Tag: featured

Prophet and loss

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On Saturday, Harold Camping proved himself to be a false prophet when no rapture materialized…

Three days before the supposed event, I wrote the following:

When the predictions of such groups fail to come true and Jesus inconveniently decides not to turn up, excuses are usually given e.g. “Jesus did return, but did so invisibly!”.  I’m guessing that probably the same thing will happen with Christian Family Radio on May 22nd.

I just read the following:

“Radio evangelist Harold Camping said in a special broadcast Monday night on his radio program Open Forum that his predicted May 21, 2011 Rapture was ‘an invisible judgment day’ that he has come to understand as a spiritual, rather than physical event.”

Straight out of the Jehovah Witness play book! Camping’s prophetic credentials seem to be shot, but mine are looking pretty good, hey? 🙂

Stuff I’ve Had To Learn: Sun Beats Wind

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I’ve been thinking a lot about Aesop’s Fables recently, and one fable in particular which was read to me as a child. I remember the pictures in the book and the story vividly:

“The Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger. Suddenly they saw a traveller coming down the road, and the Sun said:

‘I see a way to decide our dispute. Whichever of us can cause that traveller to take off his cloak shall be regarded as the stronger. You begin.’

So the Sun retired behind a cloud, and the Wind began to blow as hard as it could upon the traveller. But the harder he blew the more closely did the traveller wrap his cloak round him, till at last, the Wind had to give up.

Then the Sun came out and shone in all his glory upon the traveller, who soon found it too hot to walk with his cloak on and took it off.”

I think there’s something intrinsic to human nature which makes us believe that the best way of bringing someone around to our way of thinking is through confrontation and force. Even though this rarely works, we persist in using this approach, probably because it looks like the most direct approach and therefore the most efficient means of achieving a favourable outcome.

However, as this fable teaches, gentleness, kindness and persuasion are often more effective tools than direct force. This is because when we try and force someone to do our will, that person will resist all the more. When we attack, that person will automatically get defensive and when we try to wrestle a belief away from someone, that person will usually only cling to it all the more.

The difficulty is that being “The Sun”, rather than the “The Wind”, is hard… Patience is required because results are often not immediately visible. When we feel someone has an incorrect opinion, our pride all too often gets in the way and we become harsh as we try to “fix” this person.  Finally, treating someone with gentleness is often costly, particularly when we feel we have been wronged or treated badly. Yet, if we are seeking a beneficial and peaceful end, gentleness is what is required:

“A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger…The soothing tongue is a tree of life, but a perverse tongue crushes the spirit…” – Proverbs 15:1, 4

Intercession

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A while ago in our Young Adult group we were talking about praying before the Eucharist (“Adoration”) and I had asked the question “What do you actually do during Adoration?”

Some of the group spoke about reading Scripture.

Others spoke about praying the rosary.

One girl beautifully described it as “…just having quality Father/Daughter time”.

One word which was absent from the discussion was “Intercession”. It got me to thinking. How often do I regularly pray for those in my life? My family? My friends? My co-workers? What about the employees of the shops where I purchase my morning coffee or lunchtime sandwich? How often do I intercede for these people? Almost certainly not as much as I should…

My friend Art went to Lourdes and took with him prayer requests from his friends here in California…

So, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is this: this week, especially during Adoration, I’d invite you to spend a little bit of time interceding for those people you know – friends, family, country…favourite bloggers.

Restless Pilgrim Tour 2017

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microphoneNow that I’ve finished the Camino, the most common question I hear is: what are you going to do now?

I still have a couple more weeks in England, but after that I will be flying back to the United States in time for Thanksgiving. I’m going to be based in San Diego but I’m planning to do a little more travelling. I don’t have the moniker of “Restless Pilgrim” for nothing…

I’m intending to travel around the States, seeing friends and revisiting some of my favourite cities, as well as exploring some of the places which have remained too long on my “To Do” list…

The goal of these trips isn’t simply to be a tourist. I will have to get a job again at some point, so I will be talking the opportunity to meet with local companies and possibly do some job interviews. However, the thing I’m really looking forward to is serving at local churches along the way.

In the past I’ve spoken at “Theology On Tap” (Example #1 | Example #2), led Bible studies and organized swing and salsa evenings. I’d love to make myself useful and offer my services in these areas, free-of-change, as I travel around the States. I don’t need a stipend or travel expenses.

So, if you’d like me to come to your parish, please forward this link to the relevant person at your parish and send me an email. It could be at Diocese Young Adult event. It could be at a parish mission or at your parish’s Bible Study or discussion group. Let me know where you are in the States, and I’ll do my best to make sure that I can be in your part of the country at the right time! References are available upon request.

Catholic Life

Mass Appeal: The Liturgy is the greatest thing ever!
Do you find Mass dull? In this talk I explain why the Mass is amazing and what you can do to get more out of it.

Social Media & Your Soul
How can we use Social Media and the Internet without being used by them?

How I met your (Blessed) Mother (Listen)
I will be talking about how I came to know Mary, even after years of struggling with the Church’s teaching on the Blessed Mother. In this talk I will be offering some suggestions on how we might grow in our love for Mary and come to understand her role in Salvation History more deeply.

Evangelism

Catholics Come Home: Drawing the lapsed back to the Church
Based on a previous blog series, here I tell a little bit of my own story and discuss what you might do to try and draw people back to the Church.

