St. Anthony of the Desert<\/p><\/div>Egyptian Monasticism even spread. Monks from Egypt are referenced in connection with Switzerland (!) and even more so with Ireland. St. Verina was a Coptic hermit, who evangelized in Switzerland near Zurich. She was a relative of St. Victor, who along with St. Maurice—all from Egypt—we martyred in Switzerland. Twenty-one Swiss communities were dedicated to St. Anthony of Egypt. Ireland’s Stowe Missal gave prominent position to the Egyptian desert fathers. And the Book of Leinster contains a litany of St. Oengus, which “invokes unto my aid through Jesus Christ” the “Seven Egyptian monks in Disert [hermitage] Ullaigh.” Art, organization, artifacts all suggest the influence of Coptic monks afar. Quite an army.<\/p>\n

One of Pachomius’s largest foundations, after his death, gradually declined through the influence of decadence. Monks are not infallible. Nor soldiers or armies invincible. The point is to struggle toward the right target, under the good grace of God, toward love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law—only true freedom, and no coercion. <\/p>\n

Chastity for all. It’s a good word. And some people today—burned out by an oversexed “culture”—are pulling back from the “sex”, finding out they have spiritual capacities waiting to be discovered, renewed, by grace. We should all want chastity, and all to be chaste.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This essay appeared in the Fellowship of St. James Creed and Culture newsletter. By James Kusner It dismays me to read the blog post (Homosexual Assault Grows in the Military) by Michael Avramovich about the rise of sexual assault in the military. I remember reading in Stephen Ambrose’s works about homosexual activity among American troops […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13754,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1897],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13756"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13756"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13762,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13756\/revisions\/13762"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}