De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.

At this stage, I hope you've read the title of this post and are thinking to yourself, "I can't wait to see how he joins these things together!". I've given myself a bit of a job eh? In reality, this may well provide you with some insight as to the way in which my mind wanders from one thing to another, as it sketches out my thoughts over the course of a couple of days.



If you enjoyed Father Kevin's homily on the Ascension, as well as my own, rather melancholic reflections, you might well be interested in the irrepressible, rambunctious, Cardinal Timothy Dolan's blog from yesterday:
What did the bewildered, scared, confused apostles do upon Our Lord’s Ascension into heaven? They took our Blessed Mother Mary, locked themselves into a room, and . . . prayed! That prayer demanded perseverance, because it took nine days for Jesus to reply. The response He gave to that patient prayer of His Mother and best friends was beyond their most exalted hopes: the Ho…

Following my reflection on The Walsingham Dimension, I was introduced to this piece by Edmund Adamus which was published last year by the Ordinariate. It affirms the important Christological insights that come from a devotion to Mary. Edmund explains how Marian devotion has a particular link to Christianity in this country which has shaped and fostered an attitude which is inherently Christian, and concerned with fairness and justice (it is reproduced here with his kind permission):




In his address at Oscott College just before the end of his state visit in September 2010, Pope Benedict XV spoke of the establishment of the Ordinariate as a ‘prophetic gesture’ and one which will enable a ‘mutual exchange of gifts’ from the spiritual patrimonies of both the worldwide Catholic Church and the unique English expression of a Catholic faith preserved over many generations by those former members of the Church of England, now fully at home sacramentally in the Roman Catholic Church. freely admi…

The Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is hugely misunderstood. The first thing to point out is that it is about Mary’s sinlessness. Here's a brief excerpt from an essay I wrote on the subject a while back. Tota pulchra es, Maria, et macula originalis non est in te.  Vestimentum tuum candidum quasi nix, et facies tua sicut sol.  Tota pulchra es, Maria,  et macula originalis non est in te.  Tu gloria Jerusalem, tu laetitia Israel, tu honorificentia populi nostri.  Tota pulchra es, Maria.
From even a perfunctory look at the doctrine of the New Eve, it is possible to see how a consciousness of Mary’s role in the work of salvation began to be realised and develop. It is from a growing consciousness of the unique role and status of Mary in the work of salvation that, beginning in the early patristic period, the Church began to develop the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which was dogmatically defined by Pope Pius IX in the Bull Ineffabilis Deus (8th December 1854). 
It was here that…