With the arrival of September, we bid farewell to a summer season. I hope and pray that your summertime was refreshing and rejuvenating. Hopefully, you can point to a time or two where you genuinely felt the healing, hope, and joy of Jesus in the event, experience, or people that were brought forth on any given summer day.
I have a friend with whom I am trying to share the Gospel. He has great questions, and I like trying to offer intelligent and rational answers, but I’m not sure if he has faith yet. What should I do?
On Aug. 10, Bishop Daniel Felton, the diocesan Pastoral Center staff, and representatives from the mission fields serving the diocese came together at the College of St. Scholastica for a day of dialogue and fellowship as the local church continues to implement Bishop Felton’s pastoral letter.
Poking around for a TV series I’d never watched that I could stream, I recently found one I liked. A short way in, though, I came across an episode that originally aired in 2005, which was about a disease outbreak, and I was surprised to discover how “triggering” it was for me.
We are nearing the first of two global gatherings for the Synod on Synodality. It will take place in Rome Oct. 4-28. Pope Francis has said, “In the one People of God, therefore, let us journey together, in order to experience a Church that receives and lives this gift of unity, and is open to the voice of the Spirit.”
There is a religious word that is often misused in the English language, and that is the word “miracle.” I call it religious because necessarily a miracle is an act of God. It is misused because people claim so many things to be a miracle.
In political, social, and economic life, there is no “neutral” ground. Good and evil are competing for control of the same institutions (political bodies, corporations, education, the arts, and entertainment) because those institutions matter. We live our lives within them, and they shape the world around us. They can help bring us closer to God or pull us away from him.
Greetings in the healing, hope, and joy of Jesus! Those powerful words not only serve as a greeting for my reflection, but are held high as the banner proclamation of our Diocese of Duluth!
Each year as August rolls around, the debate over the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki rolls back around with it, and all the more so this year given the release of a major film, “Oppenheimer,” telling the complicated story of one of the main architects of that weapon. (Full disclosure: I don’t go to movies much and haven’t seen it.)
“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.” This quotation is from the great English convert, G.K. Chesterton. I think it sums up well what I wish to write about today.
The three great monotheistic faiths are what are commonly referred to as religions of “the book” — that is, people who adhere to texts that they believe to be inspired. For Muslims it is the Koran, for the Jewish people the Torah, and for Christians, of course, it is the Bible.
According to Planned Parenthood, artificial contraception did not become legal until 1965, and when it did, contraception was only available for married women. Before 1965, most women and men considered birth control a great harm and dangerous to women, marriage, and society.