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<\/a><\/div>\nIf you\u2019re intellectual, if you\u2019re a smart, sophisticated person, you can\u2019t possibly have faith in God, right? We\u2019ve been hearing this for centuries. \u201cEvery sect, as far as reason will help them, make use of it gladly; and where it fails them, they cry out, \u201cIt is a matter of faith, and above reason.\u201d So said John Locke, English philosopher, political theorist. He founded Empiricism, the school of thought that tell us if we can\u2019t measure something with our senses, it doesn\u2019t exist. It was good for our boys to learn that a man who embraced technological change he encountered also embraced our Lord. Christ infuses our world, the reality we inhabit every day. In 1998, Pope John Paul II\u2019s encyclical Fides et Ratio (Faith and Reason), 12 years in the making, explored the relationship between the two. \u201cFaith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth\u2014in a word, to know himself\u2014so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n One of Mr. Buckelew\u2019s granddaughters read this passage from Saint Paul during his funeral Mass. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. If you\u2019re intellectual, if you\u2019re a smart, sophisticated person, you can\u2019t possibly have faith in God, right? We\u2019ve been hearing this for centuries. \u201cEvery sect, as far as reason will help them, make use of it gladly; and where it fails them, they cry out, \u201cIt is a matter of faith, and above reason.\u201d So […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":144,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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That\u2019s a fable<\/a>. And this morning brought more proof. I attended the funeral of a man whose career brought him to the forefront of the development of the cable television industry, a man who prayed the rosary with his wife. Donald Patton Buckelew was an engineer who was president of his parish council and who worked with homeless men and battered women. Who brought this man to live among us? How do you measure the love Christ had for him? How do you measure the love Mr. Buckelew showed his neighbors? How do you measure how Christ worked in him and through him?<\/p>\n<\/a>Mr. Buckelew\u2019s life gave lie to the claim that faith and reason are incompatable, said Msgr. John Mraz of Saint Ann\u2019s Parish<\/a> in Emmaus, Pennsylvania, who celebrated Mr. Buckelew\u2019s funeral Mass, which was attended by his wife of nearly 57 years, Anna Mae, by his three adult children, his six grandchildren and his great-granddaughter. His daughter-in-law is one of my dearest friends, and Godmother to our oldest son, Gabriel. <\/p>\n
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What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? As it is written: For your sake we are being slain all the day; we are looked upon as sheep to be slaughtered.\u00a0No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n
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Mr. Buckelew, a child of the Great Depression, was 78 when he died on Tuesday. He was a U.S. Navy veteran who during his lifetime experienced sweeping technological change and unshakable faith.\u00a0As Msgr. Mraz reminded those of us attending the funeral Mass, we are just travelers in this world; it\u2019s a proving ground and our true home is heaven. Saint Paul, a prisoner of the Romans, wrote
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