St. Boniface House

Discussions about the California court decision regarding home schooling have been making the rounds for a few days now, and various other folks have already mentioned it: e.g. here, here, here, and here.

Really, we’re not surprised by this decision, but I guess my jaw dropped a little when I read this from the judge’s explanation:

“A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare.”

In the words of the teacher of my children, “At least they’re honest”.

Today we heard Jesus teach about marriage, and as always we must understand that in the broader context of the relationship between Christ and the Church.  Today as we come to the Lord’s Table I want to talk about our worship as “Covenant Renewal”, so that we can taste the blessing that is this meal we eat with Jesus just a little bit better.  Keep reading →

Kiersten often posts her “fly on the wall reports“–here’s a couple for me to share.

1.  I was watching a college basketball game on a Saturday afternoon a couple of weeks ago, and Katie, who is 8, came into the TV room, glanced at the game on the TV, and said, “Oh, full-court pressure.  Cool”.

2.  We were watching an edited-for-TV version of “I, Robot” starring Will Smith a few days ago, and Ellie, who is 4, informed us that “the guy who is talking right there [Will Smith] looks like Michael Beasley.”

“Until then I had thought each book spoke of the things, human or divine, that lie outside books. Now I realized that not infrequently books speak of books: it is as if they spoke among themselves. In the light of this reflection, the library seemed all the more disturbing to me.  It was then the place of a long, centuries-old murmuring, an imperceptible dialogue between one parchment and another, a living thing, a receptacle of powers not to be ruled by a human mind, a treasure of secrets emanated by many minds, surviving the death of those who had produced them or had been their conveyors.”

–Adso in Eco’s The Name of the Rose

“What is the purpose of the holy cleansing of confession, if not to unload the weight of sin, and the remorse it involves, into the very bosom of our Lord, obtaining with absolution a new and airy lightness of soul, such as to make us forget the body tormented by wickedness?”

–Adso, in Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose

One of the dumb people around Douglas Wilson writes an excellent post here.  It’s, well, refreshing, to see someone who rejects the Christian left’s “interfaith” pluralism and the idolatry of the Christian right.

 Also, he’s my long lost twin brother, or so they tell me up in Moscow.

“[S]ociety can best be understood as an extended argument, since living traditions presuppose rival interpretations. Good societies enable the argument to continue so that the possibilities and limits of a tradition will stop its growth and in reaction some may deny the necessity of tradition for their lives. The truthfulness of a tradition is tested in its ability to form people who are ready to put the tradition into question, or at least to recognize when it is being put into question by a rival tradition. Of course…some traditions lapse into complete incoherence and can be recovered only by revolutionary reconstitution.”

–Stanley Hauerwas, CC, 14

“Too often politics is treated solely as a matter of power, interests, or technique. We thus forget that the most basic task of any polity is to offer its people a sense of participation in an adventure. For finally what we seek is not power, or security, or equality, or even dignity, but a sense of worth gained from participation and contribution to a common adventure.”

–Hauerwas, CC, 13

“The authority necessary for leadership in the church should derive from the willingness of Christians to risk speaking the truth to and hearing the truth from those in charge. In societies that fear the truth, leadership depends on the ability to provide security rather than the ability to let the diversity of the community serve as the means to live truthfully. Only the latter form of community can afford to have their leaders’ mistakes acknowledged without their ceasing to exercise authority.”

Stanley Hauerwas, “A Story-Formed Community”, in A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic, 11.

Pastor Helsel shares some interesting insights here.