Sentire Cum Ecclesia

I love my iPhone. The multiplicity of “apps” (applications) available make it possible to do a whole wealth of tasks that I previously did in other ways with my phone. Actually, when non-iPhone users comment on my constant use of my “mobile phone”, I say to them: “You think this is a phone? That’s only one thing I use this for!”

But the number of apps is somewhat bewildering, and you often find yourself paying good money for rubbish. You only know that it is rubbish after you buy it and try to use it for a while. Mind you, the prices are usually very cheap and sometimes free, but nevertheless, it is annoying to buy something and then find it doesn’t work. Some apps have “lite” versions that are free, so you can check them out before “upgrading” to the full paid version. Also, I have found that sometimes when I purchase an app that doesn’t work quite as I think it should, there are later updates (free) that improve it. So first impressions are not always everything. It is good to look at the release date for the app, and to read the reviews of the app before purchase. Often you will see the comments on these reviews get better the longer the app is in circulation – that is because developers who care about their app also put time into improving it in the light of feedback.

So I thought I might do a post on the apps that I have found really useful and use everday. This might turn into a series, depending on how long my reviews turn out to be.

I’ve done a post already about Dropbox (nb. please use this link to sign up for Dropbox – it will gain both you and me an extra 250MB storage space: http://db.tt/rvgBYop). There is a stand alone app for Dropbox to allow access to your files on the “cloud”, but many other apps also work with Dropbox. I will highlight this as we go along.

The next app that I would like to highlight is Instacast. I hate iTunes. With a passion. And I never could get it to work the way I wanted to for all my podcasts. The only good thing that iTunes had over Instacast was that it had “continuous play”, which has now been fixed with the latest major update of Instacast. Instacast is the simplest and most straightforward way to manage your podcasts on the iPhone (or iPod). It works a little bit like a feedreader, in that it updates the feed to all the podcasts you subscribe to, telling you what the available episodes are. You can then set the phone to either download automatically, or manually at a time of your chosing. It is important to set the settings to download only when you are attached to wifi – otherwise you could use up your data allowance rather quickly! (Note: the settings for Instacast are not in the app itself, but are accessed through the built-in Settings app on your iPhone). You can star favourites, see which programs you have cached, email details to yourself for following up later. All works very neatly. I highly recommend this. The only thing is that you will probably find yourself with more to listen to than you have time!

Speaking of feedreaders, I have always used Google Reader as my feed. Now I access this from my iPhone with Mobile RSS. There is a Mobile RSS Pro version which you pay for, but I have been using the free version which provides all I need. More than I need, really, as I end up with with far too much to read, and spend quite a bit of time flicking between the stories. Still, it’s like having your own personal newspaper. You just sign up for the feeds (newspapers, journals, blogs etc) you want, and it’s delivered straight to your phone. You can email items on, or send them to Instapaper or Evernote (I will talk about these in a moment), or open links, or copy links etc. Very useful.

Then I must mention Instapaper. I don’t actually use this on my iPhone – although there is an app for this – but I do send items from my iPhone to Instapaper. Instapaper 1) saves you reading long documents on the internet on your computer screen, 2) saves you from having to print off such documents in order to read them elsewhere and at a time more convenient to you. I actually use it with my Sony e-Reader, but, as I said, you can use it to read articles on your iPhone. If you have an iPad, I reckon this would be the bees knees. Many internet browsing apps and other apps have connections to Instapaper, so it is often the touch of a button to save a document for later reading. Again: I highly recommend it. There is no charge for Instapaper on the internet (the developer does ask for a donation, which I was happy to make), but the app for the iPhone does cost.

Finally, for this post, I would like to mention Evernote. Evernote is a downloadable software program which you can use to store any kind of electronic note: a link to a blog, a “to do” item, a photograph, whatever, and tag it and date it for later use. It lives on your computer, and syncs on the internet so you can access it through other devices. Both the computer software and the iPhone app are free, and many other apps give you the option of saving to Evernote. Because it syncs with your computer, anything you upload to Evernote with your iPhone is downloaded onto your computer, where you can access it even off-line. I have a tag called “blog on this”, which I use whenever I see something that I think might make an interesting blog item. But I also use it to keep stuff that I need to remember for work or home – even photos of bills that I need to pay, so I don’t have to carry the piece of paper around with me. I also have a tag for books that I might like to buy at sometime in the future. This is truly “extended memory” of the best kind.

