Skeptical Faith

Google Image Most of us have experienced bullies, the kids who pick on other kids in school and other places. We’ve seen such bullies smack other kids, brazenly take a kid’s lunch or call a vulnerable child an insulting name. That's injustice. But if a teacher observes such behavior and does nothing, or the teacher reports it to the school administrators and they do nothing, that’s structural injustice. If we look closely, we can see structural injustice on a large scale in our society. It’s so pervasive, however, you may not be able to see the forest for the trees. The pandemic has made it easier to see, clearly showing that structural injustice is the “pre-existing condition” that has made the nation so vulnerable. Is This About Politics? Whoa! Is this a blog about the search for God or about politics? The fact that “justice” is debated by both political parties, or the fact that most of us think only about public safety when we hear or read justice, doesn’t make it politic...

Google Image We live in an age of outrage. It’s on the left and the right. People seem to be easily appalled, shocked, dismayed and insulted, and they seem to want others to know it. Many people promote outrage, urging others to feel disrespected by some event or words. It’s common to see partisan headlines, especially in the social media, that scream, “Where is the outrage?” People seem to get off on seeing and reporting the “outrageous.” “One reason inequality today seems to thrust us into an endless cycle of outrage and revolt,” writes Tom Deignan in the National Catholic Reporter, “is because too many people on all sides have convinced themselves that whatever fresh outrage dominates Twitter on a given day is not only apocalyptic, but unprecedented.” Natural Responses? But shouldn’t we feel outrage? Considering what’s going on in society, and in our world, shouldn’t we feel indignation, even anger? Aren’t those natural responses? And doesn’t the lack of outrage signal emotion...

Google Image In watching the media coverage of the death of civil rights leader, non-violence advocate and Congressman John Lewis, I was moved by the courage shown by Lewis and other “trouble makers” in confronting the racist practices and laws of 1960s America. How many of us would be willing to defend our views in the face of hatefulness, clubs, vicious dogs, fire hoses, spitting and hitting and all the indignities foisted on people like Lewis who decided that enough was enough?   It reminded me of other courageous people I admire, like Thomas More, a lawyer, who in the 16 th century opposed and was executed by the infamous Henry VIII; Franz Jaggerstatter, the Austrian layman who stood up to Hitler’s killing machine and was also executed for his trouble; and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a brilliant Lutheran theologian and anti-Nazi who also paid with his life. Motivated by Their Faith Like Lewis, a Baptist minister, all of them were motivated by their faith. And they spoke and wro...

Google Image My friend, Terry Bruce, recently reminded me of a sort of tongue-in-cheek creed of journalists: “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.” Those words, in fact, were on a sign a reporter had fixed to the side of his desk in the newsroom where I worked. It was a daily reminder that in writing and reporting – and in life – nothing should be taken for granted. A mother’s pledge of love, of course, can’t be “checked out” like the words of a politician or the unfulfilled promise of a corporation. And it’s not subject to the scrutiny you might expect of a scientist. Few people doubt their mother’s love, however. A mother “proves” her love through her affection, her actions on our behalf and her steadfastness, sort of like the way our relationship to God is described by traditional religion. And sort of like the way we can’t “prove” the beauty and value of art, music, philosophy and nature. Goes Beyond Faith provides a way of looking at the world and of our place ...

Google Image A few years ago, Eilene Zimmerman decided she wanted to help her estranged husband who obviously needed it. But she was shocked when she went to his home and found him dead on his bathroom floor. The cause: A hidden intravenous drug addiction. “It was, without question, the most traumatic event of my life,” Zimmerman wrote in a recent article in the New York Times. “I had two teenage children at the time,” and she had taken them with her. “It turns out that awful time in my life was good training for a pandemic, for political and social upheaval, for economic and financial uncertainty. The experience taught me that I never really know what’s going to happen next. I plan as best I can, but now I’m far more able to pivot my thinking. I have the capacity to cope with more of life’s unexpected slings and arrows, to accept the difficulties I face and keep going, even though it can be hard.” A Difficult Quality How we manage crises, traumatic events or unexpected hard time...

Mother and Daughter in Tamanique, El Salvador Padre Blas Escobar is the parish priest in the town of Tamanique in El Salvador. I began communicating with him only a few months ago because though the church I attend has a long-time relationship with that community – providing scholarships, mostly for high school students through a collaborative organization - we haven’t had a strong relationship with our sister parish there. We recently learned, however, that besides the disaster of the pandemic, many Tamanique residents were hit with the effects of a strong Pacific Ocean hurricane and needed extra help. We sent money, both to the organization we work with and to Padre Blas, who responded with photos of the people who he helped with our funds and the essentials they bought with them. We now have a personal relationship with someone we know will make sure that whatever funds we provide go to people who really need help. Actually, There Are Many Problems Most of us understand the ne...

St. Kateri Tekakwitha Google Image A monk at Conception Abbey in Missouri told this well-known story in a homily at a Mass I viewed online. In a rite of passage, a native-American father takes his son into the forest and blindfolds him. He requires the boy to sit on a stump the whole night and not remove the blindfold until the rays of the morning sun shine through it. If he survives the night, he is a man.   But he can’t cry out for help, and he can’t tell other boys of his experience because each lad must come into manhood on his own.   The boy is naturally terrified. He can hear all kinds of noises. Wild beasts must surely be all around him. Maybe even some human might do him harm. The wind blows the grass and earth, and shakes his stump, but stoically, he never removes the blindfold.   Finally, after a horrific night, the sun appears and he removes his blindfold. He discovers his father sitting on the stump next to him, apparently there throughout ...