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“Do Not Be Afraid … You Are My Dearest Friends”*

Toxic Fear is perhaps life’s greatest hostage-taker. One psychiatrist calls it a “disease of the imagination.” Fear and disabling Worry can start off like a tiny seed and, watered by thoughts that emphasize worst-case scenarios, grow into a virus-like fiend that ends up dominating our mental state. It then holds us back from our ability to enjoy nearly every dimension of our life: our talents, our work, our love, our play, and our approach to a life in the Spirit.

This website is dedicated to three major Defense Systems that can be effective in helping us overcome the insidious nature of fear, as well as other mental health demons like depression. It will also focus on how we can better live out our lives free of those persistent foragers that roam throughout the corners of our minds… relentlessly haunting us.

Those three Defense Systems are: Spirituality, Psychology and Addiction. All three of these provide newly developed means of delving into the root causes of fear and depression and other mental health disorders, and assisting people in finding improved pathways to freedom, joy, and peace.

“Do not be afraid” – a phrase found 365 times in Sacred Scripture!

*Luke 12:32; translation found in The Bible in Contemporary Language, Eugene H. Peterson

Recent Posts

  • A Religion of Impossibilities?

    Pigs Fly. People walk on walls. Catfish play the trumpet. All among things that are impossible, most would agree. Then there are the theoretical or apparent impossibilities. World Peace. Democrats …

  • Figuring the Odds

    Many of you, when studying physics or math, may recall learning about Blaise Pascal, the French mathematician, philosopher, physicist and theologian who lived from 1623 to 1662. Pascal came up …

  • God: Busy Elsewhere?

    In “Darkest Hour,” a Netflix movie about Second World-War England, Winston Churchill – the frumpish prime minister who rallied his country to resist the Nazis – told King George VI: …

  • The Benefits of Thankfulness

    This blog, as they say in show biz, is partly an encore performance; that is, it’s partly from a Thanksgiving blog I wrote in 2016. (Hey, the blog is free!) …

  • “Religion Pure and Undefiled”

    Pardon me if I’ve told this story before. On one of my trips to rural El Salvador with fellow parishioners from Iowa, I was walking down a dirt road – …

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mm Ted

Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Jul 16, 2016

“Mary has chosen the better part. Lk. 10:43”   In 1983, the movie Yentl made its first appearance in American theaters. Starring Barbara Streisand, it told the story of...

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How Could God Allow Dallas, Baton Rouge, St. Paul?

Jul 14, 2016

I once had a heated conversation with a police officer on the subject of evil, specifically, whether some people are simply evil, as he contended, or whether as I...

mm Ted

Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Jul 12, 2016

“And who is my neighbor?” Lk:10:29   Is there a more pertinent question in America today than: Who is my neighbor? Sadly, we are a divided people. We are...

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Slip Slidin Away

Jul 07, 2016

My parents’ scare tactic for encouraging their five children to study was that if we didn’t, we could wind up being “ditch diggers.” That occupation was relatively rare even...

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Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Jul 05, 2016

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mm Tom Carney

Where Did We Get the Idea of God?

Jun 30, 2016

People searching for God have probably asked themselves this question at one time or another. And the short answer is, it depends on whose god you’re talking about. Worship...

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Can You Get Over an Addiction?

Jun 28, 2016

Article posted in the New York Times (click the link below):

mm Tom Carney

When “Common Wisdom” Fails Us

Jun 23, 2016

“Cleanliness,” my mother used to say, “is next to godliness.” My mother grew up in a poor family. Her father abandoned his wife and six children so my grandmother had...