Think!

"I do not believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reasons, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."

-Galileo Galilei

An Atheism Of Sorrow

Father Ranier Cantalamessa, preacher to the papal household, in a recent essay:
“The world of today knows a new category of people: the atheists in good faith, those who live painfully the situation of the silence of God, who do not believe in God but do not boast about it; rather they experience the existential anguish and the lack of meaning of everything: They too, in their own way, live in the dark night of the spirit. Albert Camus called them “the saints without God.” The mystics exist above all for them; they are their travel and table companions. Like Jesus, they “sat down at the table of sinners and ate with them” (see Luke 15:2). This explains the passion with which certain atheists, once converted, pore over the writings of the mystics: Claudel, Bernanos, the two Maritains, L. Bloy, the writer J.K. Huysmans and so many others over the writings of Angela of Foligno; T.S. Eliot over those of Julian of Norwich. There they find again the same scenery that they had left, but this time illuminated by the sun. . . . The word “atheist” can have an active and a passive meaning. It can indicate someone who rejects God, but also one who—at least so it seems to him—is rejected by God. In the first case, it is a blameworthy atheism (when it is not in good faith), in the second an atheism of sorrow or of expiation.”

Think It Through.

A Theologians job is to make sure that if Christian Faith is rejected, it is rejected for authetic reasons.

My Hierarchy of Values: God, People, Apple and Starbucks!

My Favorite Prayer

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”
Thomas Merton

The Task Of The Parish

More than a century ago, Cardinal Newman, the great leader of Catholicism's revival in England, said, "I want a laity ... who know their faith, who enter into it, who know just where they stand, who know what they hold and what they do not, who know their creed so well that they can give an account of it and who know enough of history to defend it. I want an intelligent, well-instructed laity." My hope is that every Catholic will be able to articulate their faith in convincing and intelligent ways, and show by their living example the compelling truth of the Gospel and church teaching.
Cardinal John Henry Neuman

Hope In Action

All serious and upright human conduct is hope in action. . . . Yet our daily efforts in pursuing our own lives and in working for the world's future either tire us or turn into fanaticism, unless we are enlightened by the radiance of the great hope that cannot be destroyed even by small-scale failures or by a breakdown in matters of historic importance. If we cannot hope for more than is effectively attainable at any given time, or more than is promised by political or economic authorities, our lives will soon be without hope.
Benedict XVI

Think Different

Well Said!

There is no need to glorify a pope in order to live with him in peace and obedience.

Karl Rahner