Monthly Archives: June 2015

John, Herald of the Word

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Every June 24 the Church commemorates the birth of St. John the Baptist, who is one of only three persons whose birth is officially celebrated by the Church. The other two are Jesus and his mother Mary. Every other saint is remembered on or near the anniversary of death, the reason being that is the day they entered into eternal life. And while the Church also celebrates the martyrdom of John the Baptist, in addition she recalls his birthday, which is quite an extraordinary exception to the normal practice. This distinction led me to ponder, “Just how is John different from all the other saints that he deserves this extra recognition?” Continue reading →

Countering Fuzzy Science

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Countering Fuzzy Science

Public education today seems to be in the business of translating public tax dollars into fantastic myths, which are routinely fobbed off on young, impressionable minds as “facts.” A case in point is the way that genetic evolution is typically presented in today’s classroom. Now, I tend to recoil when fundamentalist Christians start waving their Bibles around as the supreme scientific authority because I have too great a respect for both the Sacred Scriptures and a rigorous scientific process to set these two formidable authorities against one another. At the same time one should recognize that there is a great deal of junk-science being fobbed of in primary and secondary level academia today which, much like a bad virus, only infects and weakens the cause of true objective inquiry. This is especially true Continue reading →

The “Nothing But” Revolution

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The term “revolution” gets bantered about in many different contexts in our world, some good and others not so benign. I am an ardent music lover so for me the revolution wrought by Beethoven in the music world is an electrifying moment in history. As an American I am a direct descendant and beneficiary of that momentous revolution in 1776 that shook the world and gave birth to this great nation conceived in liberty. One can also think of other revolutions that have had quite the opposite, and chilling, effects such as the Communist Revolution in 1917 Russia. History has also witnessed the Industrial Revolution, the Scientific Revolution from which it sprang, and the Digital Revolution which is Continue reading →

Finding Happiness

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Are you a happy person? Not in the sense of feeling good or possessing a lot of toys, but are you happy when you look intently at that person in the mirror? The virtually epidemic rates of alcohol and drug abuse in our society strongly suggest just the opposite, that a disproportionate number of people are very unhappy. Why is it that the most affluent generation in the most affluent country in the world’s history seems to struggle with finding happiness? In fact studies frequently indicate that the impoverished people in less developed countries enjoy a higher “happiness quotient” than people in wealthy, Continue reading →