Now that Pope Francis has gone to his reward I've been pondering my feelings. When I saw his coffin in St Peter's placed directly above the tomb of Peter himself and below Michelangelo's magnificent dome with seven foot high letters I was very moved. This is why, after all, I am a Catholic--because this is the [...]
This morning's news is the death of Pope Francis and now, as we thank God for his life and ministry we also pray for the election of a new pope. Jorge Mario Bergoglio took the unprecedented papal name of Francis, and true to his namesake, he took the side of the poor, the oppressed, the prisoners, [...]
One of Catholicism’s greatest contributions is the great artists it has produced. I have written elsewhere about how the deeply incarnational and sacramental vision of Catholicism helps to inspire art that works at a deeper level than anything the world (and non Catholic Christians) can produce. One of the best examples of this is the comparison [...]
I am sure some philosopher much brainier than me has worked this all out, but it occurs to me that before Good Friday the world was different. Yes, we use religious language and say, "Mankind was locked in sin" and "Jesus died to save us from our sins" but for many people these religious phrases are [...]
What is the difference between real religion and Nazi zombies? It’s the difference between faith and an ideology. Here’s a clue: in The Imitation of Christ Thomas a Kempis wrote, “Why do you wish to change the world when you cannot change yourself?” An ideology tries to change the world. Real religion tries to change a person. “An [...]
The COVID pandemic brought out the wild eyed conspiracy theorists and apocalyptic prophets of doom. I said at that time, "Forgive me if I yawn." I was brought up in the fundamentalist world of dispensationalism, and for those of you who wonder what on earth that mouthful of jargon means, dispensationalism is a wacky system of [...]
Rene Girard, the French literary critic, philosopher and cultural commentator observed that a driving force in all human conflict was what he named "mimetic desire" -a kind of accelerated form of envy in which we don't simply want what the competitor has, we want it simply because they have it. Furthermore, we want everything they have, [...]
I was brought up in a fundamentalist Bible church with teaching heavily influenced by Dispensationalism. This peculiar system of Biblical interpretation understood God's ways of working in the world as being divided into different time periods or "dispensations" The exciting part was that we were living in the "end times". Jesus was going to come back [...]
Some folks are praising Trump's cuts to USAID while others are lamenting the cuts because needy people in the developing world will suffer. My own opinion is that any cutback of big government or any bureaucratic overlord is a good thing. Its a good thing because big government or big bureaucracy wherever it occurs (whether it [...]
One of the Protestant "solas" is sola fide or "salvation by faith alone". This man made, non Biblical doctrine was devised in order to counter what was perceived as Catholics "earning their salvation" by doing good works. I'm the first to admit that it's an easy mistake to make. Much of Catholic devotional practice certainly looks like salvation [...]