Inmotion hosting, the company where this site is hosted, was hacked yesterday, September 25, and pages on many of the 700,000 sites hosted by this company were replaced with electronic graffiti boasting of the hacker's accomplishment. Here a series of announcements from the company on the matter. The hacker is apparently the hacker who through [...]
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Only excerpts or summaries of the posts are shown on this page. Click on the title of a post to see the whole post.Website hacker, vandalism
Monday, September 26th, 2011Puzzle About Happiness
Thursday, September 22nd, 2011The following puzzle compares the happiness of a man who thinks some of the goods he generally seeks in life are realized with the happiness of a man in the case where those goods are realized, but he thinks they are not. Besides being an interesting thought exercise, it might be helpful for shedding some [...]
Solemn High Mass in Norcia
Monday, August 8th, 2011I was recently in Norcia, Italy, at the Monastery of St. Benedict, and had the opportunity to assist as deacon of a Solemn High Mass in the Extraordinary Form for the first time. (I wrote a post two years ago when they received the apostolate from the Ecclesia Dei commission to celebrate the Holy Mass [...]
Make me responsible and trustworthy, but not yet…
Tuesday, August 2nd, 2011The "Budget Control Act of 2011" (PDF of the bill; see also the Congressional Budget Office's Analysis of the Bill) passed by the house yesterday and by the senate today reminds me of Augustine's plea: "Make me chaste, but not yet". The plan makes conditions that entail a reduction of 2.1 trillion in the overall [...]
"Call to Disobedience" and Schönborn's Response
Saturday, July 9th, 2011The leaders of the "pastors' initiative" of Vienna pubished a public "call to disobedience" on Trinity Sunday. Cardinal Schönborn this week in the summer edition of the staff magazine of the Archdiocese of Vienna made a response to this “call to disobedience” of the “pastors' initiative”, which, if not formally schismatic, is close to it. I translate both of them [...]
Interpreting Religious Statistics
Thursday, June 16th, 2011Check out this post by James Chastek on interpreting religious statistics. He makes three points: (1) An evaluation of religious statistics that looks only to the last 50 years is short-sighted in comparison with the long-term nature of movements in religious convictions; (2) people leaving the Church is an ambiguous statistic; it could be a [...]
Who is the New Eve?
Friday, March 18th, 2011To whom does the title New Eve refer? To Mary, or to the Church? And is one of these usages in a meaningful way older than the other? I'm not aware of any study that seeks whether one of these analogies historically depends more on or derives from the other than conversely (e.g., whether the [...]
Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus
Monday, November 29th, 2010The Catholic doctrine Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus is sometimes interpreted to mean that, in fact, everyone who is not a member of the Catholic Church at the moment of his death is damned. The principal problem with this interpretation is that it is contrary to the Church's own interpretation, and "it was not to private judgments that our Savior gave for explanation those things that are contained in the deposit of faith, but to the teaching authority of the Church."
Augustine and Ratzinger on Faith and Salvation
Sunday, November 21st, 2010Augustine seems to take a very strict view on the necessity of faith in Christ for salvation, and argues that if it were possible for someone to be saved who died without faith in Christ, then Christ would have "died in vain." Does Cardinal Ratzinger reject this Augustinian view?
Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue Speaks on Koran Burning
Wednesday, September 8th, 2010The Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue released a statement a few hours ago on the "Koran Burning Day" planned by the pastor of a small christian community for the anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, which has been being talked about on the Internet for some time now.
I am a Catholic seminarian and deacon in Vienna, and a teacher at the