Category Archives: Spiritual Reflection

Danger Abounds: and God Protects

Posted on by
1

Fact: We inhabit a world filled with danger. Many of those dangers are remote or small enough that we can easily take precautions against them ourselves. Locking a car door or exercising care when crossing a busy intersection are obvious examples. But other dangers lie beyond our ability to personally control: criminal acts, cancer, or invasion by an enemy force. That is why societies maintain police, hospitals, and a standing military. We rely on doctors and pharmacists to protect us from diseases that we ourselves cannot even understand much less control.

If there were no threats to our life, security, and happiness such professions would have no reason to exist. But life, as we well understand the older we get, is beset by many dangers, both hidden and visible. Some dangers we can reasonably control, either personally or as a community, but what about those dangers over which we have no plausible control? To whom shall we turn for protection when a particular danger is so grave or overwhelming that no human power is adequate to deal with it? Continue reading →

A Parable on Prayer – for 2017

Posted on by
Reply

There was once a kingdom ruled by a wise but very mysterious wizard who lived reclusively in a very high tower set at the edge of a beautiful and productive valley. The wizard was a generous hearted ruler and quite concerned for the welfare of all the people living there but, alas, the tower had no entryway allowing any person access, either to it ─ or to the wizard who lived there. Perhaps that last statement is not strictly true. Many years before the present time there had been one small doorway leading to a spiral staircase inside the tower, but this vital portal had long been lost; buried under a great landslide. So many ages had passed since the disaster that even the general location of that ancient portal had long faded from men’s memories. Continue reading →

Bread From Heaven: Is the Mass Truly Biblical?

Posted on by
Reply

    Has Christianity lost its moral relevance in the modern world? I live in a state where two thirds of the electorate recently agreed that physicians ought to be allowed to prescribe a lethal toxin to a dying patient as a substitute for pain medication. Apparently the Christian message no longer resonates with a large percentage of the populace. Could this possibly reflect a fragmented Christianity whose continued doctrinal and moral disunity has reduced even the Ten Commandments to debatable talking points? After all a church itself splintered by countless divisions can hardly expect to hold the attention of the masses. But until the rupture in this body (of Christ) is truly resolved, there seems to be little chance that Christianity can ever heal itself much less the world.

    In order to correct such problems one must first address the fundamental cause of that religious cleavage. Ironically, it is the very thing that ought to unite Christians that has proven to be the most significant stumbling block to unity. For it is the Eucharist itself that has polarized Catholics and Protestants into opposing camps for 500 years now. Continue reading →

Identity, Politics, and Stuff

Posted on by
Reply

Politics is the only area of life or nature where failures seems to be consistently rewarded. The more wrongheaded a policy proves to be, the more necessary it becomes for the political class to prop it up, if for no better reason than appearance sake. (It must appear to the voters that I am “doing” something, regardless of unintended, or possibly intended, consequences.) And as a result of many years of thoughtless (and sometimes even malicious) policies, society today is saddled with failed schools, a failing foreign policy, failing criminal justice, and saddest of all a rapidly growing number of failed families, And one has only to observe the present toxic political climate to realize that no meaningful reform is anywhere on the horizon. Too many special interests have doubled down on demands to even permit rational, civilized dialogue, much less any movement towards intelligent reform. Continue reading →

Who am I to Judge?

Posted on by
Reply

It seems these days that moral outrage is able to muster only the feeblest of responses, perhaps because outrageous behavior has become so commonplace we have come to expect it. Just recently a high profile Catholic, who also happens to be our nation’s vice-president, publicly officiated at a “gay wedding” in willful contempt of the clear and explicit teachings of his own Catholic faith. Any response from the American bishops has been largely muted if one discounts a bland, vanilla statement issued by the USCCB which passively recommended that it might not hurt to pray for our public officials. It would seem that even bishops are no longer willing to call out egregious public scandal by a prominent Catholic figure for what it is for fear of being labelled as “judgmental.”

Modern society has developed a severe case of “judgment phobia” which insists that no one is ever allowed to judge another’s actions. Continue reading →

A True Reformation? Conclusion

Posted on by
Reply

Part I   Our Sinful Church

One of the things that has confounded both Christians and non-Christians alike over the past 2,000 years is this. If the Church is truly the Body of Christ present in the world as she has continuously insisted, then how could that body exhibit such a shocking degree of sin and corruption within her members? Is it possible that the same Holy Spirit which first energized the Church on Pentecost and who ostensibly guides her very actions has fallen asleep at the switch? Yet continuing into the present day, a seemingly endless stream of scandal emanates from Ecclesial quarters, and I am referring to much more than sensational headlines about clerical sex abuse which may only represent that part of the iceberg floating above the water line. Continue reading →

Momentous Signs

Posted on by
Reply

Glorious Vacation! We just spent a thrilling week touring about Northern California, a delightful experience augmented  by the extraordinary beauty and fascinating history of this corner of the world. Pristine Sierra lakes, sprawling vineyards, and majestic giant redwoods all conspire to leave the tourist breathless. My only complaint during an otherwise perfect holiday was the haphazard posting of road signs, a situation which too often left one in a state of mystified spatial confusion.

We little realize or appreciate just how much we exist at the mercy of sign makers until we find ourselves unexpectedly on the wrong side of a six lane torrent of madly rushing traffic, Continue reading →

A light to the Nations? The Problem in a Nutshell

Posted on by
Reply

The greatest sin in the world today may well be the senseless division of Christianity. One regrettable consequence of that partition seems to be that the fabric of Western culture is unraveling under the onslaught of radical individualism. This belief holds that self-determination, even regarding one’s own gender, ought to trump not only centuries of human tradition but the very laws of nature itself. And as the institution of family recedes ever deeper into its crisis of identity, society has becomes increasingly chaotic. A kind of intellectual anarchy now routinely assaults reason to substitute its own tenets for that great deposit of wisdom known as common sense. Meanwhile, in the West, Christianity seems to be in full retreat so that even an unobtrusive order of religious sisters, by following their consciences, is being threatened with ruinous fines Continue reading →

The Splendor of God

Posted on by
Reply

God without man would still be God: but man without God is reduced to nothingness. Forgetfulness of this simple truism can lead an entire society or a lone individual to ruin, however. Without that acute awareness of God’s perpetual, abiding presence we are sure to become what C.S. Lewis so eloquently called, “men without faces.” In other words, we lose our true identities, because men and women quickly forget who they are when deprived of some positive reference to their Creator ~ a state of mind that can lead one to desperation and, even more, to desperate actions. For instance, the growing push for society to legitimize suicide is fast becoming one more symptom of modern man’s sense of desperation. But, of course, this is not a part of God’s plan for the human race. In fact, he intends quite the opposite. Continue reading →

The Game of Power

Posted on by
1

Due to last minute demands in getting my new book to press, I have been somewhat remiss since posting my last article. I apologize for this delay and hope you will all be anxious to peruse that forthcoming work titled Word Without End: The Mass ~ Splendor of the Incarnation which should be available by the end of April. The sub-script on the cover of the book, “How the Power of Love conquers man’s Love of Power” leads us directly into today’s topic. You may ask, “But what connection is there between the Incarnation and a discussion of human power?”

First I would propose that the most intoxicating substance known to man is neither alcohol, nor any drug, nor even money or pleasure. Enticing as those things can be, I still suspect that the most addictive intoxicant around is power, Continue reading →