006 :
29 Mar 2012

Contraception and the Vatican and US Politics... The contraception issue has been front page news again around the world because of developments in the United States caused by government policy and some of the jockeying for position in the Republican primaries. Today and tomorrow we will publish two contrasting essays on the issue. This first essay from Edgar Davie was in fact partly sparked by a commentary we published a few weeks ago by Dr Don Fausel and we will be publishing a follow-up commentary by Don tomorrow. Edgar Davie meanwhile, argues that to unravel the mess over contraception we need to go back to where this started in about the fourth century and even before that to the practices and beliefs of the first Christians regarding sex and the sexual act. [more]

005 :
30 Sep 2011

A layman challenges the argument about infallibility Part 2 In this lengthy argument, which we have split into three parts, US lay writer, Edgar Davie, looks at the history of the notion of infallibility and a couple of instances where the institution has seemingly broken the founding principle on which the entire notion is based. Today we present the third and final part of his argument. [more]

004 :
23 Sep 2011

A layman challenges the argument about infallibility Part 2 In this lengthy argument, which we have split into three parts, US lay writer, Edgar Davie, looks at the history of the notion of infallibility and a couple of instances where the institution has seemingly broken the founding principle on which the entire notion is based. Today we present the second part of his argument. [more]

003 :
16 Sep 2011

A layman challenges the argument about infallibility Part 1 As Edgar Davie argues in this commentary, the question of Papal Infallibility — long a stumbling block for people of other faiths, is being questioned in a variety of ways today within Catholicism. Certainly not by those who have elevated some sense of faithfulness to the magisterium to first commandment status but in wider Catholic circles there is increasing discussion with some prominent personalities receiving their marching orders for questioning the issue — such as Hans Küng and Paul Collins — and others, such as +Geoffrey Robinson challenging the concept of 'creeping infallibility'. In this lengthy argument, which we have split into three parts, US lay writer, Edgar Davie, looks at the history of the notion of infallibility and a couple of instances where the institution has seemingly broken the founding principle on which the entire notion is based. [more]

002 :
04 Dec 2010

Mandatory Celibacy: Is it an ancient, uncorrected heresy? Part 2 This is the second part of the extract from Edgar Davie's book examining, through the very logical thinking an engineer might bring to the subject, where the Church teaching on Mandatory Celibacy for the priesthood came from, and whether it might be mandatory celicacy that is a major contributor to the present clergy sex crisis? Mr Davie's conclusion, after a long study, is that Mandatory Celibacy actually conflicts with what Jesus Christ thought and taught and is an ancient Gnostic heresy that has never been corrected in the Western Catholic Church. [more]

001 :
03 Dec 2010

Mandatory Celibacy: Is it an ancient, uncorrected heresy? Part 1 Edgar Davie is NOT a theologian. He's a retired civil engineer and realist portrait artist based in Tennessee. He's also a committed and actually rather conservative lay Catholic who takes his faith very seriously. He has recently published a book examining, through the very logical thinking an engineer might bring to the subject, where the Church teaching on Mandatory Celibacy for the priesthood came from, and whether it might be mandatory celicacy that is a major contributor to the present clergy sex crisis? Mr Davie's conclusion, after a long study, is that Mandatory Celibacy actually conflicts with what Jesus Christ thought and taught and is an ancient Gnostic heresy that has never been corrected in the Western Catholic Church. [more]