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A Church That Defends Science

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Google Image For 10 years at a regional newspaper, I wrote about medicine and health, despite having a rather weak background in science. The newspaper’s editor-in-chief believed I would well represent the majority of readers on that score and better be able to explain scientific topics to the average reader. I don’t know if I accomplished that, but I tried. I wrote my articles with my dad in mind, an avid reader of the newspaper. He was a smart guy but had only a 10 th grade education. The job was a tremendous educational experience, so much so that I often thought – but never mentioned it to my bosses, of course – that I should be paying the newspaper instead of the other way around. Everyday Exposure During that time, I took some college courses on scientific subjects, but it was the everyday exposure to science and scientists that was most valuable. I wrote about medical breakthroughs; watched innovative surgeries; covered statewide, and sometimes nationwide, controversies abo...
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Bigotry with a Brogue

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A bonfire with an effigy of migrants in a boat before it was set on fire this month in Northern Ireland. Google Image A story in last week’s news was about a beautiful town in Northern Ireland called Ballymena. I happen to have visited there years ago with my long-time, dear friend, Fr. Gerald Waris, whose maternal grandfather was from the town. Ballymena evidently has long been a hot bed of religious strife. I vividly recall that one of Gerald’s relatives, who was Catholic, told us that a committee of men had to spend nights in the parish church to keep anti-Catholics from defacing it. Now comes another type of strife – one to which Americans can better relate: anti-immigrant bigotry. Rioters and masked thugs have burned buildings, including immigrant homes, in and around Ballymena. A huge effigy of a boatload of immigrants was also set afire. Millions of Irish Emigrants The irony here is that Ireland, including Northern Ireland whence Gerald, and my ancestors hailed, was amon...
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Seeing the World Afresh

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Google Image This is third and final blog in a series on an interview with Rowan Williams in the New York Times that was so cogent, so relevant to my goal of helping people searching for God that I don’t want to deprive the blog’s readers of any of his wisdom. For those unfamiliar with him, Williams is a theologian and former Archbishop of Canterbury - principal leader of the Church of England . The Times s tory, is entitled, “ The New Atheists Attack a God I Don’t Believe In, Either.” Throughout the ages, Christians have had so many ways of describing Jesus, and ways he describes himself in the gospels – the Son of Man, the Son of God, the Savior, the Lord, the Suffering Servant, to name a few. But Jesus was also a great storyteller, and that aspect was an important element in his mission. He knew that we humans are more engaged by stories than by direct preaching. “One of the things that people seem to have remembered about Jesus,” said Williams, “is that he told extremely good...
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Loving in an Age of Darkness

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Google Image This blog is second in a series on an interview with Rowan Williams in the New York Times that was so cogent, so relevant to my goal of helping people searching for God that I don’t want to deprive the blog’s readers of any of his wisdom. So, I’m using the interview in successive blogs. For those of you unfamiliar with him, Williams is a poet, theologian and former Archbishop of Canterbury - principal leader of the Church of England . The Times s tory, is entitled, “ The New Atheists Attack a God I Don’t Believe In, Either.” Back when I was in the seminary, studying to be a priest, one of my classmates and I got into a conversation in which he said regarding my faith: “It must be nice to be so certain, to be so sure of it all.” I denied such certainty but without providing details. Fact is, I struggled with faith during my time in the seminary and have done so much of my life. Mostly through centering prayer , I believe I’m getting better at recognizing God in others, ...
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The Chocolate Teapot Circling the Earth

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Google Image For the next few weeks, this blog, Skeptical Faith, will be a bit different. That’s because I recently read in the New York Times an interview with Rowan Williams that was so cogent, so relevant to my goal of helping people searching for God that I don’t want to deprive the blog’s readers of any of his wisdom. So, I’ll be using the interview in the next few blogs. For those of you unfamiliar with him, Williams is a poet, theologian and former Archbishop of Canterbury - principal leader of the Church of England  and ceremonial head  of the worldwide Anglican Communion . The Times story is entitled “ The New Atheists Attack a God I Don’t Believe In, either” and the interviewer is Peter Wehner,  a contributing opinion writer for the Times. A recent Skeptical Faith blog reported on the benefits of watching “The Chosen,” the wildly successful movie about the life Jesus, the fifth season of which is available on several streaming video sites. Strugg...
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What is an “Intrinsic” Christian?

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Google Image Back in 2006, Author Dannagal Young sprinkled her husband’s bath towel with holy water while he was showering. She got the holy water from a friend, who tried the same thing on her husband, who also had cancer, and he survived. So Young decided to try it as well. A former Catholic, Young describes herself and her husband, Mike, as agnostics, but, she wrote in a recent issue of the New York Times about the holy water, “It couldn’t hurt, right?” She said she “tapped into my childhood Catholicism and faith in a benevolent God as I pictured the magic water covering him with a protective layer.” She did this without his knowledge and acknowledges he “would have been very annoyed” had he known.    Mike had what Young describes as “ a benign tumor that had nonetheless taken over his midbrain,” and he died several months after the failed “holy-water therapy.” She describes her frustration with medical solutions at the time but says she now realizes that “science and m...
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An Obstacle in the Search for God?

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Google Image I’ve written about sexual subjects only a few times in the 12 years I’ve been writing this blog. Why? Shouldn’t every aspect of life be included among topics meant to help people searching for God? Yes, but when it comes to religious teachings, I believe sexual values have traditionally been overemphasized. “Morality,” in fact, has often been used solely to refer to sex. But current sexual mores – at least as portrayed on TV, in movies and streaming video – are, in my opinion, hard to sync with Christian or Jewish ideas of right and wrong and with the goals of people searching for God. Dramas, sitcoms, crime shows inevitably view sex as little more than recreation. Whenever romance is portrayed, it almost always includes one or more sex scenes, often on first encounters or dates. Merely Reflecting Reality? Producers of these shows will undoubtedly say they are merely reflecting contemporary reality. That’s partly true in so much as their shows portray a segment of s...
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