With the death last night of Sen Edward Kennedy, fellow Catholic and longtime proponent of universal health care, it might be a good time to check out a fine article about the Catholic response to the current debate in Congress over at Busted Halo, a Catholic young adult site sponsored by the Paulists.
Stump the priest
A suggestion from some of the students at UofL is that I open the floor for questions. Always a great idea. When I teach a class I always tell people to interrupt me with questions or I'll just go on and on and on. So feel free to leave questions or topics to explore in the comments section below.
Nothing greater can be conceived
well. School's back in and I figured it's probably time to start writing again. Looking around for a topic I was surprised to find that one of the most emailed articles in yesterday's New York Times was a meditation on St Anselm of Canterbury's ontological proof for the existence of God. In tracking down the author, Nathan Schneider, (gots to love the google) I found out he's a 20-something who (among other things) edits an online magazine called "Killing the Buddha," which is for "people embarrassed to be caught in the 'spirituality' section of a bookstore." There I found an earlier article he'd written about his own proof of God, his search for meaning in life, his baptism as a Catholic when he was a senior in high school, and his continued search for faith in college. They are both worth reading. And "Killing the Buddha" has some interesting things as well. One quote from Schneider's "Proof Enough for Me":
A very Catholic way of looking at it I think.
The proofs people make for their gods, whether those of great philosophers or of the unwashed internet, arise in eminently social ways-argument, love, politics, or even boredom and loneliness. They are not objects of some pure logic, as philosophers often treat them, but come mingled in flesh, desire, and experience.
A very Catholic way of looking at it I think.
The US bishops and health care reform
At church this past Sunday I promised links to statements from the United States Bishops' Conference on health care. So here they are:
One of the most comprehensive statements is A Framework for Comprehensive Health Care Reform: Protecting Human Life, Promoting Human Dignity, Pursuing the Common Good, which contains the following passage:
The bishops' action alert on health care issued on June 2nd can be found in a pdf file here.
One of the most comprehensive statements is A Framework for Comprehensive Health Care Reform: Protecting Human Life, Promoting Human Dignity, Pursuing the Common Good, which contains the following passage:
Our approach to health care is shaped by a simple but fundamental principle: "Every person has a right to adequate health care. This right flows from the sanctity of human life and the dignity that belongs to all human persons, who are made in the image of God." Health care is more than a commodity; it is a basic human right, an essential safeguard of human life and dignity. We believe our people's health care should not depend on where they work, how much their parents earn, or where they live. Our constant teaching that each human life must be protected and human dignity promoted leads us to insist that all people have a right to health care.
The bishops' action alert on health care issued on June 2nd can be found in a pdf file here.
Undivided unity
I keep getting requests for copies of the homily I preached on Trinity Sunday. Difficult to fulfill because I never write down anything for my homilies. So I decided I would give a try at blogging it instead. The readings for that Sunday can be found here.
It all starts with a New Albany high school teacher, Edwin Hubble. The name may sound familiar. That's because NASA's orbiting telescope is named for him. He went on from teaching high school Spanish in greater Louisville to become an astronomer at the Mount Wilson observatory in Southern California. At the time (1919) it had the largest telescope in the world. It allowed Hubble to see something no human being had ever seen, at least knowingly: the Andromeda galaxy.
Strange as it may seem, before Hubble human beings saw the universe as limited to the stars we see in the night sky. After Hubble the size of the universe expanded incredibly. Hubble went on to catalogue numbers of galaxies. He also was able to find something by measuring the shift in the spectrum of light they emitted. It's the same technique used today to track storms with Doppler radar. He discovered that all of the galaxies were moving away from us, that the universe is expanding. And strangely enough the farther away a galaxy was, the faster it was moving.
It was a Belgian priest (and fellow alum of the University of Leuven), Georges Lemaître, who realized that if you track all of those galaxies back along their paths at their measured speeds, you end up with all of them in the same place at the same time. It was a fellow physicist who ridiculed his theory of a "primeval atom" as a "big bang." That was the name that stuck.
"Ask now of the days of old," Moses says, "Ask from one end of the sky to the other. Did a people ever hear the voice of God speaking from the midst of fire?"
