Some excellent recent blogs/posts very much worth reading:
Phil Nielsen’s article, “Depicting the Whole Christ: Hans Urs von Balthasar and Sacred Architecture”
Winston Elliott’s blog, “The Christocentric Life”
Michael O’Brien’s “Twilight of the West”
Carl Olson’s “On the Feast of Epiphany”
And, on a more secular note, Jim Otteson’s most recent post at Forbes.com, “Get Rid of Government Experts”
Bill, thanks for the note on Mary. I must admit, I’ve always been somewhere in the middle on this issue. While I think many Catholics take their reverence of Mary too far, I’ve never understood the (general) Protestant reluctance to call Mary “The Mother of God.” This, of course, is what Elizabeth says to her (“Who am I, that the mother of my Lord should visit me?”). And, it seems to me very, very difficult to understand the Incarnation or the belief that Jesus was fully man and fully God without understanding the critical role Mary played in bearing him for nine months, nursing him, teaching him, raising him, and standing at the cross with him. She practically forced the first miracle, performed at Cana, and Jesus’s words from the cross, in part, dealt with her (as St. John recorded it). From the beginning to the end, His mother stood with him.
Anyway, Bill—just a long way of writing “thanks.”
