Immorality and porneia

One of this Sunday's readings has this passage from Paul (1 Cor 6:13c-15a, 17-20). There were some complaints on Domenico Bettinelli's blog that the translation "Avoid immorality" was not helpful, since (it was thought) the English word "immorality" refers to any kind of immoral behavior, whereas Paul (using the Greek word porneia) is referring to [...]

ScienceBlogs

Some of the better science blogs are now congregating together at ScienceBlogs, which will make it easier to find good quality science postings. I have some minor niggles on the layout design: it's a fairly bland layout (and they all have much the same layout, so some individuality has definitely been lost), and the text [...]

A short course in evolution

Domenico Bettinelli asks:
I can understood the secular science antagonism to intelligent design, but I can’t understand the antagonism from Catholics and other Christians.

Much the same question is asked regularly on the usual kind of blog, where inevitably more heat than light is generated (and, of course, God began by creating light). Here's the Catholic [...]

Supreme and final?

Wheaton College, being evangelical and finding itself containing a professor who had decided to convert to Catholicism, fired him. The college has a twelve-point mission statement, clearly written from an evangelical point of view. But the professor had claimed that he could agree with all twelve points. Could a Catholic reasonably agree with Wheaton's twelve [...]

Christmas ducklings

I think we sometimes shoot our own eye out while reading the Christmas story. The events surely need looking at intently before they start to become visible as anything more than "trees, walking". Nativity plays are often quite inaccurate, but imprint themselves on the young, like the first visible animate object imprints itself on baby [...]

Haman and human rights

Haman said to King Ahasuerus, 'There is a certain unassimilated nation scattered among the other nations throughout the provinces of your realm; their laws are different from those of all the other nations, and the royal laws they ignore; hence it is not in the king's interests to tolerate them.Esther 3:8

Haman's claim has been [...]