Dwight Longenecker
Fr. Dwight Longenecker
Greenville, SC, United States
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Past articles by Dwight:
How “The Bible Only” Destroyed the Bible –
I'm reading The Meaning of Jesus- Two Visions by Marcus J. Borg and N.T.Wright. Borg is a liberal Biblical scholar, Wright is more conservative. It's a good book, and one I'd recommend to anyone who wants to understand the liberal Christian point of view and the conservative Biblical perspective. Borg and Wright are respectful. Both → Read More
Correcting Fr James Martin….yet again –
Fr James "Slippery Jim" Martin SJ has a huge presence on social media, and his tweets (and the positive comments they spark off) reveal a reality that most in the Catholic leadership wish to ignore. That is the fact that within the Catholic Church today there are two churches. One is the establishment church of the → Read More
What Would a Truly Catholic Politician Look Like?
With the rise of Uncle Joe Biden the American public is being presented yet again with a Catholic politician who professes to keep his faith private, while exploiting his Catholic faith whenever he and his PR professionals think it expedient. Joe Biden seems like one of the old school "Kennedy Catholics" who go to church → Read More
The Clerical Cassock: A Black Badge of Courage
I have blogged in the past about the opportunities one has to evangelize in the deep South when wearing the cassock. My favorite episode was when I stopped at the supermarket to pick up a few items. I was wearing my cassock and Benedictine scapula and as I got to the end of the aisle with → Read More
Is Every Family a Holy Family?
My attention was drawn to a tweet by a priest in Kentucky called Fr Jim Sichko. I tried to verify the tweet, but when I looked him up it seems he has blocked me from his account. I can't understand why because to the best of my memory I can't remember ever crossing swords with → Read More
Why We’re Heading for World War III –
Hilaire Belloc said "Every argument is a theological argument." It's another way of saying "Ideas matter and beliefs matter." With Boris' big win in the UK and Donald Trump preparing to win huge next year in USA we should sit up and pay attention to what we are witnessing. In the democratic process we say "The → Read More
The Queen and the Pope on the Plane
The Holy Father has followed his now established tradition of holding a press conference on the airplane on the way home from an international visit. Once again I have read the transcript and am astonished at how little the world's greatest religious leader speaks about religion. Even more disturbing is how little the world's most → Read More
Mont St Michel, Angels and the Imagination
Apologies for not blogging very much over the last few days. I intended to blog every day during our fantastic pilgrimage to France, but if you've ever been on one of my pilgrimages you realize it is "go, go, go." Most mornings we had a wake up call around 5 or 6 and were on → Read More
St Joachim, St Anne and the Immaculate Conception
St Joachim and St Anne are the parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary. We know about their life and the early life of the Blessed Virgin from an early Christian apocryphal writing called The Protoevangelium of James AKA The Gospel of James. You can read it here. The Protoevangelium is not Scripture, but it's one → Read More
The Miracles of St Charbel Makhlouf
One of the great gifts I experienced when we returned from England to the USA was the great diversity in the American Catholic Church. I had never been a Catholic in the United States so I had to learn about the Catholic history. So I met the saints: St John Neumann, St Elizabeth Ann Seton, → Read More
Correcting James Martin SJ…Yet Again –
Alas, Fr James (Slippery Jim) Martin is at it again...subtly subverting the Catholic faith with his unique brand of saccharine spirituality. He tweets here" It is stupefying to me that women cannot preach at Mass. The faithful during Mass, as well as the presiders, are missing out on the wisdom, experience and inspired → Read More
Resentment and the Obliteration of Beauty
Max Scheler was a German philosopher who was just about an exact contemporary with G.K.Chesterton. As Chesterton was a prophet of the modern world, so Scheler's observations in his book Ressentiment are prophetic. His basic theme is that ressentiment undermines and kills everything good. What is ressentiment? It's more than feeling bad because Johnny got a bigger pile of → Read More
Countering Cotton Candy Catholicism
One of the advantages of being a Catholic is that, if you go to Mass regularly, you will hear so much of Sacred Scripture being read. This is also one of the disadvantages. It is not a disadvantage because you hear Sacred Scripture, but because you hear it in small chunks. What is lacking in the experience → Read More
Going for Baroque
Visit a church in Rome and you be confronted with the Baroque. When you come into a church like San Luigi dei Francesci (pictured here) or any number of other churches you are hit with what first seems to us in our barren age--totally over the top extravagance. Huge angels lean over the billowing clouds → Read More
Blogging From Rome
I'm enjoying a vacation-pilgrimage with our two youngest children in Italy. Some time ago I kind of gave up on vacation for vacation's sake. I got bored with the beach and don't do relaxation very well. So, when our son Elias was spending some weeks in Spain on his study abroad program I suggested we meet → Read More
Beware the Arguments for Married Priests in the Amazon
Notice my headline is not "Beware Married Priests." I have written extensively on this topic over the years. As one of the few married Catholic priests, I guess I have something to contribute to the discussion. Could married men be ordained as priests? Yes. It is a discipline of the church that can be changed. The → Read More
The Ancient Novelty of Christianity
I'm very much enjoying Samuel Gregg's Reason, Faith and the Struggle for Western CivilizationI hope to review it more thoroughly once I've finished with it, but the opening section is brilliant on the birth of Christianity. Gregg's thesis is that Western civilization is the product of Roman Christianity and if that foundation is destroyed the → Read More
Women’s Ministry: Amazons from the Amazon –
For those who remember their Greek mythology, the Amazons were a tribe of women warriors. The document published from the recent synod of the Amazon not only calls for the consideration of the ordination of older married men, but also pleads for a recognized role for women. Catholic Herald reports here: Published by the Vatican → Read More
Mother of the Church and Miss America
Today we celebrated Our Lady Mother of the Church, and as a convert you'll forgive me for being confused on a matter about which I have heard very little discussion. It's this: why are there so many different Marys? Have you ever thought about this? First you've got all the images of Mary associated with her → Read More
The Benedict Not Optional… –
Rod Dreher has popularized "The Benedict Option" and someone has nudged him with, "Yeh. Rod, but all you're really saying is that we should...y'know...be good Christians." I think he did not disagree. In other words the Benedict Option is not optional. In fact it is so not optional that I'd say the book should have been called "The → Read More