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I have nothing to add to this video. http://youtu.be/81dch5uQs7M Read more
One of the problems we see in many Catholic political discourses is the way many quickly turn everything into a slogan. A catchphrase is an easy tool to use, but, theologically, it is dangerous. It over-simplifies. It ignores context. It is able to be used to support partial truths while distancing itself from the fullness of truth itself. Hans Urs von Balthasar said it well: “A theology that develops from catchword principles is always a theology that levels out, mitigates... Read more
Middle age is bittersweet – wisdom, but also absolute decline. Your sense of time both expands and grows short. You realize 100 years is not as long ago as you used to think, but in the other direction death comes rushing toward you ever more tangibly. I’ve decided to skip the Corvette-and-hairpiece, clinging-to-youth thing some guys do in their middle years, but I now understand how powerful an attractant nostalgia is for guys my age. It’s all death-denial. The negotiations... Read more
I’ve been blessed to be scarce at Vox Nova. I’m tired. Emotionally, physically, intellectually,and spiritually: I’m exhausted. This semester of teaching and coaching (and so much more) has been full. It has filled and emptied me at a stroke. I often stumble my way back to home or office, saying hello to students, to friends, to my self, filled with an acute emptiness that fills my heart with gratitude. There is something going on here. I see God in a... Read more
The truth is that God inhabits without limit; wherever the real is or the actual does, He is it. Special knowledge of how to get in touch with him is that same knowledge which carries the bee home to its hive each night; who sells that knowledge to the bee? If we have no money, if we can’t read or be wise, are we abandoned? Does He abandon the lowly insects because they are virtually no more than reflex machines?... Read more
In the most recent Republican debate, Rick Perry made an impassioned defense of waterboarding. According to the LA Times report: Texas Gov. Rick Perry launched the most forceful defense of waterboarding, saying that all means possible should be used to extract information from those who would aim to hurt U.S. service personnel. “For us not to have the ability to extract information to save our young people’s lives is a travesty. This is war. And I am for [using any... Read more
From the famous “cross of gold” speech of 1896, which resonates strongly today: “When you come before us and tell us that we shall disturb your business interests, we reply that you have disturbed our business interests by your action. We say to you that you have made too limited in its application the definition of a businessman. The man who is employed for wages is as much a businessman as his employer. The attorney in a country town is... Read more
Instead of trying to create political fires, I think the USCCB and Sister Walsh has something more important to do: dealing with the Catholic plank within. I wonder how many people who complained about the HHS’s decision to give less funding to some of the USCCB’s good work , encouraging Sister Walsh in using denigrating rhetoric against the Obama Administration as a whole, nonetheless support Voris in trying to gut the USCCB itself? Sister Walsh, I think, should look at ... Read more
There is a story which is being told and retold, in many different forms. It is the story of the usurper-king and the fool who is the real king. Philip K Dick has caught on to this story, and writes of it in the following words: “A usurper is on the throne. The rightful king (who is younger) appears as a madman, criminal, or fool; he is mysterious; his nature and origins are uncertain. He is arrested and tried. (I... Read more
From the outstanding inaugural speech by the newly-elected president of Ireland: “To close the chapter on that which has failed, that which was not the best version of ourselves as a people, and open a new chapter based on a different version of our Irishness – will require a transition in our political thinking, in our view of the public world, in our institutions, and, most difficult of all, in our consciousness. In making that transformation, it is necessary to... Read more
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