A Sound of Sheer Silence

1. Early on in his journey toward God, St. Francis found himself near the small chapel of San Damiano (St. Damian), about a half mile south of Assisi.  St. Bonaventure's Life of Francis  says that San Damiano was in disrepair, "on account of its great age."  First off, we should probably put "great age" in perspective.  The original San Damiano probably dates to the end of the 11th or beginning of the 12th Century, so by the time Francis comes upon it in 1205, it is 100, maybe 150, years old.  That's certainly not nothing, but from the perspective of the history of the Christian church--even from the perspective of Francis's time--it is relatively recent. Nevertheless, San Damiano was in disrepair by the time Francis arrives.  We are conditioned, or at least I was conditioned, to think of our time as some sort of uniquely problematic period in the history of Christianity.  Christianity is in decline, Millennials are leaving in droves, nothing is a...

The Rule and life of these brothers is this: namely, to live in obedience and chastity, and without property, and to follow the doctrine and footsteps of our Lord Jesus Christ, who says: "If thou wilt be perfect, go sell what thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven, and come, follow Me." And: "If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me;" in like manner: "If any man come to Me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple."  "And everyone that hath left father or mother, brothers or sisters, or wife, or children or lands, for My sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall possess life everlasting." --First Rule of the Friars Minor, Paragraph 1 (~1212 A.D.) To outside observers, the notion that Christianity should have a focus on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ would...

It is basically impossible to live a day without hearing something about Islam and the Muslim world.  And much of what we hear is disturbing.  We see terrible violence in Syria, primarily Muslim-on-Muslim, and that violence is spreading to other countries (including the U.S.) from ISIS and other radical groups.  Iran and Saudi Arabia, perhaps the two most high-profile Muslim nations, seem to be on the brink of war, if they are not already at war.  Meanwhile, there are calls from political leaders in the U.S. to round-up American Muslims, including American citizens, because they represent an existential threat to the country. Truthfully, I don't know what to make of much of this.  I believe strongly and completely that for the government to discriminate against Muslims in the United States on the basis of their religion would be to surrender the very thing that makes this country what it is.  Beyond that, it has dawned on me that I do not know enough ...

The bombshell on the "religious Internet" this week was a new study from the Pew Forum, looking at trends in religious identification ("The Religious Landscape Study").   You can dig through the data to your heart's content here. In short, the two big takeaways are that lots of people are leaving Christianity for no religion, and that Catholicism is not doing appreciably better than the Mainline (and even the Evangelicals are showing cracks).  Lots and lots of people have expounded on these topics and broken them down in various ways, so much so that I don't really have much to add.  Instead, I want to talk a little bit about the notion of leaving and staying in a religion. It is true that I will attend religious services on Sunday in the same religious tradition that I was raised in.  But to say that I have "remained" a Catholic implies a straight line from being baptized to the present day, and that is simply not true.  My arc is something li...

To me, the coolest part of Catholicism is the saints.  Note that I didn't say the best part--by definition, the best part is the whole business of God becoming man, dying, and rising from the dead.  That's the best part.  But the saints are the coolest and most interesting part of Catholicism, because they express the diversity of the "catholic" or universal church.  There are people from every part of the world, from every time, and from every situation. But it is not simply about diversity for diversity's sake.  The diversity means that the saints provide a variety of ways to be a Catholic and to be holy.  While ultimately each of them is talking about the same God, they talk about it in different ways.  These different ways of talking about God mean that different people will find different saints speak to them more than other saints.  That's a feature and not a bug--you don't have to "click" with every saint. In hindsight, I think one o...

First off, I have it on good authority that my post " The Moral Theology of the Devil " was discussed during the course of a first date.  It is flattering that someone is reading my writing, but I suspect such a relationship is doomed from the start if that is a relevant topic.  Still, good on you, I guess. Anyway, two additional thoughts along these lines.  The first one is that the Moral Theology of the Devil plays on human resistance to what I believe is the most difficult teaching of Christianity (and, probably, all of Abrahamic monotheism)--God loves everyone equally.  I remember a lecture from Tom O'Meara, a Dominican theologian, who explained that people want to be convinced that they "have more God" then others.  But no one has more God than anyone else.  God is the creator of everyone, and so everyone is equally loved. If you look at traditional religions, with their panoply of gods and spirits, the entire purpose of religion is to generat...