13.5 billion years. Give or take a few hundred million. That's how long ago it was. That moment of the primeval atom. And it was only in the first instants as the universe itself exploded into existance that the conditions were right for the creation of the basic elements: hydrogen, oxygen. The heavier elements came later. Forged in the hearts of the first stars.
"Ask now of the days of old," Moses says, "Ask from one end of the sky to the other. Did a people ever hear the voice of God speaking from the midst of fire?"
13.5 billion years. Give or take a few hundred million. That's how old you are. Or at least 75% of you. All of the hydrogen and oxygen your body is composed of was made in those first instants 13.5 billion years ago. They will only make up you for a very very short time. Imagine all of the places and times that these elements that make up you and I have seen.
We ask from the days of old. We ask from one end of the sky to the other. We listen for the voice of God from the midst of the fire. And we trust that God speaks from the heart of his creation.
Our faith tells us that God is Trinity and Unity. Just as it is hard to wrap our minds around the universe in its vastness, so it is with God. Yet faith says that God - before the beginning of time itself and larger than the very limits of all things - is at the core community.
Our faith tells us that we are made in God's very image and likeness. We must be at our very core community as well. The call to unity, to connectedness with one another comes from the preaching of Jesus, but it comes first from our very selves. It is written into the very stuff of which our bones are made.
And it is a call to unity that reaches far wider than our families and friends, far wider than the human community, far wider than this planet on which we live.
The voice of God sings to us from the ends of the skies, it calls to us from the depths of time, it echoes from the very fires of creation,
"We are one."
Strange as it may seem, before Hubble human beings saw the universe as limited to the stars we see in the night sky. After Hubble the size of the universe expanded incredibly. Hubble went on to catalogue numbers of galaxies. He also was able to find something by measuring the shift in the spectrum of light they emitted. It's the same technique used today to track storms with Doppler radar. He discovered that all of the galaxies were moving away from us, that the universe is expanding. And strangely enough the farther away a galaxy was, the faster it was moving.
It was a Belgian priest (and fellow alum of the University of Leuven), Georges Lemaître, who realized that if you track all of those galaxies back along their paths at their measured speeds, you end up with all of them in the same place at the same time. It was a fellow physicist who ridiculed his theory of a "primeval atom" as a "big bang." That was the name that stuck.
"Ask now of the days of old," Moses says, "Ask from one end of the sky to the other. Did a people ever hear the voice of God speaking from the midst of fire?"
13.5 billion years. Give or take a few hundred million. That's how long ago it was. That moment of the primeval atom. And it was only in the first instants as the universe itself exploded into existance that the conditions were right for the creation of the basic elements: hydrogen, oxygen. The heavier elements came later. Forged in the hearts of the first stars.
"Ask now of the days of old," Moses says, "Ask from one end of the sky to the other. Did a people ever hear the voice of God speaking from the midst of fire?"
13.5 billion years. Give or take a few hundred million. That's how old you are. Or at least 75% of you. All of the hydrogen and oxygen your body is composed of was made in those first instants 13.5 billion years ago. They will only make up you for a very very short time. Imagine all of the places and times that these elements that make up you and I have seen.
We ask from the days of old. We ask from one end of the sky to the other. We listen for the voice of God from the midst of the fire. And we trust that God speaks from the heart of his creation.
Our faith tells us that God is Trinity and Unity. Just as it is hard to wrap our minds around the universe in its vastness, so it is with God. Yet faith says that God - before the beginning of time itself and larger than the very limits of all things - is at the core community.
Our faith tells us that we are made in God's very image and likeness. We must be at our very core community as well. The call to unity, to connectedness with one another comes from the preaching of Jesus, but it comes first from our very selves. It is written into the very stuff of which our bones are made.
And it is a call to unity that reaches far wider than our families and friends, far wider than the human community, far wider than this planet on which we live.
The voice of God sings to us from the ends of the skies, it calls to us from the depths of time, it echoes from the very fires of creation,
"We are one."
. . . 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,
Wise words. You'll probably hear them from me someday.
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.
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.
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