Quo Vadis America? “Our nation is too full of those that are crying Down…Down with schools. Down with the churches. Down with teachers. Down with government. Down with the police. Can you build anything down? You cannot!” Archbishop Fulton Sheen exclaimed to his TV audiences about America during his popular TV show in the mid-1960s. He honed in […]
Quo Vadis America: Thomas Jefferson’s Revolution or St-Just? Read More »
Language: not so subtle pervisions One of the last classes I took to satisfy the number of courses needed for my undergraduate major in English was Linguistics. Taught by the head of the English department in the small college, it was, by far, one of the tougher courses for me. Not because the material was
Language: Not So Subtle Perversions Read More »
If you are angry… Take a look at his face, a close look at pure, undiluted rage and fury. Although it’s tempting to feel superior and judgmental at such complete loss of self-control, I can’t. I’ve been there, precisely where that enraged man is. And it seems as if many of our fellow citizens live
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Religion begins with experience Religion does not start out with the notion of God. It starts with a personal experience, the overwhelming experience of ultimate belonging. Religion of the Heart Two pictures side by side in one frame hang on the wall of our Texas home. They reveal two views of a snowy cross-country skiing mountain
Revealed to the Childlike: Religion Begins with Experience Read More »
Anamnesis Four-or more-syllable words are intimidating, like this one: anamnesis. But to lovers of words, this one means far more than remembering, recalling to mind. Or a psychological term indicating a return of lost memories. Wordsworth’s poem, Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, describes anamnesis without ever mentioning the word. Because it
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Giving- Do you still not understand? Tuesday’s Gospel, the day before Lent began, functioned as a bellwether for these forty days of Lent. It’s so for two reasons: a meditation and a homily. Tuesday’s Gospel reading was Saint Mark: Mark 8:14-21 The disciples had forgotten to bring bread, and they had only one loaf with
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Christmas Wake-Up Call: Stoning, Massacre and a Trump PS on Becket Wake-up call? Why do we need a Christmas wake-up call? Consider that for much of the world, Christmas starts right after Thanksgiving. Christmas music plays everywhere, shopping ads begin and the Christmas trees go up. Weeks later, when Christmas Day finally dawns, the excitement’s
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The blood of the church: love Just as the human heart must have blood to maintain life, so must the church have love to live. The metaphors are not mine but Madeleine Debrel’s, Venerable Madeleine Debrel. The blood of the church: love. She was a poet, this French mystic who poured out her life for
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Image Maura Harrison’s An Illustrated Comedy, Inferno Canto 1. In the middle of the journey of our life, November’s the month of the dead “I continue to think that we start from very different places on the question of death itself, what it is and what, if anything comes after it…I have trouble getting myself
November’s the Month of the Dead-Why Should We Care? Read More »
Pope John Paul In Arguing With the Pope, journalist Barbara Harrison wrote about Pope John Paul’s trip to Denver in August of 1993. He was there because it was the eighth World Youth Day. I remember little more than my complete sense of bafflement as I read her piece. How could this man evoke the thunderous adulation and
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