Insurance, Holiness and Hair
The centrefold of a 2011 edition of Sydney’s short-lived tabloid, mX, featured a report concerning the vast sums with which an assortment of celebrities insured their various body parts. Some...
View ArticleOnly One A**hole in the Body of Christ, Please!
From a reader: There seems to be a fine line and a big difference between being orthodox and being a dick. Some of the nicest people I have come across in a parish are taken up in the kumbaya...
View ArticleMariology at the Beginning of the Third Millenium
A few years ago, I posted on the possibility of giving an epistemological twist on the idea of Mary as the icon of discipleship. There I hinted that part of her iconography is demonstrated in her life...
View ArticleTracey Rowland on Zombie Jesus
The John Paul II Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame Australia, Tracey Rowland, recently launched my little book Redeeming Flesh: The Way of the Cross with Zombie Jesus at a launch...
View ArticleOut of Body, Out of Mind
In 1975, long before the age of social media, an experiment was conducted at Stanford University. The experiment first provided a false impression regarding a person’s ability to distinguish real...
View ArticleGod and the Pink Elephant
At a seminar on zombies (yes, I am still on the promotional path for the Redeeming Flesh) at the University of Queensland, I made a mention of Catherine Pickstock’s analysis of the metaphysics of...
View ArticleToday, When Eternity Began…
At a recent retreat, someone said that eternity begins at your baptism. He also said that, in spite of this, many Christians live life as though they are in a waiting room, counting the empty units of...
View ArticleFidelity in Difference
Conform. That is the catchcry of a lot of Christians of varying stripes nowadays. Fidelity to the tradition is now often framed – and even more often, obnoxiously – in terms of a conformity to a...
View ArticleSinging Psalms With Angels and Demons
There comes a point for those who do the Office of Readings where one has to read Psalm 135 (136). It is a long psalm, so long that the one psalm alone takes up all three readings of psalms in the...
View ArticleTowards a Kenotic Identity Politics: Migration, Transformation & the Eucharist
I recently had the pleasure of being part of a symposium on Religion and the Humanitarian Challenge, organised round the arrival of my former doctoral classmate Assoc. Prof Erin Wilson, director of the...
View ArticleSo You Think You Understand Mary?
In the Roman Catholic Church, there are two Marian dogmas, the celebration of which are given the status of a solemnity. The first is the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, the dogma...
View ArticleAfter Resurrection, the Holes…
I remember a line used by my catechism teachers when I was a kid that made reference to the holes made in Jesus’ hands and side. My teachers told me that this was used to prove to his disciples that it...
View ArticleFrom the Vault: the Divine Wedgie Podcast Series
If you have been following the evolution of the Divine Wedgie over time, first up, a big thank you. More seasoned readers would remember that, for a time, I ran a podcast series in tandem with the...
View ArticleSpontaneous Personal Prayer is Superior, Right?
There is a memorable scene in an episode of the American television series Judging Amy (1999-2005). In that scene Bruce van Exel, a self-confessed and somewhat devout Catholic Court Services Officer,...
View ArticleScattered & Gathered: Catholics in Diaspora
The good folk at Wipf & Stock have just published the third volume in their “Studies in World Catholicism” series, which draw on papers presented in “World Catholicism Week”, which is organised by...
View ArticleNostalgia, Reality & the Voice of God
I had trouble sleeping last week. I would wake up in the middle of the night and find myself stricken by nostalgia, longing for the times when I was studying or working overseas. This usually resulted...
View ArticleBodies Between Heaven & Earth
I have just started trawling through some old essays for tips for a potential project on faith and embodiment. One theme that is constantly jumping out is the body operating as a kind of doorway, the...
View ArticleThe Heft of Heaven
Almost twenty years ago, Goo Goo Dolls made a name for themselves with a song that began with “…and I’d give up forever to touch you”. The song then became synonymous with the movie City of Angels, in...
View ArticleFrom the Vault: Divine Wedgie Podcasts on Soundcloud
It has been busy at the office, and so I have been unable to to write a new post this week. However, it has prompted me to revisit old material that, even though it might have been produced in the...
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