all the paintings

Human intellect is incurably abstract. Pure mathematics is the type of successful thought. Yet the only realities we experience are concrete – this pain, this pleasure, this dog, this man. While we are loving the man, bearing the pain, enjoying the pleasure, we are not intellectually apprehending Pleasure, Pain or Personality. When we begin to do so, on the other hand, the concrete realities sink to the level of mere instances or examples: we are no longer dealing with them, but with that which they exemplify. Read more

May 19

Come, Holy Spirit

Montage - Come Holy Spirit

Veni, Sancte Spiritus,

et emitte caelitus

lucis tuae radium.

May 18

La-Sainte-Chapelle-1152x720-wide-wallpapers.net
21 Comments

Christians, We Have A Religion. Deal With It.

Do you know what’s going to happen to the next person who tells me – or implies, insinuates or otherwise intimates – that real Christianity is a relationship, not a religion, and that ergo, Catholicism sucks?

No?

Well, neither do I. Because by that time, my eyes will have glazed over, I will have started hearing voices and I will definitely not be responsible for my actions.

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May 16

Peter Paul Rubens, Immaculate Conception, 1628 (Museo del Prado, Madrid)
12 Comments

Daughters of Eve, Daughters of Mary

You know what you don’t except to hear when you listen to a podcast from Bethel Church, a charismatic megachurch with its own School for Supernatural Ministry?

St Irenaeus’ theology of Mary as the New Eve.

Yep.

A friend sent me a podcast on Christianity as the “Original Women’s Movement”. But my favourite bit was at the beginning when a a prose poem was read. It was by a woman called Christianna Reed Maas, and I don’t know about you, but sometimes, I just need to be reminded that who I am – as woman – is a precious and powerful thing.

This does that. 

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May 14

16 Comments

Some (exciting for me!) Blog News

Just a small note to say that I’ve added two pages to the menu at the top.

One is for my summaries of the Council of Trent, and the other is a List of Prohibited Books which you should definitely not click on.

Me and my blog

Me and my blog

More excitingly (at least for me), I am now officially catholiccravings.com. (You can click this one, just to prove it’s real. I may have clicked it a number of times already…)

Daniel Nour, who is my media guru, told me I should and so I did. (Although he still can’t make me understand Twitter. Seriously, how does that thing work??)

It feels like a big step, but a good one. Kind of like going steady with a blog… since I bought her a domain name and everything. (But will she wear my pin at homecoming? That’s the big question people.)

And most importantly of all, thank you to everyone who reads this poor little blog of mine, whenever, however, or whyever. You are, beyond all doubt, the coolest, smartest, and most beautiful people in the world.

And you have great taste…

May 14

2 Comments

Council of Trent on the Sacrifice of the Mass: A Summary

1. In the Old Covenant, God ordained that sacrifices be offered but these were but signs, and so God ordained that “another priest should arise, according to the order of Melchisedech, our Lord Jesus Christ” to fulfill and perfect the weak and imperfect Levitical priesthood. At the Last Supper, declaring Himself a priest forever, “He offered up to God the Father His own body and blood under the species of bread and wine; and, under the symbols of those same things, He delivered (His own body and blood) to be received by His apostles, whom He then constituted priests of the New Testament.” And by His words “Do this in commemoration of me, He commanded them and their successors in the priesthood” to continue to offer His Body and Blood to the Father and to be received by the people.

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May 12

Vigee Lebrun, Madame Vigee Lebrun and her daughter, Jeanne Lucie Louise, 1789 (Musée du Louvre, Paris)
7 Comments

A Mother’s Day Heresy

On the way to Mother’s Day lunch with my mum and grandma, we passed a Catholic Church. It had a sign outside wishing all the mothers a Happy Mother’s Day. Which was lovely.

Then it said this:

“God couldn’t be everywhere, that’s why he made mothers.”

And then I died a little inside.

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May 10

Richard_II_King_of_England

“With nothing shall be please, till he be eased with being nothing”

From Richard II’s prison soliloquy, Richard II, c. 1595:

I have been studying how I may compare
This prison where I live unto the world:
And for because the world is populous
And here is not a creature but myself,
I cannot do it; yet I’ll hammer it out.
My brain I’ll prove the female to my soul,
My soul the father; and these two beget
A generation of still-breeding thoughts,
And these same thoughts people this little world,
In humours like the people of this world,
For no thought is contented. [...]

Thus play I in one person many people,
And none contented: sometimes am I king;
Then treasons make me wish myself a beggar,
And so I am: then crushing penury
Persuades me I was better when a king;
Then am I king’d again: and by and by
Think that I am unking’d by Bolingbroke,
And straight am nothing: but whate’er I be,
Nor I nor any man that but man is
With nothing shall be pleased, till he be eased
With being nothing.

May 10

Pope Benedict & Patriarch Bartholomew
23 Comments

Do Orthodox have more to “lose”?

For the first time, it occurred to me that Orthodox Christians have way more to “lose” in seeking reunion with the Catholic Church.

You see, I had the joy of attending an ecumenical dialogue between Catholics and Orthodox, focusing on our (currently imperfect) unity as Apostolic Churches. On the Catholic side, there was a bi-ritual Ukrainian Greek Catholic priest Fr Simon, and on the Orthodox side, a Coptic Orthodox priest Fr Antonios.

And it was fantastic.

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