Author: Fritz Bauerschmidt
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Ars Praedicandi: The Reckless Shepherd and Remembering 9/11/2001
Jesus begins his parable with a question: “What man among you having a hundred sheep and losing one of them would not leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one until he finds it?” In fact nobody with an ounce of shepherding sense would leave ninety-nine sheep alone in the desert…
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Women and the Diaconate: Threading the Historical Needle
Reading Cipriano Vagaggini’s essay “The Ordination of Deaconesses in the Greek and Byzantine Traditions” has prompted me to reflect on the difficulties posed in mounting historical arguments of either side in the debate, and what might count as sufficient historical precedent in changing Church practice.
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Prayer and/as Political Speech
The prayer offered at the Democratic Convention by the Rev. Dr. Cynthia L. Hale, in a perhaps odd way, put me in mind of some of the things that get said in the debate over the orientation of the priest in the celebration of the Eucharist.
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Liturgy and Patriotism
A recent survey of Protestant pastors found that 61% felt it was important to incorporate patriotic elements into July 4th worship, even though 53% suspect that their congregations love America more than God.
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John Allen: the liturgy wars have gone quiet, but have not gone away.
John Allen’s take on the current mood with regard to the Missal translation.
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“Looking like a Catholic church”: Liturgy, Architecture, Form, and Function
Recently Fr. Dwight Longenecker published a piece entitled, “Why a Catholic church should look like a Catholic church.” What is at issue, however, is not whether a Catholic church should look like a Catholic church, but rather what this means.
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Francis to create commission to study female deacons in Catholic church: Some initial thoughts
The National Catholic Reporter reports that, in a Q&A session at a gathering of women religious, Pope Francis said that he thought a commission to study the question of women in the diaconate was a good idea. Here are a few initial random thoughts…
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Assembly a little sleepy mid-Easter Vigil? No problem.
So we all know how, by the middle of the Easter Vigil, our attention can begin to wane and our eyes to grow heavy. Here is one way to wake everyone up and bring in Easter with a bang.
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Ars Praedicandi: Preaching at the Vigil and on Easter Sunday Morning
In addition to offering quite different scriptures to work with, these two liturgies draw very different sorts of assemblies, and so, at least ideally, call for different sorts of homilies.