Wichita's Catholic Homeschoolers Have a New Web Site

The Holy Family Home Educators, Wichita's Catholic homeschoolers, now has a website at http://hfhewichita.org . They meet monthly alternating between the east side (St. Thomas Acquinas) and the west side (St. Francis Asissi.) They ar every active. The year just started off with a beautiful mass at Newman's chapel.

Benedict's Wednesday Address: GREGORY OF NYSSA: AIM OF MAN IS TO BE LIKE GOD

GREGORY OF NYSSA: AIM OF MAN IS TO BE LIKE GOD

VATICAN CITY, SEP 5, 2007 (VIS) - This morning, the Pope travelled by helicopter from his summer residence at Castelgandolfo to the Vatican, where he landed shortly before 10 a.m. He then went to St. Peter's Square where he presided at his weekly general audience, attended today by 16,000 people.

Continuing his series of catecheses on the Fathers of the Church, the Holy Father returned to consider the figure of St. Gregory of Nyssa (335-395) - who had also been the subject of last week's catechesis - highlighting how the bishop saint always "showed a highly elevated sense of man's dignity."

For St. Gregory, "man's aim is to make himself like God ... through love, knowledge and the practice of virtues, ... in a perpetual and dynamic adherence to good, like a runner stretching forwards."

However, "the perfection that makes us participants in God's own sanctity is not something granted forever," the Holy Father warned. Rather it is "a permanent journey, a constant commitment to progress ... because complete likeness to God can never be achieved, The history of each soul is that of a love ... open to new horizons, because God continually expands the possibilities of the soul, so as to make it capable of ever greater good."

"In this journey of spiritual ascent, Christ is the Model and the Master Who shows us the beautiful image of God. Looking at Him, each of us discovers ourselves to be 'the painter of our own life' in which our will undertakes the work and our virtues are the colors at our disposal."

"The value that St. Gregory gives to the word Christian is very important," said Pope Benedict, "because a Christian is one who bears the name of Christ, and one who bears the name of Christ must be like Him also in this life. ... But Christ, Gregory recalls, is also present in the poor," and he invites people to recognize the dignity of the poor, precisely because "they represent the Person of the Savior."

The Holy Father concluded by saying that "the path to God, then, passes through prayer and pureness of heart, and through love for others. Love is the stairway that leads to God."

At the end of the audience, the Holy Father greeted participants in various languages. Then, addressing Missionaries of Charity who have come to Rome for the tenth anniversary of the death of Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta, he highlighted how "the life and witness of this true disciple of Christ ... are an invitation for you and for the entire Church always to serve God faithfully in the poorest and the most needy."

AG/GREGORY OF NYSSA:MOTHER TERESA/... VIS 070905 (460)

Graham Greene's The Honorary Consul

I just (8/8) finished Graham Greene's The Honorary Consul. Starts slow, ends with a wallop!

What is love? What happens when someone can't or won't love?

Powerful stuff.

It takes place in Argentine during the 1970s. the action is in a fictional border town across the Parana from a Paraguay ruled by a repressive dictator. The protagonist, who seems to have more trouble with the sixth commandment than with the ninth, finds the reality of love, the selfless giving of one's self for another, beyond his ken.

Nick Allen at Bloomberg Reports MI5 Was Watching George Orwell

Nick Allen tells us, "George Orwell Was Right; Big Brother's Agents Were Watching" him!

Britain's MI5 was keeping tabs on George Orwell. In 1984, he gave us the vision of a world dominated by Big Brother who controlled ever part of our lives. Mr. Allen details the contents of MI5's files.

It is not widely known, but Orwell's original tittle for the book was 1948, but that was rejected by his publisher.

Evangelicals Turn Toward ... the Orthodox Church?

Jason Zengerle, "Evangelicals Turn Toward ... the Orthodox Church? The Iconoclasts" in the August 27th issue of The New Republic.

