Thoughts for a Sizzling Friday in July

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I thought a change of pace might be in order even as I try to wrap my brain around the recent bizarre events transpiring in our country and the world in general. Humor never killed a man (except for the “funny” guy who killed himself by shooting fireworks from the top of his head. At least there was no brain damage ~ since there was nothing there to damage). So I begin and end this post with some jocularity. In between, however, I expect you to THINK  (Horrors!) but I feel that if you actually found this site you are up to it.

I begin with a favorite quip from my favorite Jesuit, Fr. Tom Kelly, long deceased. “America is a country where everyone is allowed to say what they think ~ even when they CAN’T think.”

Speaking of Jesuits, Do you know the difference between a Dominican and a Jesuit? Simple, the Dominican’s job is to explain the faith; the Jesuit’s job is to explain it away!

I see the recent drive to bury the Confederate battle flag as really an attempt to bury history. But here is the real irony. The party trying to bury it the deepest is the very same party whose history it reflects ~ the Democratic Party. Continue reading →

Hijacked by Higher Education

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 I have great sympathy today for those young millenials who aspire to succeed on the “real life” monopoly game-board which seems to be increasingly stacked against them. Limited job opportunities compounded by lackluster growth in real wages is certainly discouraging, but the thing that may ultimately doom untold millions of twenty-somethings to a very bleak future is not current market trends but mountains of compounded educational debt. In fact, an entire generation is being subjected to a vast “bait and switch” scheme by those very institutions charged with helping them to successfully integrate into the larger society. And the primary perpetrators of this cruel hoax appear to be the very establishments of higher education whose stated purpose it is to prepare our youth for a future productive life. Instead, many American colleges and universities seem too busy fleecing their youthful charges to devote much concern to their long term prospects. Continue reading →

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 →

Foundations of the World

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Living near the Rocky Mountains one can hardly fail to be impressed by the grandeur of creation. Such a locale also stimulates the mind’s curiosity about those imposing, silent leviathans arrayed like so many silent sentinels gazing upon the passage of countless centuries.The story of earth itself lies hidden beneath those craggy outcrops. Geologists tell us that the Rockies are mere upstarts relative to earth’s overall history. Only about 70 million years have elapsed since they began to emerge from a Cretaceous era sea called the Western Interior Seaway, at a time when Thunder Lizards (dinosaurs) still roamed the lush tropical landscape Continue reading →

Importance of History

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Every single one of us has a history inherited from a family, grandparents, our nationality, etc. But it seems that too many people today take the short view of history. It ends where their personal memories end. Educators sometimes unwittingly protract this problem by too often stressing the future while shortchanging the importance of the past. Granted, education should prepare one for the future, but it is equally important to remind students that there is no such thing as a future without the past that leads up to it. In short, it is impossible to know where we are going if we don’t know where we’ve already been. Continue reading →

Immortality for Sale?

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The Washington Post recently reported that a number of tech pioneers such as Google, Pay Pal, Facebook, eBay and other giants of Silicon Valley are plowing billions into biomedical research hoping to dramatically extend human life spans. Apparently these high-tech Ponce de Leons are on the prowl for their own 21st century “fountain of youth.” Although such a chimerical quest might provide amusement to those of us more pragmatically inclined, the fact is that a number of high-tech gurus are “dead serious” (pun intended) about defeating the ravages of aging and death, in their own lifetimes if possible.

Google’s Sergey Brin, for instance, has apparently donated $150 million for gene modification research, Continue reading →

Gratitude

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Nothing rounds out one’s personality like the spirit of gratitude. Gratitude, like optimism, changes our whole outlook on life for the better. Fittingly, the very word “gratitude” rhymes with “attitude” because gratitude is an attitude which becomes essential to human happiness and well being. But gratitude is not an easy habit to cultivate, especially in a free society such as ours. Not that freedom itself is antithetical to gratitude. In fact, freedom is the strongest inducement to be grateful to the God who first gave us freedom. Not all peoples possess the precious liberties that we Americans enjoy and that fact alone should inspire one to a sense of profound gratitude.

Today, however, our country seems to be losing that once vibrant sense of gratitude to God which long served as a hallmark of our national identity and character. Continue reading →