Some suggested reading material for all

Read the article in Wikipedia found under Dissolution of the Monasteries, England and Wales.

Good idea to read it before any admiration of the UK or snickering at the Catholic Church.

Vatican initiative for dissident Anglicans

Needless to say I am delighted at this plan and applaud Pope Benedict XVI and all who worked on this process.

For those of you who have been deprived of the history of the split between Roman Catholics and Anglicans (brought about by English King Henry VIII) read the Christian Science Monitor article which gives you a good idea with just a few sentences of context.


www.csmonitor.com

Thomas Howard: "On Being Catholic" quote

A great book by a fine man and scholar. Here is a quote from page 39. As you know I've been trying to help people have more of a "historic" and "cultural" perspective. Back in Biblical times there were no "special interest groups" or "marketing pitches." Here Mr. Howard makes this point very nicely about the early Church:

Christian worship did not simply proliferate randomly. There was a shape given to it in the beginning. Actually, it took this shape; it is not as though the apostolic community cast about for ingredients that might be appealing to local Jewish converts, or to Greeks, or to Scythians, Romans, Egyptians, or Parthians, least of all to that ubiquitous figure, "contemporary man." No market research was brought into play. No caucuses-of youth, or of senior citizens, or of the affluent or the indigent, or of women, or men, or of anyone else-were heard from. No theologians or reformers or charismatic leaders or prophets dictated the shape of things.