Wednesday, January 26, 2011

On Catechesis

For any of you who have an inspiration to encourage and teach kids in the faith I just want to say that it is a wonderfully enriching experience. I have sixth grade kids and they are just a fine group. And today I think they began to get it!

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Thoughts on taxes, schools, the Church

Yes, I agree that this is a double taxation without representation. If you homeschool or send kids to a charter, Christian, Catholic school you should not be having to support the statist schools. As to nominalism in the Church, both Catholic and Protestant, I agree. In Catholicism I think the reason that one sees much of this is cultural. So many that attend, attend only because they grew up with the charge that one needs to attend church. Even when one has stopped believing one still attends. But there are many strong believers. I belong to a men's group that is very strong. I know seminarians who I find to have a substantial holiness about them. I know priests that I believe are as firm in the faith as the martyrs. But to someone on the outside looking in it does seem lukewarm. This is again from seeing so many who are really fleeing the faith. When one is on the inside one sees the fervency. EWTN (EWTN.com) is an amazing television network (also radio) that is the real deal. I've come to believe that the early church began in ecclesiology and doctrinally Catholic. But all that to say, I respect and applaud much in Evangelicalism: the respect and love for Scripture (although I see presently that this is not as strong as it was a generation ago); being Christocentric; zeal in evangelism. Many good points. But I see that there is first a disunity about many things: baptism, divorce, contraception, abortion, women pastors, etc. In the Catholic church it is a unity of belief at least in Rome if not among the general Catholic audience.

Unintelligent Design?

The dismissal of Intelligent Design from the academic public square is an interesting thing. Shall we rather believe more readily in unintelligent design? Or is our refusal to even consider such a hypothesis to the beginning of the world largely rest with the word "design"? Does the admittance of "designer" put us "the designed" in a subjugated position and is it this that we resist?

Sunday, January 2, 2011

Epiphany

Epiphany. The light come to the nations. The magi enter the house. The kings kneel and adore a king of a different realm. This a messiah like Moses to free his people but from an even more insidious Egypt, a bondage of the heart. Chains so much subtler and stronger than iron. The severe mercy needed meant the murder of the Maker of heaven and earth. The One by which everything consists and holds together. But this deicide, the consummate crime would be undone in the end. Three days and death would lose its sting. Yes, it is not Herod's rule that will last. It is the other king born in the insignificance of a tiny town in Judea: Bethlehem, the house of bread. May we too journey as the magi to the house and bring our gifts. And may we give first and foremost an Inn for this King. May we be the creche for Christ.