What Do We Expect from Religion?
Thomas Keating, a Trappist monk and promoter of a kind of meditation called centering prayer, asks this question in one of his videos on YouTube. Ancient Israel’s expectation, says Keating, ...
‘Spiritual but Not Religious,’ Revisited
I’ve expressed several times in these blogs my skepticism about declarations by some of our contemporaries that they are “spiritual but not religious.” Much of the skepticism results from the ...
Does God Really Care?
A migrant worker is toiling in a soybean field when he comes across a large metal box, mostly covered in dirt. He looks around before digging the box out and ...
The Bible: Lousy PR?
I often read or hear comments about the Bible that go like this: “Why should anyone pay attention to a book that was written when people were barely literate and ...
Dealing with Doubt
In several of her books, the famous novelist, Anne Lamott, has written often about her struggles with doubt. “I have a lot of faith,” she wrote in Plan B: Further Thoughts ...
Is There Such a Thing as ‘Catholic Guilt?’
The short answer, in my opinion as a lifelong and practicing Catholic, is “yes.” There’s no doubt that Catholic doctrine and tradition impose more responsibility on its members than many ...