. . . and I feel fine

Meanwhile in today's New York Times, Mark C Taylor, chair of religion at Columbia has his own idea of a university in an article titled, "End of the University As We Know It." It's a good read to see how someone is rethinking academia in the light of world changes. Something we could use in the area of religion.

One of my favorite quotes echoes my own thinking about parish life, "The division-of-labor model of separate departments is obsolete and must be replaced with a curriculum structured like a web or complex adaptive network." Replace "departments" with "committees" and "curriculum" with "parish." You get the idea.

I'm convinced that the web is helping us to see the world as it is, a place of interconnections and networks. A web. Duh.

And the faster we learn to minister from this reality, the better we will serve one another. And God.

My other favorite quote from the piece is Taylor quoting himself,

For many years, I have told students, “Do not do what I do; rather, take whatever I have to offer and do with it what I could never imagine doing and then come back and tell me about it.”

Wise words. You'll probably hear them from me someday.

Newman squared

For those of us Catholics who go to church at a public university in the United States, an important day is coming, although the date isn't set yet. All the preparation is in place for Pope Benedict to declare John Henry Newman Blessed. This is the last step before he could officially be declared a saint. Word is that Benedict is anxious to make this happen.

Newman was an Anglican priest and professor at Oxford University when he converted to Roman Catholicism. A voluminous writer (one of the problems with declaring Newman a saint has been that all of his writings have to be thoroughly reviewed and he wrote A LOT) one of his works is The Idea of a University. Early in the last century the movement of campus ministry at public universities in the US named itself for Newman. Often the campus ministry at a public university is referred to as a Newman Center.

The campus ministry at UofL joined the Newman movement back in the 1930's. There's an official signed certificate attesting to that in Sarah's office. But so far as we can tell the UofL Newman Center never adopted a saint as a patron. So maybe if we wait a few months we could adopt Blessed John Newman as our patron, and officially become the Blessed John Henry Newman Newman Center. After all it makes sense. In 1879 the pope made Newman a Cardinal.

"Our Father, who art in heaven" 4 minutes ago from Tweetie

Over at Whispers in the Loggia Rocco Palmo writes about the centennial of the birth of Fr Patrick Peyton. If you've ever heard the saying, "The family that prays together stays together," then you've heard something of Fr Peyton. He was a pioneer in using the media of his day, mostly television, to spread his message of prayer.

At a mass in Peyton's home parish in Ireland, Cardinal Sean Brady urged us to continue his tradition,

In the name of Fr Peyton I would like to make an appeal to every Christian in Ireland today who sends texts, twitters or uses e-mail. I appeal to you to think about setting up groups of prayer between you and your friends using these modern means of communication. I ask young people in particular to think of sending their friends and family an occasional twitter or text to say that you have prayed for them. Make someone the gift of a prayer through text, twitter or e-mail every day. Such a sea of prayer is sure to strengthen our sense of solidarity with one another and remind us those who receive them that others really do care.

A beginning of a way to use new media in the faith.

"I'm on top of the world" 4 minutes ago from Tweetie

A few weeks ago while helping to lead a wilderness retreat in the Red River Gorge, one of the other leaders and I kept complaining about the poor cell phone coverage. The weather radar was taking forever to load. Well in another example of how the US is lagging in technology, I heard this morning that as of this summer, you won't have that problem at the top of Mount Everest! This June Nepal Telecom is expanding coverage to perhaps the most iconic of the remote corners of the planet.

Faster and faster humanity is being knit together in ways undreamed of a generation ago. Continue dreaming what it means for us in the world of faith.

Next to godliness

My mom never got a dishwasher. That's because when we were kids she kept up with us by forcing us to wash dishes with her after dinner. That's how I taught her how to study scripture.

In Catholic grade school and on into my first year of high school I was learning about how the Bible isn't literally true, about how there are different kinds of literature in it, about how there wasn't really an Adam and Eve, etc. And over drying dishes mom wasn't buying it. Not the way the nuns taught her, apparently. Not that it mattered that my teacher was a priest. Apparently we can be heretics just as easily as anyone else. But I didn't give up on her and eventually she came around. She thanks me for it now.

