An earlier post this week with a similar title evoked the most passionate comments I've had on a post for a long time. I suggested that one of the reasons why Catholic kids leave the church is that our catechism and worship styles and preaching for the past fifty years did not prepare them for the [...]
Lucas Cranach the Elder - Adam and Eve One of the interesting things about conducing a parish mission is how many people stay behind to ask really probing questions. Last evening here in Indianapolis a man named Frank asked me if it was wrong not to believe certain things the church teaches. He's a [...]
Remembering that the New Testament is hidden in the old and the old is made manifest in the New, yesterday's feast provides three powerful images from the past that converge at Pentecost: Wind, Fire and Witness. The mighty rushing wind connects back to the first day of creation where in the first verses of the Bible [...]
Cut Off Catholicism vs. Continuous Catholicism In the midst of composing this series on what's killing American Catholicism I am not only reading George Weigel's Evangelical Catholicism and Sherrie Weddell's Forming Intentional Disciples but on the flight out to Indianapolis read Russell Shaw's American Church -- The Remarkable Rise, Meteoric Fall and Uncertain Future of Catholicism in America. Shaw's [...]
Sorry for the break from blogging, but parish and family life have been very busy this last week. What's killing American Catholicism? This is the third part of a series. The problems all begin with the letter 'C'. The first part was Cultural Catholicism. The problem when people are more cultural than Catholic. The Catholic faith transcends [...]
In a nearby convent there was a nun who had taken to levitating during mystical prayer. The people were, of course, stupefied by this astounding miracle and were flocking to see the flying nun. The novices in Thomas' friary were just as excited as the others and dragged the great philosopher off to see the [...]
A spirited conversation has been going on in the combox about the existence of God. I said here that God does not exist--and went on to say, at least he does not exist as we exist. He is, instead, the very ground of all existence. He does not exist so much as he IS existence. Commenters [...]
On the week before Christmas in 1941 my grandfather was walking with his two sons to market in downtown Pottstown, Pennsylvania. It had snowed the night before and the roads were too icy to drive. That's why they were walking. As they crossed the river bridge a coal truck turned on to the bridge. The bridge [...]
One of the most common pronouncements by the atheists in the combox is that "Christianity is a myth." In one sense they are correct. The gospel story does operate like a myth. However, most of the atheists making this comment do not seem to have a very knowledgeable understanding of myth and how it works. They don't [...]
One of the things the atheists like to destroy is the New Testament. Without anything positive to offer themselves, they feel obliged to de-construct the authority of the New Testament if they can. A favorite way to do this is to try to show that the New Testament is a much edited, late cut and paste [...]