I have had a wonderful time with the people and clergy of St John the Baptist, Edmond OK. Oklahomans are very friendly and natural and down to earth. The parish is very large and very active and we had a wonderful turn out for the three mission talks on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday evenings.
On Monday evening I related my conversion story from Evangelical fundamentalism in Pennsylvania to Bob Jones University, Anglicanism, Oxford, a hitch-hiking pilgrimage to Jerusalem, then on to be a country parson and reception into the Catholic Church. There was also a focus on the question of authority in the church and its influence on my journey.
On Tuesday the topic was The Attack of the Ism's. I explained how certain philosophies lie deep in our culture and how they affect our lives and beliefs as Catholics. I outlined twelve 'ism's' which are all different examples of an underlying relativism in our culture, then showed how the four marks of the Church are the anti dote to this poison.
On Wednesday we asked 'How Can I Be One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic?'--going more deeply into the ways individuals, parishes and communities can live fully Catholic lives.
It was a blessed and enjoyable time, but now it's good to be heading home.
PS: More and more airports have free Wi-Fi. Forgive me for liking gadgets, but it's pretty neat to be able to sit in an airport and engage in my favorite hobby: blogging.
Thursday, March 04, 2010
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2 comments:
Fr Dwight,
You'll have to share some of your stories about your pilgrimage to Jerusalem. I'm going this summer for a month and would like to hear about your travels and what you experienced. Maybe it'll make a good post for a rainy day (when those pesky Anglicans aren't rustling your feathers :-) just kidding!)
I was just about to write an article about -isms being the new idolatry for my own In Terra Aliena blog, when I saw you had got there first.
One of the points I was going to make was that one of the dangerous -isms can be Catholicism itself. Both the OT and the NT are pretty scathing about those who put "religion" before God. The Catholic Church is about the salvation of us sinners, not some sort of feel-good philosophy.
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