Columns

Speaking with authority

Mar 01, 2020

We are growing ever more distrustful of words. Everywhere we hear people say, “That’s just talk! That’s nothing but empty words!”
A looming spiritual battle

Feb 23, 2020

The other day, at a forum, speaker after speaker highlighted overdevelopment, the ecological challenges and the lack of affordable housing for the poor.
On hallowing our diminishments

Feb 23, 2020

Thirty years ago, John Jungblut wrote a short pamphlet entitled, On Hallowing Our Diminishments. It’s a treatise suggesting ways we might frame the humiliations and diminishments that beset us through circumstance, age, and accidents so that, despite the humiliation they bring, we can place them under a certain canopy so as to take away their shame and restore to us some lost dignity.
Community solidarity in the face of coronavirus

Feb 16, 2020

Some years ago — I can’t remember exactly when — a relative gave me a book called Pandemic. I flipped through the pages and found it grim, depressing reading, as it predicted the likelihood of a global epidemic. I put it away – though now I wish I had read it back then. There were enough problems in the world; this one could wait, I thought.
Magnanimity

Feb 16, 2020

Once during a baseball game in high school an umpire made very unfair call against our team. Our whole team was indignant and all of us began to shout
On self-hatred and guilt

Feb 08, 2020

Recently on the popular television program, Saturday Night Live, a comedian made a rather colorful wisecrack in response to an answer that Nancy Pelosi had given to a journalist who had accused her of hating the President.
Move towards a more progressive taxation system

Feb 07, 2020

St Francis of Assisi was well known for his “preferential option for the poor”, eight centuries before our time. When Francis heard a voice telling him repair to the church as it was “falling into ruins”, he took it literally, thinking that the Lord meant him to physically repair ruined churches.
Are we the most insane species?

Jan 23, 2020

“Man is the most insane species. He worships an invisible God and destroys a visible Nature. Unaware that this Nature he’s destroying is this God he’s worshipping.” ? Hubert Reeves, French Canadian astrophysicist and populariser of science.
The little way

Jan 22, 2020

Most of us have heard of St. Therese of Lisieux, a French mystic who died at age 24 in 1897 and who is perhaps the most popular saint of the last two centuries.
Proofs for the Existence of God

Jan 17, 2020

One of the most famous of these was Thomas Aquinas who produced five different logical ‘proofs’. For example, this is the algebra of one of his arguments: imagine walking down a road and finding a stone.