Category: A Sampler of Posts
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Gluttony: Drawing the line.
So, I said a few posts ago that I would try to write some ideas about what is, and what isn't, gluttony. This is one of those posts where I become an armchair theologian. I might be on to something, or I might be completely wrong. Take it with a grain of salt! Aquinas's definition…
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The demon that feeds on fasting.
It just goes to show: Never brag. A couple of days ago I wrote a weight loss update in which I mentioned that when I tried to drop a pound, I hadn’t been able to do it without effort, and (not really wanting to make the effort) I hadn’t pushed it. “But I’m holding…
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Switch.
Readers who have been interested in following some of the threads about personal change — becoming an athlete, overcoming gluttony, detaching from time, and maybe even beginning the devout life à la St. Francis de Sales — might be interested in a quick-read book I just finished, one that Mark got for free at work…
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Tagged: Ephesians 5. (Part II – Okay, but like I said, what does “wives, submit to your husbands” mean?)
So Darwin tagged me and asked that question about Ephesians 5, and I went and wrote a post of several paragraphs of, er, scriptural analysis. Which everyone knows is the easy part. Now I’m sitting down to try to answer the hard part. Even though I liked my fellow taggee Dorian’s ranty post about it…
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Tagged: Ephesians 5. (part 1 – general considerations)
Darwin tagged me yesterday morning, along with several other married women bloggers, in a post asking opinions about Ephesians 5. For context, read his whole post — but the main question is, what are we to think of "Wives, be submissive to your husbands?" Here are a few points, in no particular order. No, I don't…
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“Life” language: political vs. pastoral, political vs. Christian.
Editing note added years after the original post. I don’t think this post, as originally written, makes this bit of Catholic teaching clear enough: Catholics are permitted to vote for pro-choice candidates for reasons that they judge to be proportionate. If there is a sin in voting for a candidate who supports any inherent evil,…
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More on the body-person dissociation.
I wrote a couple of days ago about the idea, common among Christians but incompatible with traditional Christian theology, that the body after death is "just an empty shell" and that the "real person" is completely absent from the body. (Christian orthodoxy, on the other hand, looks forward to "the resurrection of the body" and…
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Separation.
Katie Allison Granju struggles with the imagery of her son's cremation. I don’t remember much of that period immediately after Henry died, but I do remember the agony I felt every time I thought about what was going to happen to Henry during the autopsy and then later, at the crematorium. Knowing that Henry’s body…
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Hearts of flesh.
I wrote this some time ago and didn't polish it, and haven't time to do so today, but I thought I'd put it up for its timeliness, as today is the Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. * * * I will take your heart of stone and put a new heart of flesh…
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Pickiness.
One problem with being “on a diet” in America: It tends to make you an aggravated, and possibly aggravating, dinner guest. This is where the habit of gluttony* really shows its true colors, and in so many different ways. Our cultural expectation of overeating as part of a celebration — and I don’t mean ordinary,…
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The remains of impulse.
I was obese [editing note: I’d say “fat” today] for my entire life, up till age 33. That year, for no apparent reason, I had an epiphany: a new desire. The twin desires for a better [thinner] body and better health, I’d always had those. As long as I remember I alternated between wanting thinness badly enough to work…
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