Welcome!

“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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Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Oct 26, 2018

  “Master, I want to see.” Mk. 10:51 Blindness. Perhaps no other theme haunts the Gospels more than blindness. It appears again and again in story after story. Recently,...

mm Tom Carney

Saints? What’s the Point?

Oct 25, 2018

If you visit the small, Central American country of El Salvador, you’ll notice in prominent places huge images of Oscar Romero, sometimes alongside an image of Ernesto “Che” Guevara....

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Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Oct 12, 2018

  “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” Mk. 10:23 The World Series is right around the corner. So, here’s a...

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So Near, Yet So Far

Oct 11, 2018

There’s a story in the Acts of the Apostles – in my view, the most interesting book in the Bible – about the Apostle Paul walking around the Areopagus...

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Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Oct 06, 2018

  “Is it lawful for a husband to divorce his wife?” Mk 10:2   Listen to these heart-rending words of a 43-year-old mother: “’Are you trying to tell me...

mm Tom Carney

Sins of our Fathers (and Mothers)

Oct 04, 2018

A few weeks ago, I watched a film on Netflix called “The End of the Tour.” Released in 2015, it “received widespread acclaim from critics,” according to Wikipedia, and...

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Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Sep 28, 2018

  “If your hand causes you to sin, chop it off …. If your foot causes you to sin, cut it off … If your eye causes you to...

mm Tom Carney

Better or Worse Off?

Sep 27, 2018

This is a question often asked the public during presidential election campaigns. Do you think the country is better or worse off than four years ago? It’s a question...