The New Republic, a generally left of center magazine of opinion, focuses on an interesting phenomenon: the conversion of former evangelicals to Orthodoxy. Movement from such a non-liturgical, even anti-liturgical religion to quintessentially liturgical Christianity is interesting. Jason Zengerle chronicles the journey of Wilbur Ellsworth, once pastor of the First Baptist Church of Wheaton, Illinois, the heart of evangelical Christianity. This journey ended with Ellsworth a priest in the Antiochian Orthodox Church.

Antioch is one of the Patriarchal sees. Antioch was where we were first called Christians. Peter was the first bishop.

Zengerle writes, "Ellsworth's story is hardly unique. Most of the approximately 150 members of the Orthodox parish he now leads are former evangelicals themselves. Even Ellsworth's transition from evangelical minister to Orthodox priest is not uncommon. Of the more than 250 parishes of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America, some 60 percent are led by convert priests, most of whom are from evangelical backgrounds. And, according to Bradley Nassif, a professor at North Park University and the leading academic expert on Evangelical- Orthodox dialogue, the Antiochian Archdiocese has seen over 150 percent church growth in the last 20 years, approximately 75 percent of which is attributable to converts.

While it's unlikely that the Orthodox Church--which, according to the best estimate, has only 1.2 million American members--will ever pose any sort of existential threat to evangelical Christianity in the United States, it is significant nonetheless that a growing number of Southern Baptists and Presbyterians and Assemblies of God members have left the evangelical fold, turning to a religion that is not only not American, but not even Western. Their flight signals a growing dissatisfaction among some evangelicals with the state of their churches and their complicated relationship with the modern world."

At the First Baptist Church, the church's interior holding the minister, choir, and congregation is called "the sanctuary." Zengerle reveals either his own Evangelical background or limited knowledge of other traditions. I would be most surprised to hear the Orthodox refer to the part of the church in front of the iconostasis as "the sanctuary."

Thanks to Robin Moroney of the Wall Street Journal for the lead.

The Film "Once": See it

Amy Welborn has mostly praise for "Once," a new film that you may have a hard time finding in the movie houses. Once is "[r]emarkable because it is about the ability of art to impact us, to change our lives, to reveal what is true about our lives - the real truth, which is all about calling us to be the best people we can be."

Barbara Nicolosi, chair of Act One, screenwriter, and movie critic writes, "Hey! I finally saw a good movie this year! And it's sad that I'm kind of in shock because it is such an odd feeling these days to see a really good movie. But the sadder thing is that most of you who read this blog won't get the chance to see this rare good movie, because it has a teeny weeny little distribution, meaning it will play in NYC and L.A. and that's probably it. So, keep an eye out for the DVD. It will be worth a rental.

Once is one of those dramas in which not a lot happens exteriorly, but something huge happens in the soul of the main character. This makes the project, in my book, a very good dramatic film. I really enjoyed it in a way that I rarely enjoy movies anymore because it had such solid craft. My only criticisms came down to matters of taste. It has remarkable creative control, and a profound humanity at its core that has you leave the theater wanting to be kind, and wanting to commit yourself to whatever creative passion you have.

Once is less of a traditional narrative and more of a kind of rock opera...although the music in the film isn't rock as much as poetic pop crooning. But still, with the movie completely built around the sound track, the movie manages to pack in more of a story - and a profound one - than 90% of the movies that are out there right now." Read on....

Amy Welborn's "[s]hort synopsis: a street performer in Dublin, who repairs vacuum cleaners to make money, meets up with a Czech emigre, who turns out to have some musical ability herself. There are surprises along the way, which I will not reveal, but by the end of the 83 minutes, you have seen a change in the soul of the main character and even a subtle re-commitment, a firming up of resolve, on the part of the emigre, and it is all for the good."

Did Thera's Blowup Knock Out the Hittites?

The historical origin of the Atlantis legend is the destruction wrought by the volcano on the island of Thera or Santorini three thousand five hundred years ago. The actual event had gotten dislocated in its transmission from the Egyptians through Solon to Plato (our source of the legend.)

This catastrophic explosion fatally damaged the Minoan civilization and apparently damaged the ruling elite' grip on ancient Egypt. Watch a video from the National Geographic society about it.