Publisher @OrbisBooks, saint-whisperer @GiveUsThisDayLP. #TolstoysTalesofTrump. #MastersofSocialIsolation. Seeking meaning in the sacred and the absurd.
Joined December 2016
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As if: if only we could put this unpleasantness behind us and get back to the real business of defending the deposit of faith against secularism, relativism, and atheism. It was that orientation that caused the Vatican to miss the real scandal under their noses.
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Fr George Zabelka died on April 11 1992. He was chaplain at the air base on Tinian Island, the launching pad in August 1945 for the firebombing of Tokyo and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He came to believe he had failed in his deepest duty as a Catholic priest.
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During a retreat in 1973, after many years in parish ministry, he confronted Jesus' teachings on the love of enemies and decided he must either "accept what Christ said or deny him completely." From that point, his ministry was devoted to the message of nonviolence.
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He saw his own acceptance of the Bomb as an extension of the church's long silence and acquiescence in the face of state violence: "heir to a Christianity that had for seventeen hundred years engaged in revenge, murder, torture, the pursuit of power, all in the name of our Lord."
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"Communion with Christ cannot be established on disobedience to his clearest teachings." His witness helped inspire the US bishops to undertake their pastoral letter, "The Challenge of Peace." #PaxChristi
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Among the odd notes in B16’s letter on sex abuse crisis is where he offers an excursus on the proper reading of Mk 9:42 (better if a great millstone): not about innocent children, but protecting the faithful from the “intellectual arrogance of those who think they are clever.”
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Thank you for an incisive response. The letter also fails to account for a case like Cardinal Law--who arrayed himself as a model of orthodoxy and champion of moral order--who nevertheless egregiously shielded offenders, betrayed victims, called down "God's power" on the media.
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Yet he offers not a single word of insight or remorse about his own failures, or how clerical culture contributed to a system that placed a higher value on avoiding "scandal" or protecting priests than on protecting innocent children. He has learned nothing. Sad.
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While Law was treated as a model of orthodoxy and moral rectitude, he was presiding over one of the greatest scandals in the history of the church. Pope B blames the failings of moral theologians and laments a time when "my own books were hidden away," in certain seminaries. ..
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His tomb is in the Jesuit cemetery on the grounds of what is now, believe it or not, the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, NY (originally a Jesuit seminary). His grave is indistinguishable from those of his confreres. I took the photo attached to my tweet.
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Howard Thurman, mystic, theologian, minister, activist, and grandson of slaves, died on April 10, 1981. Martin Luther King said he carried Thurman's "Jesus and the Disinherited" with him on every demonstration. From @OrbisBooks here are two books: bit.ly/2X1II7I
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Today, on the anniversary of the death of Teilhard de Chardin on April 10, NASA released the first photo of a Black Hole. Here is a new book on the role of struggle in Teilhard's thought as well as his biography. For other Teilhard titles @OrbisBooks see: bit.ly/2GegL71
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He sought to reconcile the cosmic mysticism of St Paul with insights of evolution and cosmology. He saw the universe in the widest perspective: the explosion of stars, the violent formation of land masses. He saw a similar process in the life of individuals.
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In this process we are formed not only by our conscious choices but also by what we undergo—what he called the principle of “passive diminishment.” We are shaped and measured by our defeats as well as our achievements; our weakness and strengths: what we do and what we endure.
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That includes the “barrier that blocks our way, the wall that hems us in.” Failure for the saints “plays the part of the elevator for an aircraft or the pruning knife for a plant. It canalizes the sap of our inward life...in such a way as to make us shoot up higher, straighter.”
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Teilhard was forbidden by his Superiors to teach, lecture, or publish any writings during his life. “I begin to think that my function is that of St John the Baptist, one who presages what is to come...or simply to help in the birth of a new soul in that which already is.”
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