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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

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mm Ted

Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Jul 17, 2022

“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 a...

mm Ted

Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Jul 17, 2022

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

mm Ted

Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Jul 17, 2022

“… rejoice because your names are written in heaven.” Lk 10:20 Remember the Baltimore Catechism? Those of you raised as Catholics in the 1940’s and ‘50’s are likely nodding...

mm Tom Carney

The Gospel of the Little Prince

Jul 14, 2022

This is an “encore” edition of Skeptical Faith. Hopefully, a new essay will be available next week. Attention all those concerned only with “matters of great consequence:” Is it...

mm Tom Carney

When Is It Politics and Not Religion?

Jul 07, 2022

A recent article in the New York Times reports on Gustavo García-Siller, the Catholic archbishop of San Antonio, TX, and his advocacy for gun control in a state where...

mm Tom Carney

Get-R-Done

Jun 30, 2022

In the midst of a recent heat wave, my wife, Amparo, and I chose to paint our tool shed in the back yard. Ill-conceived timing maybe, but for various...

mm Ted

Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Jun 26, 2022

“And to another Jesus said, ‘Follow me.’ But he replied, ‘I will follow you, Lord, but let me go first and bury my father.’ But Jesus answered him, ‘Let...

mm Tom Carney

The Bugaboo of Our Own Limitations

Jun 23, 2022

I don’t fly often but I was recently on a flight when a man in front of me on the boarding bridge got my attention. I had notice him...