Well apparently there are Muslim scholars that are applying the same type of tools to the Qur'ān that we Christians apply to the Bible. They held an annual conference this week at the University of Notre Dame. Nicholas Kristof writes about it in today's New York Times:

At Notre Dame, scholars analyzed ancient texts of the Koran that show signs of writing that was erased and rewritten. Other scholars challenged traditional interpretations of the Koran such as the notion that some other person (perhaps Judas or Peter) was transformed to look like Jesus and crucified in his place, while Jesus himself escaped to heaven. One scholar at the Notre Dame conference, who uses the pseudonym Christoph Luxenberg for safety, has raised eyebrows and hackles by suggesting that the “houri” promised to martyrs when they reach Heaven doesn’t actually mean “virgin” after all. He argues that instead it means “grapes,” and since conceptions of paradise involved bounteous fruit, that might make sense. But suicide bombers presumably would be in for a disappointment if they reached the pearly gates and were presented 72 grapes.

I have a feeling that suicide bombers aren't the only ones who might have problems with these scholars' work. They are having to have their conference at a Catholic university after all. They might find their audience even less receptive than my mom. Here's hoping they don't give up though. The hardest part is convincing people that scholarship doesn't take God or inspiration out of scripture.

And it's not like we Christians have had an easy time with it either. That creation museum in Northern Kentucky is still pretty new. And I hear of the occasional priest who still preaches a seven day creation. Maybe my mom was right about us priests after all.

Living in exponential times

In my never-ending quest to ponder the fast pace of change and what it's doing to the world, and therefore what it's doing to us as Christians, and how we'd better start dealing with it and quick, here's a video to ponder:

Jesus defies Vatican directive

I don't know why it seems to have just come into my awareness in the last month or so, given that it was issued in August, but the Vatican has issued a directive prohibiting the use of the name of God in the Liturgy. This doesn't change anything in the official prayers or texts, because the tetragrammaton, as it is known, has never been used in them. The words of Jesus, on the other hand, are a different matter.

He did it again in today's gospel passage. And in the TEMPLE no less.

"Before Abraham came to be, I AM," he says, puncturing orthodox Jewish silence on an afterlife, claiming preexistence for himself, and blaspheming by pronouncing the name of God (I AM) all in one sentence. And then while the crowd is busy trying to find the biggest, nicest stones to crush him with, he slips away.

As we enter the celebration of Holy Week (and our Jewish brothers and sisters enter the celebration of Pesach) It's not a bad idea to spend some time remembering the deep Jewish roots of our faith, and the respect that we should have for them. Having been working at the Interfaith Center for more years than I care to count, I long ago got out of the habit (common among some Christians) of using YHWH in prayer or conversation. But it's also great to know (as we learned at the model Seder on Monday) that the cup of wine drunk "when supper was ended" is known as the "cup of redemption."

These are also days when we have a tendency to ponder what it might have been like to have "been there." Personally I get uncomfortable with that one. As somebody who's chosen a life that is in large part about preserving religious tradition, I can too easily imagine who's side I would probably have been on. At least I wouldn't have needed a fake beard.

1,000's of degrees

The University of Notre Dame hands out thousands of degrees every spring, but there's one they're planning on this May that has landed them in hot water. Barack Obama is the slated commencement speaker this year, and a number of bishops are quite upset. Bishop John D'Arcy of Fort Wayne-South Bend is skipping the graduation ceremony for the first time in his 25 years as bishop there, based on Obama's support of abortion and stem cell research. Students, on the other hand, seem to be supportive of the choice of the president, arguing, as university officials do, that awarding an honorary degree does not endorse all of his policies.

Notre Dame has a tradition of inviting newly-elected presidents to speak at the first commencement after their inauguration. Most recently, George W. Bush drew protests in 2001, also over life issues. This time for his support of the death penalty.

take a spring break

Been away from blogging for awhile and trying to catch up today before Holy Week hits. For those who would like to read about the Interfaith Center's Alternative Spring Break and the famed "raising of the grotto" that I preached about last week, you can find the blog at http://ulifcasb.wordpress.com/

It's great to be able to get mileage out of a week of work that I didn't even have to do ;-)