7 Quick Takes Friday (Updated)

1. Does anyone know which Bible translation(s) the American Founding Fathers were using? It’s my understanding that the Pilgrims used the Geneva Bible (which I’m reading on Kindle in a 1587 edition), but it occurs to me that (off the top of my head) I don’t know what the Founders were hauling with them to [...]

Read Full Post »

A brief history of numbers

Liber Abbici, published in 1202, was not the first book in the West to advocate the use of arabic numerals instead of Roman. James M. Kushiner points to earlier works in the short post How We Got Our Numbers.

Read Full Post »

Contrasts

First I read: Osama Bin Laden and the Terror of Narcissism by Russell D. Moore. (hat tip: Trevin Wax) Then: Life doesn’t have to be easy to be joyful, by Jennifer Fulwiler. Hmmm. Food for thought.

Read Full Post »

Father Jules and company

The following is a chapter from my book Not Exactly Allies, which is now available on Kindle. When I get a few other projects out of the way, I’ll try to learn how to do what needs to be done to make trade paperback editions of my books, but for now I’m just trying to [...]

Read Full Post »

Life after conversion

“Suddenly, I Was Surrounded by Life” I think that sums it up pretty well. The article also mentions a new book: Atheist to Catholic: 11 Stories of Conversion.  

Read Full Post »

The strange way of Christian love

Tim Muldoon writes about lessons learned when his daughter goes to the memorial mass of a premature baby. Along the way, he describes much of what’s at the core of Christian life. Beautiful.

Read Full Post »

Reading with new eyes: or, a discourse on chivalry

Julie of Happy Catholic is now writing at Patheos. This post combines observations on faith, classic literature, and chivalry. It’s hard to beat that. And, by the way, if you think you know about the Round Table tales of Camelot, please go read the post. She points out some of what later versions have left [...]

Read Full Post »

Slubgrip instructs on pop culture, politicians, and propaganda

Taking his cue from The Screwtape Letters (don’t tell me you haven’t read The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis?!!), Fr. Dwight Longenecker has a senior tempter instructing junior tempters on how useful pop culture and political leaders can be. Despite himself, just like the more-candid-and-revealing-than-he-knows Screwtape, Slubgrip says a lot about the delusions that are [...]

Read Full Post »

7 Quick Takes Friday

I haven’t participated in Conversion Diary’s 7 Quick Takes Friday in while. But here goes: 1. While hanging around a Catholic hospital’s emergency room earlier this week, I saw on the wall a cross with Jesus on it, but Jesus was oversized for the cross, was fully robed, and wasn’t nailed to the cross. His [...]

Read Full Post »

Playing God, etc.

From Mark P. Shea, answering a question on how he’d deal with a couple that aborted a baby diagnosed with severe deformity (which certainly would have been fatal, if the diagnosis was correct): Part of the difficulty here is that such questions usually involve several parts. What does God think? What would I do? What [...]

Read Full Post »