Evangelization for the terrified (Listen here)
Jesus told his disciples to go out to the whole world and share the Good News. If it’s “Good News”, why does that seem so scary?! In this talk I explain why we shouldn’t be shared of doing evangelization and give some very practical tools for speaking to your friends and family about the Faith.

Apologetics for the confused
What do you say when someone asks you why you’re Catholic? In this talk I go through a few key principles to employ when being called upon to defend what you believe.

Knock, knock. Who’s there?
What do you do when a Jehovah Witness or Mormon comes to your door? Over the course of this talk, I explain the origins of these groups and give some guidance on how to speak with them in a constructive way.

No God but God: An introduction to Islam
Approximately 23% of the world’s population identify as Muslim, but many Christians know relatively little about Islam. In this talk I provide an overview of the religion, as well as its similarities and dissimilarities to Catholicism.

Church History

The Worship of the Early Church (Listen here)
What did the first Christians do when they gathered together? If you could travel back in time to the end of the First Century and attend a Christian gathering, would you feel out-of-place?

Was the Early Church Catholic?
I’ll trace the roots of Catholic thought, theology and practice in the first few centuries of Christianity.

Blood & Ink: How the Early Church conquered the world (Listen here)
How did a small Jewish sect, started in the First Century, whose founder was publicly executed, manage to conquer the might of the Roman Empire? In this talk, I explain how the first Christians witnessed to Jesus both in their writing, lives and martyrdom, thereby winning the world for Christ.

Solving today’s problems with ancient wisdom
In this talk, I look at how the problems which face the Church today can be addressed using the wisdom of the first Christians, the Early Church Fathers.

Mary and the Early Church
Come to appreciate the Mother of God through the witness of the Early Church.

Women in the Early Church
We often hear about the Church Fathers, but were there mothers too? In this talk I look at the lives of some of the most important female figures in the Early Church.

Scripture

Reading Sacred Scripture for all its worth (Listen here)
How do Catholics read the Bible? What can you do to get the more out of Scripture at Mass? If you want to grow more familiar with the Biblical texts, where do you start?

Big Picture Bible: Salvation History in 60 minutes
If someone asked you to explain the overarching story of the Bible, what would you say? In the space of an hour I run through the story of salvation history and help give a framework for making sense of individual stories.

Hidden Treasure: How the Old Testament is unveiled in the New (Listen here)
This is an exploration of “Biblical Typology”, the way of reading Scripture which was developed by the Early Church Fathers, seeing in the Old Testament foreshadowings of the events of Christ, His Mother and the Kingdom of Heaven.

References are available on request

March For Life Discussion: Better Communication

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As I previously mentioned, over the next few days I’m going to be publishing some posts in response to a discussion which took place on my Facebook wall while I was at the March For Life in Washington DC.

pro-life-vs-pro-choice

Some of my friends had reacted negatively to the fact that I was at the March, while others defended my presence at the demonstration, as well as the pro-life position in general.

As I sat in Ronald Reagan Airport at 1am, catching up on this Facebook thread, it was clear that there had been a certain amount of miscommunication between my friends. Now, I think a certain amount of miscommunication is somewhat inevitable, but I would suggest that we can be proactive in ensuring the discussion is productive. This is the subject that I’d like to address in this post.

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The Four Loves – Chapter 2 (“Likings And Loves For The Sub-Human”)

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Four Loves 2

Continuing my notes on The Four Loves, in this chapter Jack examines the likings/loves we have for things things which are not human (which he calls “subhuman”). In particular, he focuses in on love of nature and love of country. We will not deal with these in this post. Due to the length of the chapter, these will be dealt with in subsequent posts.

Notes and Quotes

1. Before we get to loves, we need to look at likes, which means we need to look at pleasures

…there is a continuity between our elementary likings for things and our loves for people. Since “the highest does not stand without the lowest”* we had better begin at the bottom, with mere likings; and, since to “like” anything means to take some sort of pleasure in it, we must begin with pleasure.

* This is a quotation from “The Imitation of Christ” by Thomas a Kempis

2. We may divide pleasures into two kinds

Now it is a very old discovery that pleasures can be divided into two classes…

(a) Need Pleasures

…those [pleasures] which would not be pleasures at all unless they were preceded by desire… An example… would be a drink of water. This is a pleasure if you are thirsty and a great one if you are very thirsty. But probably no one in the world… ever poured himself out a glass of water and drank it just for the fun of the thing.

(b) Appreciative Pleasures

…[the other kind are] those which are pleasures in their own right and need no such preparation [of desire]. An example… would be the unsought and unexpected pleasures of smell – the breath from a bean-field or a row of sweet-peas meeting you on your morning walk. You were in want of nothing, completely contented, before it; the pleasure, which may be very great, is an unsolicited, super-added gift.

3. There can be complications with dividing up pleasures in this way

(a) You can have both pleasures at the same time

If you are given a coffee or beer where you expect (and would have been satisfied with) water, then of course you get a pleasure of the first kind (allaying of thirst) and one of the second (a nice taste) at the same time.

(b) Addiction can turn pleasure from appreciative-pleasure to need-pleasure

For the temperate man an occasional glass of wine is a treat like the smell of the bean-field. But to the alcoholic…no liquor gives any pleasure except that of relief from an unbearable craving. 

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