I will cover some other apps in later posts – I might devote a single post to all the devotional apps I use (I don’t use the Confessional app, btw), and another post to cover the utility apps that I find very helpful (eg. the app that makes your iPhone into a torch!). The only things my iPhone doesn’t seem to provide is a screwdriver and a pen knife!

Returning to that can of worms, the “development of doctrine”, I noted an interesting post a little while back on the blog of the President of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, Pastor Matt Harrison (can anyone tell me – is it “Doctor” Harrison?). Matt is an expert on the Lutheran theologian Herman Sasse, and this piece comes from him:

[T]he question of infant baptism is a theological question, not merely one of practical sociology. Neither is it a question that is to be answered from history. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologica III Quaestio, 68:9) meets the objection that intention and faith are necessary for baptism with a quotation from the last chapter of the “Heavenly Hierarchy” of Dionysius the Areopagite, according to which the apostles approved the baptism of infants. But that is, to say the least, a tradition that cannot be verified.

Sasse follows this, however, with a good run down of the actual historical evidence for the apostolicity of the practice of infant baptism, then this conclusion:

It is obvious from the above that the historical question whether the church of the apostolic age knew and practiced infant baptism must be answered in the affirmative with a very high degree of probability. But that fact in no wise decides the theological question concerning the right of infant baptism. After all, the church of Corinth in the days of the apostle Paul practiced a vicarious baptism for the dead [I Corinthians 15:29]. It is possible, therefore, that we are dealing here with a very ancient abuse. Theologically, infant baptism can be grounded only on Scriptural evidence which proves it to be a legitimate form of Baptism.

The Catholic Church would never consider the possibility that a practice which can be fairly convincingly shown to have been in the Church since the time of the apostles and which has been practiced continuously ever since with the full authority and approval of the Church to be “a very ancient abuse”. We are more than happy to provide the theological reasoning for the practice, but the tradition alone is sufficient for us to say that it is a dogma of the Church that the sacrament of holy baptism is not to be denied to infants. We do not require “Scriptural evidence which proves it to be a legitimate form of baptism”. Of course, if there were actually a clear Scriptural injunction against the practice, that would be a different matter.

The differing ways in which Lutherans and Catholics approach tradition in this matter is similar to the question of the ordination of women. The Catholic Church holds that the ancient and continuous tradition that women are not ordained to holy orders sufficient to decide the matter. We are happy to provide theological reasoning for this, and we also note that the few Scriptural passages that have relevance to the matter seem to point in the direction of affirming this tradition. Nevertheless, we do not believe that the Scriptural witness alone is conclusive on the matter, and we regard this very inconclusiveness of Scripture – coupled with the protestant requirement for specifically Scriptural proof – part of the reason why there has been so much variation in practice among the protestants themselves.

It is an interesting comparison in theological method, to say the least. Of course it all goes back to the fact that Catholics recognise God’s revelation in both Scripture AND Tradition, whereas for Lutherans, the latter will always remain suspect.

I just happened to notice a piece of this on the back of a piece of recycled photocopy paper that my wife was using to scribble some notes this morning, and looked it up on the internet: “The Birth of Jesus Never Saved Anyone” by Marc Kolden of Luther Northwestern Seminary. It is from 1991, so hardly current, but the question is an interesting one: what was the significance of the birth of Jesus in the plan of salvation?

Kolden writes:

The New Testament does not think salvation or the new birth occurs through Jesus’ actual historical birth or through any sort of birth of Christ in us. The birth of Jesus as such is not redemptive. Redemption for the New Testament writers as well as for the early church involved principally Jesus’ death and resurrection. Our rebirth is not a participation in Christ’s birth but in his death and resurrection.1 The writings of the apostle Paul and of John have been most influential here: insisting that the church is born on the cross, that the Spirit through the word and sacraments make the cross effective in us, and that our witness is to be to Christ crucified and risen….

The birth of Christ in itself never saved anyone, but in the whole career of Jesus—his birth, teachings, deeds, crucifixion, and resurrection—the God of heaven and earth has drawn near to redeem us, and this work is being carried to completion even
now.

His point is fair enough, and I take his point, but I do find it interesting that this is a Lutheran theologian saying this. What would an Orthodox theologian say? It is characteristic of Lutheranism to emphasis the Cross over the Birth of Jesus… Perhaps the question would be clearer if we were to ask whether the INCARNATION “saved anyone”? Although John 1:14 is only one verse in the entire scripture, it does seem to point to a saving significance of the incarnation which must be emphasised in a full doctrine of salvation. The Incarnation was certainly a turning point in the history of God’s dealing with mankind…

Perhaps it is simply the rather bold way that Kolden phrases his statement in order to make his point that niggles. Anyway, over to you.

