Recently, I learned that in some academic circles students are taught that ‘Christian privilege’ allows Christians to enjoy certain rights and advantages not easily accessible to non-Christians. True or not, those who propound this position find it scandalous. How does one respond to such a…
Category: Advancing the Kingdom
The Proclamation of Life in a Missionary Perspective
This lecture on preaching the Gospel of Life, was delivered on February 13 in London at the University of Notre Dame London Campus and was sponsored by “Catholic Voices,” an organized initiative whose purpose is to enable and provide effective media and public square communication…
Human Dignity and Bioethics Lecture
This lecture was delivered in Oxford at “Blackfriars” on February 12. Blackfriars is the historic Dominican presence at Oxford University, dating its original founding to 1221. It is a Dominican Priory, a House of Studies associated with the University of St. Thomas-Angelicum in Rome, and…
“The glory of God is man fully alive”
Many will recognize this quotation as that of St. Irenaeus, the second century bishop of Lyons. It is also the motto of a new school in the Philadelphia suburbs, Martin Saints Catholic High School. With pleasure I bring to your attention the exceptional approach with…
Posterity’s prosperity
Recently I came across an editorial celebrating the extent to which progress has flourished in the world over the past two centuries. Supported by impressive statistical research its author cites the extraordinary advances the world has experienced in numerous ways. These include the lengthening of…
The Gadarene Swine Fallacy
When I was very young I was taught that to be a ‘good’ child I had to be ‘nice’ to my brothers and sisters. The two adjectives were interchangeable. Then when I was in middle school the shared synonymy of the two words was sundered.…
Wordless Trees
At breakfast one morning this past week, I overheard my nine-year-old granddaughter mention she would be auditioning for a Christmas pageant in her school that afternoon. Officious grandparent that I am, I promptly volunteered advice on elocution and the importance of diction, projection, volume, et…
In the mist of mystery
It has been written that Truth, Beauty and Love are the celestial triumvirate that surrounds the throne of God. This poetic imagery prompts this novel (for me at least) reflection. According to a catechetical definition, God is infinite knowledge, infinite power and infinite love. One…
Mocking the sacred
A few days ago I read about a Hollywood celebration in which a well known television personality who – while accepting a coveted award for her talent – made fun of Jesus Christ by stating he had nothing to do with her success. Presumably, she…
The pastoral uselessness of Christology
Taken out of context this phrase is understandably provocative. However, its author, an eminent church historian, employs it with reference to the church’s disproportionate attention to academic theology at the expense of pastoral ministry before Vatican II – an imbalance that Pope John XXIII (now…