I’m not going to leave. I am not going to let myself be forced out. I am going to stand and fight for what is right and just. I am going to speak my mind. This is what my conscience tells me to do. This is where I stand in regards the institutional Catholic Church (especially in the United States). It is also where I stand in regards the United States itself. Likewise, it is what I plan to do... Read more
The Apostle Paul, after being freed by grace from the chains of sin and the way it impeded his spiritual development, declared himself to be a prisoner of the Lord. What a strange thing to say! It sounds as if he went from one kind of unfreedom to another. Yes, the Lord is good, and so a far better master than sin, but when Paul says this, it seems to contradict the way he otherwise says Christians are made free... Read more
While faith and reason should go together, that should not mean we confuse what we can derive from reason alone as revealing the fullness of our faith. The revealed truths of Christianity transcend human understanding, and therefore, human rationality. We can apprehend elements of the absolute truth, and then use our reason to engage what we have apprehended, to derive meaning and value from what has been revealed, but we must not think the focus of our faith should be... Read more
I’m writing this, when it looks as if Trump is going to be the next president of the United States. I am going to let this remain a very raw piece. It’s not going to be highly edited or polished. I am not going to include all the normal links I usually add, because, at this point, why? If people dispute what I have to say, they can read many of my other posts, which has the links, if they... Read more
Greed underlies many problems in the world today. Our system of government and economic engagement often rewards greed, allowing those who are wealthy seek to gain more and more wealth, wealth without limit, without consideration of those whom they hurt. And where do they get their wealth from? Do they create it? While, they often try to claim that, they do so by relying upon the work of others, workers who they do not pay justly for what they have... Read more
Even when we sin, when we embrace unlove instead of love, that sin leaves us either spiritually wounded or dead. Nonetheless, despite our rejection of love by some act of unlove, God continues to shower us with love and grace, making sure that we can be healed of all the harm we have caused ourselves and rise again from the ashes. God’s love for us is not stopped when we sin; rather, as it is eternal, it is unchanging, but... Read more
God doesn’t want us to be mere servants; we should not think God as being some unreasonable master who makes unreasonable demands of us. What God wants is to be friends with us. In that friendship, we should unite ourselves to God and the divine will, for friends have a special bond which often leads them to seem to be so united, it is as if there were one will between them. To make this clear, before his death, Jesus... Read more
God made us not only to exist on our own, to live our lives and make something of ourselves during them, but to participate in and experience the divine life for ourselves. We will always be creatures that God created; we will never be what God is in our nature, but as we participate in the divine nature, we can be considered to be gods by grace. When we do so, we will come to know the persons of the... Read more
I have many concerns about the 2024 presidential election in the United States. I especially have issue with the way many Christians are treating the election. They have lost sight of the purpose of government, which is to promote and protect the common good. They have lost sight of the way Christ denied the devil when the devil tempted Jesus with worldly power, for they find themselves succumbing to that temptation, seeking power, not for the sake of the common... Read more
As the Christian faith is often presented as some sort of moralistic legalism, with God looking for any and every reason to damn us for eternity, we lose sight of what Christ was about, that is, the good news that God loves us and desires our salvation. We should not believe God is looking for any and every excuse to condemn us, using whatever extreme legalistic argument to justify our perdition; rather, our faith should have us know God loves... Read more
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