From where I sit, there appears to be two different political philosophies or agendas guiding the United States. The first embraces a concern for the common good, and flowing from that concern, engages social justice with the desire to lift everyone up, promoting the dignity of all persons, no matter the differences which one can find between them (race, sex, religion, cultural background, et. al); what gets in the way of the common good, what gets in the way of... Read more
Knowledge is a good, but like every other good, it can be abused. People can desire it for the wrong reasons, such as those who accumulate facts to make themselves look smarter, wiser, indeed holier than they are. We must do more with our lives than simply learn. We must act upon what we have learned, with the caveat that we do so with proper humility and love: Those who merely grasp at knowledge are themselves grasped by pride: the... Read more
Trials and tribulations come upon us all. Some are much more difficult for us to deal with than others, but during all of them we might wonder, where is God? Has God abandoned us? Why doesn’t God seem to be helping us? While it seems as if God has gone away, if we had a better perspective of the situation, we would see that God is letting us exercise our own agency so that hopefully we can grow and become... Read more
There is a great deal of confusion concerning the categories of sex and gender in the world today. In part, this is because gender has often been treated as the absolutization or essentialization of someone’s assigned sex at birth. Christians, if they look to Scripture and subsequent Christian tradition, should at least question such essentialization. There are indications in both which suggest that in the eschaton, in the kingdom of God, humanity will transcend all temporal sexual and gender designations.... Read more
When J.D. Vance was announced as the Vice Presidential Candidate for Trump, I was not surprised. For weeks, it looked like he was going to be Trump’s choice. He was doing all he could do to show Trump that he would follow Trump’s lead, doing whatever Trump wanted him to do (unlike Mike Pence, who, for all that he did wrong, at least certified the 2020 election results). Vance went from being a Never-Trumper to being one of Trump’s most... Read more
Lately, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has been very disappointing in its actions, especially in regards the ways its leadership has worked to undermines its programs for the poor, peace, and social justice. Yes, there is more to the faith than being a charitable organization, but faith without works is dead. Scripture not only calls us to be concerned for the poor, for those who are suffering at the hands of structures of sin in society, but... Read more
While “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever” (Heb. 13:8 RSV), our understanding and relationship with Jesus is in constant flux. That is because we are temporal beings who are constantly changing, and as we change, we will find our ways of engaging Jesus, and what we learn from that engagement, changes. Hopefully, we will find ourselves attaining greater and greater insight into who he is. This often means we will have to take what we... Read more
Christian Scripture offers us a glimpse of what is to be in the eschaton, sometimes in ways which appear to be contradictory, which is why there are various, often contradictory, interpretations and beliefs concerning it. Some Christians believe that Scripture indicates that those who are not “saved” will be annihilated (a view, to be sure, repudiated by most Christian traditions). Most Christians believe that everyone will be brought back to life in a general resurrection from the dead, whereupon everyone... Read more
In the introduction to the book I am currently reading, Prayer of the Heart, the author, Fr. George Maloney, a writer I greatly respect for his knowledge and wisdom, wrote something which I found to be greatly mistaken: Only a human person, of all God’s material creatures, has the ability to stand on the mountaintop of his or her consciousness and ask the why and where of human existence. Why have I been created? Where is my life going? Where... Read more
Sometimes, we are our own worst enemies. We let our worst thoughts get the best of us. We find ourselves becoming stuck in a bad headspace, and when that happens, we don’t know what to do to get out of it. This is especially true with those who are actively striving for perfection in their lives. They think all they should be doing is wrestling with all their temptations, and the thoughts which generate them, but in doing so, they... Read more
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