Fr. Harrison Ayre's Avatar

Fr. Harrison Ayre

@frharrison

Pastor of St Peter's in Nanaimo, BC. Doctoral Candidate at St Mary’s, Twickenham.

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22.03.2025
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Latest posts by Fr. Harrison Ayre @frharrison

Just submitted 14,000 words with 102 footnotes to my supervisors. Stick a fork in me, I'm done. (the fruit of 1.5 weeks of intense work)

12.03.2026 05:14 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Your last saved meme is your moral philosophy

08.03.2026 21:47 👍 11 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 1

bsky.app/profile/frha...

08.03.2026 21:43 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

crap. this is what happens when you post after writing all day.

I meant to say INTERNATIONAL LAW

not “natural law”. *sigh*

08.03.2026 21:43 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 1

sorry :(.

08.03.2026 03:04 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

am not super read up on all his liturgy stuff at the moment. dealing a lot with politics, systematic methodology, and his really old untranslated stuff. dont rsally have anything to contribute atm in part, too, because my brain is fried today

08.03.2026 03:01 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

10 pages while stepping on a historical landmine towards the end that sucked up 4 hours of scouring texts I didnt even realize existed 5 hours ago but I think I navigated it decently.

I am fried.

08.03.2026 03:00 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

wait till my thesis is defended and published and then I'll be able to bring it out in full :).

07.03.2026 22:45 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

wait till I argue that Ratzinger is what I am calling a 'semi-idealist'! (I don't want to put the full idea out yet until I get my thesis defended though).

07.03.2026 22:40 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

many english speaking catholics will be shocked to find out how much their favourite theologians embraced the idea of natural law in the early to mid 20th century

07.03.2026 19:53 👍 7 🔁 0 💬 4 📌 1

yep! wish I figured this out 2 years ago! lol

07.03.2026 15:51 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I don't know why coffee shops work better for writing a thesis but they do. maybe it is the forced minimalism when writing. Regardless. Found out the Starbucks nearby opens at 5am. Pretty much going to be here every day lol.

07.03.2026 14:28 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Just learned a fun fact:

Fulton Sheen gave a talk at a conference sponsored by the 'Abendland' Journal in the interwar period. crazy.

06.03.2026 23:54 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

it is a good thing to just check where you started today when writing and realizing "holy smokes, I actually wrote 4 pages so far today and should be able to squeeze out a couple more".

6 ain't too shabby for a day's work!

05.03.2026 05:18 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

One of the annoying things about doing historical research into various obscure German thinkers is finding out current critiques of Neo-Scholasticism (such as: they took on Kantian epistemology) was already made by German theologians. In the 1850s.

05.03.2026 02:34 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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05.03.2026 01:26 👍 31 🔁 4 💬 1 📌 0

“an ideal and pure Church, separated from the earth, does not exist; only the one Church of Christ, embodied in history." Pope Leo XIV

AMEN

04.03.2026 13:32 👍 6 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0

Kinda weird and amazing how central the concept of analogy has become the driving 'word' of my doctoral thesis. It's been pretty exciting to find that concept become so important, since it was so unexpected!

03.03.2026 22:53 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

after doing this set up. I wrote a new major section intro (about 3-4 pages) in an hour. was so easy, directional, and narrowing in. huge massive victory.

01.03.2026 23:35 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

btw, saw your email. I am just....in the throws of major revamping to my huge section and just trying to give most mental attention to that. hopefully....Wednesday I can send it to supervisors. I'm behind on ALL email because of this.

01.03.2026 21:13 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

we need you to remain sarcastic!

01.03.2026 21:09 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

weirdly, I've encountered a few. but also it has demonstrated to me that they are missing something with Balthasar. And usually comes from something much deeper and unannounced that they may not even be able to give word to.

01.03.2026 20:57 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

I wish I figured this out like 2 years ago. I would have saved myself soooooo much heartache. because boy oh boy. as I move along, I notice issues, where I'm stretched too far, etc. I am narrowing hard and fast in ways I could never do when I just wrote things in a Word doc hoping it would work.

01.03.2026 16:32 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Addendum: and the best part is, as each substructure gets constructed, I can see pretty quickly if there is a higher level issue. For example, 1.1.2 and 1.1.2.1 (and even 1.1.1) kinda are all the same thing so I can simplify the structure later on in review.

01.03.2026 14:50 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Post image Post image

Essentially looks like this. then under each numbered paragraph, I write the actual paragraph. The visualness keeps me focused. The 'type' of paragraph I've got on a side list as 6 different types. Then when I edit, I don't need to worry about structure or connection: it's already been done! 3/3

01.03.2026 14:50 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

1) Major Section Checklist: Lay out the claims (subsections of major section) that need to be proven for the major section's claim

2) Minor section movements: what are the steps needed to demonstrate this claim

3) Paragraphs to execute movement: type of paragraph and its 1 sentence purpose

2/3

01.03.2026 14:50 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

I think I've cracked the nut of for my thesis writing.

Issue was never conceptual grasp or ark. It was granular argumentation & linear articulation. My brain doesn't work that way.

Developed a system in the last 48 hours that I think will save me a ton of time in the next four months.

1/3

01.03.2026 14:50 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 1

The swings between hopelessness and exhilaration when writing a thesis is kinda wild.

28.02.2026 21:47 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Each of you is saying, "I belong to Apollos," or "I belong to the evangelical ethos of Bishop Barron," or I belong to Cephas," or "I belong to Christ."

Is Christ divided? Was the evangelical ethos of Bishop Barron crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of his evangelical ethos?"

24.02.2026 21:10 👍 18 🔁 3 💬 1 📌 0

I think it's a bad idea to have multiple publishers authorized for the new Liturgy of the Hours, for this reason alone:

differing page numbers

We will no longer be able to say to a group of people (especially of those new to the breviary) go to page ___.

25.02.2026 01:05 👍 22 🔁 2 💬 4 📌 0