religion

Chris Knight's avatar
Pope Benedict XVI, retirement, abdicates, abdication, Roman Catholic Church, history, helicopter

Pope Benedict XVI, the first pontiff in nearly 600 years to depart the seat of Bishop of Rome voluntarily instead of dying in office, flies off by helicopter: leaving the Vatican and the post he has held since 2005.

Now begins sede vacante. The “time of the empty chair”. One which in the days and weeks ahead, the cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church will seek to fill in prayerful guidance. Thus will this most persistent of institutions continue with a lineage of leadership stretching back to the ancient of days.

But in the meantime, though I am not Catholic, this blogger wishes good luck and godspeed to Benedict XVI. May his days be long and fruitful!...

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Chris Knight's avatar

If love of history is a vice, then the past couple of days have been hardcore porn for me.

Inclement weather brought on icy roads this past Sunday night, so I decided to stay over at my girlfriend’s house and leave early the next morning. I was already awake up in the guest room when the news broke that Pope Benedict XVI had announced he would be resigning at the end of the month. It was shocking enough to send me racing downstairs to knock on Kristen’s bedroom door to tell her about it.

I’m kinda glad for the early-morning insomnia: Lord only knows what would have happened if I was halfway asleep and heard something like that. Probably have broken my neck trying to tumble out of bed…

This sort of thing is absolutely fascinating to me. It has been very nearly 600 years since the last time ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

I was already up in the wee hours of the morning when the news came out of the Vatican that Pope Benedict XVI, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, announced that he will be resigning the papacy at the end of this month.

My first thought was “is this a joke?”, but that notion lasted the better part of 8 seconds. When it finally sank in that His Holiness would, indeed, be exiting the post he has held since succeeding John Paul II in 2005, my mind went reeling. And it hasn’t slowed any throughout this day.

I am not Catholic, but I did know that it had been a long… like, a waaaay long time, since a sitting pope had left the Holy See by choice. It turns out that the last time was Pope Gregory XII. That was in 1415.

Nearly six hundred years ago.

Ummmm… “wow”?

Consider ...

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It was cold as it gets, that early February morning on the North Atlantic. The USAT Dorchester was en route to Greenland, carrying nearly nine hundred U.S. soldiers on their way to the European theater. The Dorchester was part of a convoy of Navy and Coast Guard vessels: necessity for the grim threat of the German U-boats.

The Dorchester was struck by torpedo just before 1 in the morning. The ship began to take on water fast, and a frantic chaos ensued in the desperation to escape.

Among those aboard were four United States Army chaplains. George L. Fox was a Methodist minister. Alexander D. Goode was a Jewish rabbi. Carl V. Poling had served as a Baptist and Church of Christ minister before being ordained in the Reformed Church of America. John P. Washington was a Roman Catholic priest.

As the Dorchester descended into the frigid waters, the four ...

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This evening I had the opportunity to do something that I’ve wanted to do for most of my life: attend the Christmas Eve Mass at a Roman Catholic Church.

I am very happy to report that it was as beautiful as I had long expected it to be. Although I am not Catholic, nonetheless I came away from the experience feeling that God had ministered to my spirit in a way that I have needed Him to these past few days especially.

That, and it was a pleasure to celebrate the birth of Christ with my Catholic brethren. Turns out that just about all the Christmas hymns were those that I had already grown up with 🙂

Here’s a photo I shot just before the Eucharist tonight at St. Veronica’s…


The church was packed solid! We had to sit in one of these three adjoining hallways that had been ...

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First it was Darth Vader joining the Lutheran Church in Iceland…

…and now the “ancient religion” of the Jedi is the seventh most practiced faith in the United Kingdom! Nearly 180,000 people in Great Britain and Wales put their religion as “Jedi Knight” during that country’s most recent census.

The warrior-monk creed from the Star Wars saga came in after Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Judaism and Buddhism.

Ehhhhh, Star Wars ubergeek though I be, this would be going too far in my book.

But then again, Star Wars mixing it up with religious practices can have some pretty fun results…

(Please forgive me Jeff, but I’ve been wanting to use that pic for a long long time… 😛 )...

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There is an interesting article at the Catholic News Agency’s website about the condition of religion in present-day China. Particularly, it presents notable evidence that China will soon have a larger Christian population than any other country.

But in reading this, I am compelled to wonder if the Chinese might already have most of the world’s Christians. Maybe more than all other countries put together.

Could that be even possible?

From the article…

During a recent book launch in Rome, a noted theologian said that China will be home to the majority of the world’s Christians within the next two decades.

“Interfaith dialogue is something that China, which will have the world’s largest Christian population in 20 years, lives with every day,” said Harvey Cox during the presentation at the city’s Jesuit Gregorian University.

Cox presented the book “Catholic Engagement with World Religions: A Comprehensive Study, in dialogue with its

...
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Senator Tom Coburn from Oklahoma has been digging into the details of the federal budget. Among the things our government is spending our money upon: inventing roll-up beef jerky, the study of goldfish swimming patterns and an iPhone app for scheduling coffee breaks.

And then there’s this: $100,000 of taxpayer money to look into the question of whether Jesus Christ died for the Klingon race. Yeah those ridge-headed alien warriors from the Star Trek franchise.

Incidentally, all of the above examples were found in the United States military’s budget.

From the story by Heather Clark at Christian News Network…

An Oklahoma senator has released a report outlining what he believes is some of the Pentagon’s most wasteful spending. Among a number of odd items includes a workshop on how Christianity would be affected if aliens were proven to exist.

Senator Tom Coburn is known to be the “waste-watcher”

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Awright, disclaimer time (‘cuz I believe in that sort of thing): I’ve known Stephen Shumate for most of my life, though it’s been the better part of twenty years since we’ve corresponded at all. But as is such these days we wound up hooking up again through Facebook. I’ve always thought Stephen as being one of the wisest and coolest people I’ve ever met (not to mention adventurous: he used to do crazy dangerous whitewater kayaking and probably still does).

When it caught my eye that Stephen had written a book, well… that certainly piqued my attention. Especially when the title of it is Cars and Christianity.

When I saw that title I was honestly expecting something very different. Like, maybe a book about the physical nuts ‘n bolts of automobiles as much as contemplation upon spiritual life. Technical geek though I be, the inner workings of cars and ...

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