Dante's Divine Comedy Starts May 19!

Hello Everyone,

We told our Bible study students at the end of last year that we had decided to study Dante's Divine Comedy this year since Pope Francis has requested everyone read the trilogy during this Year of Mercy.

Here's an article by Bishop Robert Barron on the importance of reading The Divine Comedy: The Spiritual Master Pope Francis Wants You to Read.

We have finally picked a date to start out with Dante's Inferno. That would be Thursday, May 19 at 7pm in Guadalupe Hall on the grounds of EWTN.

We will be using Catholic Courses' 3-part study with Professor Anthony Esolen as instructor.  Each book study is made up of eight 30-minute DVD lessons with a few questions for discussion after each segment. We will be doubling up the classes, so that will mean you'll have more reading to do at home beforehand.

We recommend you purchase Anthony Esolen's translations of the books: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso (covers may vary). Of course if you've already got your own set at home, you can use it, but Joseph Pearce tells us a Catholic commentary makes all the difference.

                                    

As soon as you get Inferno, read Cantos 1-8 for the first two lessons taking place on May 19.

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Here is the schedule:

Inferno: May 19, 26, June 2, 9
Purgatory: June 30, July 7, 14, 21
Paradise: August 4, 11, 18, 25

Let us know if you plan to join us! Invite your friends too.

Mark and Celine McCoy
EpiphanyStudies@gmail.com

Prophets Schedule

Click the tab above for the Prophets Study schedule. We're combining sessions 4 and 5 as well as 7 and 8 in order to finish in eight meetings instead of ten.

Several have told us they can't come to some of the meetings and would like to borrow the CDs. We would rather not do that and will work with you to provide make-up opportunities. Since the sessions are short, we can either come in early at 6:15 (if Mark's work permits) or stay late and show the missed segment after the regularly scheduled one.

We hope this won't be necessary too often. It's a short study as it is and we're making it even shorter.

The Prophets: Messengers of God's Mercy

We have confirmed with EWTN that we will be able to offer The Prophets: Messengers of God's Mercy at Guadalupe Hall starting Monday, September 14 and running at the latest to November 16. Since the DVD sessions are 30-40 minutes long, we may double up a few and end earlier. Our start time will be 6:45pm.

A study guide is available from Ascension Press here, but we won't require it.

Our first meeting on September 14 will be a 30-minute introduction, so no preparation is required.

Update: Link to view content till 9/11/15

Theresa got us a link to review the Epic content until September 11, 2015. Click the link below to access. Thanks, Theresa!

Epic online content

Those of you who haven't been keeping up with the study from home will only have until Sept. 11 to get all your viewing done. If someone else offers the study, you might be able to register with them and then view online. Not exactly sure how that would work.

Reminder: we start at 6:30 tonight and will only watch the last session of Epic. We're done with Great Moments in Church History.

Last Epic class tonight! ...What's next?

Tonight is our last session of the Epic Study! Those of you who have been studying at home may want to come tonight: faithful attendees Dan and Elsie Troceen, unable to come to the last 2 sessions, discovered they couldn't view the video online. We tried ourselves and found we couldn't either. Theresa Brown has placed a call with Ascension Press to try to resolve this. She says we were supposed to be able to view the online content up to 2 weeks after the end of the class.

Some of you have been asking what we're going to do next. After a long study like this, all we think of is taking a break. And then we wait for inspiration. Yesterday we finally got inspired to offer The Prophets: Messengers of God's Mercy by Ascension Press. We will order it and take a look at the DVDs and study guide and then decide whether to offer it as a 10-week or 5-week course. The videos are only 30 minutes long, so we may do as we did with the Exodus study and double up the sessions and only have a brief discussion period for each.

We will NOT bother with online viewing since AP only offers that through a parish (as we had Theresa register our Epic study as taking place at St. Theresa's in Leeds).

It looks like we'll have to stick with Monday nights since Guadalupe Hall is unavailable other nights. If we do a 10-week course, we'll probably start Sept. 14; if a 5-week course, probably some time in October.

For those who don't have the study guide

Epic Study, Session 14

CHRONOLOGY OF MAJOR PROTESTANT GROUPS

Group	Date Founded	Founder(s)
Lutheran	1517	Martin Luther
Anabaptists	1521	Nicholas Storch, Thomas Münzer, John Denk, Baithasar Hubmaier, Felix Manz, Conrad .Grebel
Anglican	1534	Henry VIII
Calvinist	1536	John Calvin
Mennonites	1536	Menno Simons
Presbyterian	1560	John Knox
Congregationalist	1582	Robert Brown
Baptist	1605	John Smyth
Dutch Reformed	1628	Michaelis Jones
Methodist	1744	John & Charles. Wesley
Unitarian	1774	Theophilus Lindley     .
Mormonism*	1829	Joseph Smith
Seventh-day Adventism	1860	William Miller, Hiram Edson, Joseph Bates, Ellen Gould White
Salvation Army	1865	William Booth
Jehovah's Witnesses*	1879	Charles Taze Russell
Christian Scientist	1879	Mary Baker Eddy
Pentecostal	1900	Charles Parham, William Seymour
Fundamentalism	1909	Various

*Theologically, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons) and the Jehovah’s Witnesses are not Christian and therefore not truly Protestant Groups.

Book/Film Recommendations

10 Books that Screwed Up the World and 5 Others that Didn't Help by Benjamin Wiker, Ph.D. will help you understand the wrong thinking of many of those mentioned in our last episode of "Great Moments in Church History." This book is available at the Hoover library.

A great book on the life of St. Thomas More is The King's Good Servant but God's First from Ignatius Press. And one of the best films of all time is A Man for All Seasons. Hope you've all seen it.

By the way, we just watched (again) The Agony and the Ecstasy with Charleton Heston and Rex Harrison. Excellent film that will help you understand the time of Michelangelo and Julius II.

I haven't used my Facebook account in a long time but have just started up again. If anyone wants to check it out, click HERE for the link. Happy to add as friends any and all of you who have studied with us.

Mark