No cause for reticence

I argued with the misguided essayist who said in the New York Times that he wants the rest of us to avoid using words like "saint" and "martyr" with reference to the priest who was murdered in France last week.

Tough love

Found this pithy poster over at Gerard Van der Leun's American Digest:

The illustration fits well with this post from Donald Sensing, who happens to be a Methodist minister.

Fond memories

Because life is too short to watch the DNC convention...It's Little Jerry and the Monotones instead, singing "Telephone Rock" (from Sesame Street in 1974)

David Warren musing thoughtfully again

From an essay with the cheery title, "Why Our Problems Are Insoluble" --

Saint Thomas More is to my mind among the greatest statesmen because he could, with sublime courage, articulate the limits of political power. He was martyred because he delineated them in the presence of a great tyrant. He was not executed because the monster, Henry Tudor, was stupid or a hothead. He was executed because Henry was intelligent enough to see that More had got to the crux of the matter. He knew, in effect, that More was a saint, and that other people could see that he was.

quote context: http://pllqt.it/R590Ge

Imputed vs. Infused

A thought I had after a road trip to Tennessee and back:

Why yes, it is sometimes possible to be more Catholic than the Pope. Fr. Dwight Longenecker explains, with the help of a Catholic deacon named Richard Ballard who was a Lutheran pastor for 25 years:

"I asked what he thought of the Holy Father's surprising and heavily stressed statement that in the matter of justification Luther 'did not err.' 

"According to orthodox Catholic theology, Luther did err," he insisted. "Luther argued for an exterior 'imputed righteousness' which means the baptized person remains a sinner, even after justification. In essence, God is merely pretending that the person is justified and sanctified, when he really isn't," he said.

"This is a major divergence from Catholic theology, which instead of 'imputed righteousness' teaches 'infused righteousness'; in other words, the baptized person really is transformed and purified by God's grace," Ballard said.

Kudos to Fr. Longenecker -- himself a convert to Catholicism -- for talking with his friend, and respectfully pointing out that when this pope chats with reporters on the papal plane (as he was doing when he praised Martin Luther too fulsomely), bad or confusing things happen.

(Photo is from a rest stop in the Great Smoky Mountains)