Blog

Category: Blog

I’m the editor of this site. I’m a retired theologian with time on my hands. 

I read an eclectic field of topics — online mostly. And like most who are like me who think they know everything about everything ─ much like the man called Ove (everyone else is an idiot) ─ I have opinions. I try to temper my opinions so that I can appear to be “simply Catholic” [see P.S., below].

I am also preparing myself for the Four Last Things. 

So if you, too, share these things about yourself on your free time, you’re welcome to read the stuff on my site. Since I’m so full of myself that I don’t believe criticisms, I’ve left for you no means to contact me.

Enjoy!

P.S. The term “simply Catholicism” was coined by Cardinal George in 2004. Apparently, this is Cardinal George’s explanation of his term:

“We are at a turning point in the life of the church in this country. Liberal Catholicism is an exhausted project. Essentially a critique, even a necessary critique at one point in our history, it is now parasitical on a substance that no longer exists. It has shown itself unable to pass on the faith in its integrity and inadequate, therefore, in fostering the joyful self-surrender called for in Christian marriage, in consecrated life, in ordained priesthood. It no longer gives us life.
“The answer, however, it not to be found in a type of conservative Catholicism obsessed with particular practices and so sectarian in its outlook that it cannot serve as a sign of unity of all peoples in Christ.
“The answer is simply Catholicism, in all its fullness and depth, a faith able to distinguish itself from any culture and yet able to engage and transform them all, a faith joyful in all the gifts Christ wants to give us and open to the whole world he died to save. The Catholic faith shapes a church with a lot of room for differences in pastoral approach, for discussion and debate, for initiatives as various as the peoples whom God loves. But, more profoundly, the faith shapes a church which knows her Lord and knows her own identity, a church able to distinguish between what fits into the tradition that unites her to Christ and what is a false start or a distorting thesis, a church united here and now because she is always one with the church throughout the ages and with the saints in heaven.”
–source: Margaret O’Brien Steinfels, “Simply Catholicism”, Commonweal, June 13, 2004.

Further clarification is found with Bishop Barron at this link: https://www.wordonfire.org/videos/wordonfire-show/episode423/.