“Laudate Si’s” Disturbing Echoes

Posted on August 8, 2015 by Francis

The great 19th century thinker and apologist John Henry Newman observed that the Church exhibits three characteristics: first she is pastoral thereby sanctifying her members, next she is pedagogical (a fancy word for her teaching mission), and finally she is political because the Church is made up of humans. It was this third characteristic that caused Newman the greatest concern and, in fact, any cursory glimpse of Church history quickly reveals her many political struggles from the beginning, when Paul took Peter to task over his attitude towards the gentiles as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles.

. The problem is that the lines are not clearly demarcated and sometimes political considerations become entangled with the Church’s pastoral and pedagogical mission Continue reading →

Tolerance, a Force for Good or Evil?

Posted on August 1, 2015 by Francis

My father was a great dad in almost every respect. Notwithstanding his cheery, loving disposition he was affected by a bit of residual puritanism which sometimes surfaced in amusing ways. I remember one such instance when I was about 12 years old. Our family received some free tickets to a newly released film, Meredith Wilson’s The Music Man. While the movie itself was quite entertaining I was more bemused by dad’s reaction to the story line which he earnestly viewed as immoral because Professor Harold Hill, the charming confidence man who wins the heart of the local librarian (Marian), is actually rescued from his well deserved fate of being exposed, horsewhipped, and thrown in a jail cell. Anything less than severe punishment represented a serious breech of justice in dad’s somewhat legalistic mind. I saw the thing a little differently. The real moral of this zany story revolves around the redemptive love of a good woman, Marian, and how that love has the power to transform a jaded, fast talking slicker into a genuine human being who learns to care more about others than himself.

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God and Evil

Posted on July 26, 2015 by Francis

All sin is evil ─ But not all evil is sin.

The most vexing question for believers and nonbelievers alike to reconcile with a presumably good God is how he can allow so much evil to infect our world. The question of evil cuts to the very heart of all human existence because, at some point in time, it impacts every human being in a profoundly personal way. Even someone who appears to live a charmed life; positive, happy, successful, and possessing good looks and personality must eventually confront evil in the form of death. But for most of us, life entails a substantial amount of suffering, anguish, and disappointment even before death calls our name. So, are the cynics right in assuming that we are little more than puppets being manipulated by some sadistic deity Continue reading →

John, Herald of the Word

Posted on June 26, 2015 by Francis

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

Posted on June 20, 2015 by Francis

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

Posted on June 11, 2015 by Francis

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

Posted on June 4, 2015 by Francis

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 →