Have you heard of “the cloud”? I hadn’t until about a month ago, and now I wouldn’t be without it. “The Cloud” refers to various means of storing files on internet in order that you and those whom you chose can have access to these files from any computer, smartphone, ipad or other device that connects to the internet. I make sure that my teaching files are stored in this way, since once turning up for an Anima Education lecture without my computer and needing to access the files from a friends internet connection.

There are a number of “cloud” systems out there, but I use Dropbox, which creates a folder on your computer which is synchronised with the “cloud” folder on the internet. The folders are generally private, but a great thing about Dropbox is you can place files in a “public” folder which then generates a url address you can give others so they can download the files in question.

I have heard that there are privacy issues with Dropbox, as you would expect with anything you place on the internet, so don’t use it for any personal or sensitive data. But it is a great way to back up material, transfer it to other devices/computers, or share large files with your friends that are too big for emailing.

The free account gives you 2GB of space, which isn’t a lot. But one way they get extra users is by giving their current clients a special link to email to friends who might like to use the service. For everyone who signs up using your special link, you get an extra 250MB of free space. And they get 2.25GB of space instead of just the usual 2GB too!

Here is where the shameless part comes in. I do recommend Dropbox, and so I would like to recommend it to readers of this blog. If you use this link: http://db.tt/rvgBYop to sign up, you will be gifting me with an extra 250MB of space, which would be very nice thank you.

I hope you don’t think this is too unethical of me. If you want to find out more about Dropbox, click here for their website – but please, when it comes to signing up for Dropbox, use the link above for my benefit (and yours – since you get an extra 250MB of space this way)!

BTW, Dropbox is especially useful for the iPhone and iPad. I have a number of apps which all use Dropbox. At some other time, I will get around to telling you about the other apps I find really useful.

One reason why I have never gone into politics – despite the interest I have in it – is that governing a country is a damned difficult job. It requires something in very short supply these days: wisdom.

The problem comes with developing policy and knowing what actions to take to assure that country is governed wisely. When you enact a policy on this or that, there will always be repercussions – often unexpected, but nevertheless predictable enough if the policy is wisely and thoroughly thought through before hand. The analogy doesn’t quite work, but I have often thought of “the system” as a balloon: you poke it here, and it bulges there.

One example would be the proposed mining tax which brought Kevin Rudd down as Prime Minister in 2010. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but it had repurcussions that not even Kevin anticipated. Another would be the free insulation policy that Kevin’s government brought in – and which also brought in a lot of unskilled, untrained, and unscrupulous installers, with the result that there where several deaths involved in the process of and as a result of faulty installations. It too seemed like a good idea at the time…

A current example would be the knee-jerk response to the ABC Four Corners expose on the live-stock trade with Indonesia. Howls of protests at the treatment of the cattle in the Indonesian abattoirs resulted in the Government bending to popular pressure and suddenly and completely halting the trade. A big win for the animal’s rights activists, but a big loss in other areas. Not only were many Australians suddenly without a livelihood, but the poorest of the poor in Indonesia were suddenly reduced to destitution (see this article in today’s Age).

So the animals win, and the human beings loose. But wait, not even the animals win, as one stock owner had to face the possibility of having to shoot 3,000 head of cattle because he had no feed for them and he had no buyer for them. I have been in a situation during drought on my own family’s farm when my father had to start shooting sheep (because the price for sheep fell so low, it would mean selling them would actually cost us money). My father is one of the most humane farmers I know – he really cares for his animals – and that experience was certainly a low point in his whole life as a farmer.

Another, much greater threat, is facing societies in the western world: the legal redefinition of marriage to include same-sex unions. I wonder if one day we will all look back and say “It seemed like a great idea at the time…”? For 10 reasons why this is a very, VERY bad idea, see Jeff Mirus’ comment here on CatholicCulture.org.

I remember as a child prayers for our Queen and governors that they may be “granted wisdom” to rule rightly and justly. When did you last hear an elected goverment official or politician described as “wise”? Do we still even expect “wisdom” of our governments? It seems to me that popular democratic government structures are in fact structured in such a way as to preclude truly wise government. The pressure is on to do what is popular, what is current, what “seems like a good idea at the time”, rather than to sit down and have a really good think about the consequences of the policies they are pursuing.

