So many Catholics are dodging the tantrum and hewing to Our Lord. The responsum is unlikely to dissuade us from blessing God as we find God blessing us.

There are no major points of doctrine at stake, nothing in the Creeds, putting at risk the shape of our salvation. And there are no real scruples about the apparently hostile Biblical texts since fundamentalist readings are in any case officially disapproved by Church authority.

Unless you can convince gay people that gay sex is automatically wrong because they aren’t really gay, and therefore aren’t acting according to their real nature, you have failed to maintain the prohibition.

As it turns out, my mind is of little importance. What is important is who has changed my mind. Both the big Who and the many, many secondary whos and whats we all represent for each other.

Lies and violence in the heart of family and church life. That’s where my testimony begins. For whatever reason of God’s own, I have received the formal commission to live this reality as a priest… failure is one of grace’s preferred building sites.

The real joy of the gospel is found in groups of sinners who sit lightly to their sins, know they are loved, and long to love better starting from where they are.

Canonically, it makes no sense at all, but … he does these things!

When Paul urges his listeners to become his imitators in offering himself up as sacrifice, just as Paul imitates Christ; or Peter tells his that they are living stones of the long-awaited New Temple: both take for granted that to be in Christ is a fundamentally priestly form of life.

What might those who follow the thought of René Girard have to offer to those currently excavating Çatalhöyük and Göbekli Tepe in Turkey?

One can, and some do, read Martel’s book as an accusation against the world of systemic mendacity which it reveals. For my part, I read it as one of the events which signal that God’s forgiveness is at last reaching even the hardest-hearted parts of our Church.