Since late winter / early spring, I have been teaching the high school Sunday School class at the parish to which I am assigned. I have enjoyed it. At the same time, I have chosen to take a non-standard approach. So, we have discussed movies like: Divergent, Hunger Games, Twilight, The Hobbit, and Lord of […]

All of us are guilty of making contradictory statements. We try to avoid them (unless we are politicians), and try to correct ourselves when possible. However, increasingly, I am seeing contradictory statements that are clear enough that it should not be necessary to point out that they are contradictory statements. Worse, there is even a […]

This is a bit of a parallel piece to a post on Internetmonk called Conversations in the Great Hall. Let me start with the same quote from C.S. Lewis with which the other article started: I hope no reader will suppose that “mere” Christianity is here put forward as an alternative to the creeds of […]

The comic above has a very accurate point when one character says, “In our haste to render each other in the worst possible way, we’re actually creating self-portraits.” We are at a particularly particularly frustrating-for-me time in the history of this country. We are not listening to each other. We are not using logic. We […]

As children many of us were taught to say our evening prayers. Often they were little short phrases, as befits a child learning to pray. And so we would say prayers like: Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, If I shall die before I wake, I […]

While a bit of a cliché, there is some significant truth to the quote above. “The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.” Scripture and Holy Tradition both tells us over and over again that we are imperfect. That means that we sin. More […]

Many Americans do not realize the strength of Eastern Orthodoxy in the Eastern part of Europe going on through to Siberia, the border with China, etc. And, because we do not, we often do not realize that there is a partially different way of thinking because of the different religious approaches of the East and […]

Catholic Republicans are developing a pope problem. Earlier this month, Francis recognized Palestinian statehood. This summer, he’s going to issue an encyclical condemning environmental degradation. And in September, just as the GOP primary race heats up, Francis will travel to Washington to address Congress on climate change. Francis may be popular with the general public, […]

Lately Cuba has been undergoing change. And, by lately, I mean over the last decade or so. But, this makes life difficult for any Cuban who left Cuba in the time immediately after the revolution (and over the next two decades). You see, there is a battle between the emotional memories of what happened to […]

I like the comic above because it reminds me of Jesus talking to the rich young ruler. Now a certain ruler asked Him, saying, “Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” So Jesus said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One,that is, God. You know the […]