The Gospel reading for the Tuesday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time Mark 7 1-13 nbsp raises the issue of tradition the theme of my last post on 1 Corinthians 15 1-13 but in this context it is raised in terms of condemnation At least a superficial or initial reading points to condemnation of

You must sing the title as in Fiddler on the Roof Go back and try it if you did not this blog post will improve greatly with the sound of the song ringing in your ears Paul s beautiful demonstration of the reality of Christ rsquo s resurrection is based on the tradition of the early Church of w

We are coming to the end of our course ldquo The Cradle of Early Christianity rdquo after time spent journeying from Athens to Thessalonica to Philippi to Pergamum modern Bergama nbsp Smyrna modern Izmir Ephesus and Constantinople Istanbul nbsp We have surveyed the ruins of numero

The strange thing about studying early Christianity in Turkey is that there are not a lot of Christians left in Turkey the lands that were home to so much of the earliest growth and development of Christianity and the location of all seven of the first Ecumenical Councils As we discuss how Christi

For reasons having to do with airline flights we trace the Apostle Paul s journey through Greece backwards at least Paul s first journey through Greece described in Acts which is often titled The Second Missionary Journey Acording to Acts 17 1-15 and 1 Thessalonians itself Paul was persecute

We went on a tour of classical Athens today with stops at the Acropolis and the Parthenon which sits majectically upon it and the ancient Agora In between quite literally we went to the Areopagus called Mars Hill by the Romans The Areopagus associated with the Greek god of war Ares and m

I want to wish all readers of this blog a Happy New Year I also want to let you know that I will be leaving for Greece and Turkey tomorrow with Dr Pavel Gavrilyuk and 25 students to explore the sites of ancient Christianity When able I will try to post on the sites the readings for our course

For the Third Sunday in Advent I reflected on the joy inherent in the Christmas promises as we look to the past present and future Then some two days later I was felled by a bacterial infection that kept me in bed for the next five days unable to do much beyond sleep take my antibiotics and dr

We have had what I consider a rousing discussion on the Immaculate Conception still ongoing as I write with cris de coeur from some participants that we concentrate more on our relationship with God and less on dogmatic definitions Dogmatic definitions in a sense set the boundaries of discussio

The Feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary causes difficulties for this biblical scholar for though biblical passages are read on the feast day none of them clearly support the doctrine as promulgated by the Church This is not to say that the Church through its Tradition does not have acces