Teaching & Living the Faith: June 2011 Archives

The rapture came and went...and this guy got caught up in it. Good for him. The rest of us will meander along...but in case you want to join the others in the rapture, the actual date is now October 21. So I am told.  But what time should people be ready? Harold Camping, founder of Family Radio and rapture prophet. Camping might be ready for the rapture as he's now recovering from a stroke. The 89 year old prophet of doom-and-gloom-Christian-style alters his guaranteed prediction of Judgement Day every so often.

Posted on his blog today, The Gospel in the Digital Age, Archbishop Timothy Michael Dolan wrote a piece on meaning of marriage and family according to natural reason and Catholic belief. His Excellency makes several and crucial points that require our clear attention. A sound-bite understanding of these important issues is insufficient for us.

The stampede is on.  Our elected senators who have stood courageous in their refusal to capitulate on the state's presumption to redefine marriage are reporting unrelenting pressure to cave-in.

The media, mainly sympathetic to this rush to tamper with a definition as old as human reason and ordered good, reports annoyance on the part of some senators that those in defense of traditional marriage just don't see the light, as we persist in opposing this enlightened, progressive, cause.

I am very glad that the first engagement of my visit should be with you, representing as you do key sectors of Croatian society and the Diplomatic Corps. My cordial greetings go to each of you personally and also to the important communities to which you belong: religious, political, academic and cultural, the world of the arts, finance and sport. I thank Archbishop Puljic and Professor Zurak for the kind words they have addressed to me, and I thank the musicians who have welcomed me in the universal language of music. This dimension of universality, characteristic of art and culture, is particularly appropriate for Christianity and the Catholic Church. Christ is fully human, and whatever is human finds in him and in his word the fullness of life and meaning.

Father Edward T. Oakes, SJ, is a professor of systematic theologian teaching at Mundelein Seminary. He is a member of the some time meeting of the Dulles Colloquium (a theological discussion group that was organized by Father Richard J. Neuhaus and Cardinal Avery Dulles) and he is a member of the ecumenical theological discussion group Evangelicals and Catholics Together. Oakes is a frequent writer for First Things and several other periodicals. Oakes is the author of Pattern of Redemption and a co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to Hans Urs Von Balthasar. There are several translations done by Father Oakes of Balthasar to note.