What a difference it would make if God really were to grant our prayer, and give us “wise” governors…

Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, we pray for our Queen and the Royal Family; The members of Parliament and all in authority; that they may govern our country with wisdom and understanding and for the good of your Church and all people. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Sorry about the lack of blogging lately. I’ve been run off my feet.

I received this advance copy of a flyer of a book to be published by Concordia Publishing House. The author is a Catholic, Dr Franz Posset. It should be interesting.

A recent email from a commentator on this blog called this man an “idiot. Or worse.”

I don’t think he is an “idiot”. In saying that “there are no theological reasons against women priests” Cardinal Polycarpo is being very “inaccurate”, but he is correct in saying that the fundamental reason why women cannot be ordained to the Catholic priesthood is “a strong tradition that comes from Jesus”.

In her book “The Catholic priesthood and Women”, Sara Butler makes a useful distinction between the “reasons” and the “explanations” why women cannot be ordained. When you look closely at all the papal and curial statements of the matter, the Cardinal is correct: the fundamental reasons why women may not be ordained are indeed all “traditional”.

However, in seeking to understand the reason for the tradition, the Church has reflected on the theology of the tradition which makes the tradition comprehensible. These theological “explanations” are not in themselves the “fundamental reasons” why women cannot be ordained, but they explain theologically the very good reasons for the tradition. The Church has, over history, expounded varying theological reasons why women cannot be ordained. At one point, this theology WAS based on the idea of the inequality of men and women. That theological “explanation” has been abandoned, and thankfully so. But newer theological “explanations” – especially in the light of the rich nuptial theology of the Eucharist and John Paul II’s exposition of the “theology of the body” have given us new ways of understanding more deeply the ancient and unchanging tradition.

So he is wrong in saying that there are no theological obstacles to the ordination of women. But he is right in saying that the fundamental reason why the Church can never ordain women is “tradition”. In the Catholic faith, however, all dogma is fundamentally about “tradition” and being faithful to the tradition handed on by the Apostles from the Lord himself. It would simply be unfaithful to the Apostolic Tradition to adopt this practice. Whatever the theological explanations given for the tradition, the tradition itself cannot be changed.

UPDATE: CNA has a story on this giving the full context of the Cardinal’s comments. It is as I thought – he is inaccurate in saying that there are “no theological obstacles”, but at the same time, he certainly isn’t putting forward a positive argument for the ordination of women.

The Pope sends a "Tweet"

Okay, I like news.va. It might put Zenit out of business, though. And I won’t be following it on twitter. My Google Reader via my iphone will be enough. Although at the moment I am subscribed to far too many feeds. I spend all my time reading the news and not commenting on it.

We hosted one of these conferences in Melbourne a couple of years ago – Archbishop Hilarion of the Russian Orthodox Church came out for the event.

This Orientale Lumen Conference – number XV apparently – took place in Washington, and was (like all OL conferences) especially designed to bring Western Catholics, Eastern Catholics, Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox together in dialogue.

This time the conference was on the topic of “Rome and the Communion of Churches: Bishop, Patriarch or Pope?” – a topic recently discussed on these pages and of interest to many readers.

All the sessions are available for audio download (Nb. you can’t download the audio it from the main program page – although you can listen to them there – you have to click the heading for each session and go to the separate pages for that session to download).

Many of the speakers will be known to you. Adam DeVille is one – we’ve been talking about his book “Orthodoxy and the Roman Papacy”. Others are Fr Ron Roberson who, if I am not mistaken, is the author of the most authoritative directory of Eastern Churches ever published. Kallistos (aka Timothy) Ware was there, the author of one of the best known introductions to Orthodoxy ever published. And Fr Robert Taft – a man of decided opinions in the East/West dialogue and the author of dozens of books on Eastern matters – too. As well as Cardinal McCarrick.

HT to Tighe for this one. Tighe also provided a link to a blog of an Eastern chappy who gives an interesting reason why he did not plan to attend the OL Conference this time round…

I am not sure what is up with Fr Zuhlsdorf at the moment, but he has been regularly putting up posts of late (such as this one) requesting our prayers for something going on at the moment in his life. Please join me in praying for him. When serious stuff happens in anyone’s life it can really stuff up your ability to serve others according to your gifts. We need Fr Z.’s gifts. So please pray for him.