The Best of Intentions ...

This is a blog that is near and dear to my heart, but it is also one which I have been neglecting. I'd like to find time to come back to it often in a contemplative manner and share the thoughts that the good Lord causes in me when I am reading and trying to appreciate scripture and other religious and spiritual writings. But my life seems always too full of competing forces and challenges and requirements and obligations so that I rarely get a chance to come and find the inner peace that one needs to do justice to such a goal. I'll try to do better, but I can't promise anything.

A Saint In Progress?

The process of canonization practiced by the Catholic Church is a process which confuses a lot of people. The Catholic Church does not create saints. God creates saints through the cooperation of the saintly and the grace God give that empowers them. What the Catholic Church does is test claims that certain people led extraordinary live of sanctity and the tests are rigorous and difficult and if upon investigation a person passes all the hurdles the Church declare them worth of veneration in a multistep process. The Church does not create saints because only God can do that.

Moving On

Fr. Corapi makes a video statement. It is unclear what has been going on. All the free advice from all the folks who are clueless about what is going on and are making gratuitous guesses are not helping the situation.

What it comes down to is charges by an unnamed person or persons against Corapi. The charges themselves are unclear and mostly seem rather doubtful. Corapi has denied any impropriety but he's not been too clear about what he is denying. So there is a huge amount of uncertainty and vagueness. Unless you know more not only about the charges but about the relative integrity of the players, it just isn't clear who's at fault and why. I'm decidedly on the fence but I think people who are giving Corapi the benefit of their free advice are mostly not helpful. The analogies they are making are suspect and the judgments they are making are uninformed. Under those circumstances they are more part of the problem than part of the solution.

The Problem In A Nutshell

The failure of the church to teach clearly and unambiguously is not only a tragedy, it is a sin which the bishops and priests will have to answer for. Looking around the wreckage that is the Catholic Church compared to what it was when I was a boy is enough to make me cry. I like Fr. Corapi's dichotomy of all the people into Sheep, Sheepdogs, and Wolves. The problem we have is that those who should be Sheepdogs are too often Wolves or Sheep. We could certainly use some Sheepdogs.

A Capsule History of the Shroud of Turin

Eucharistic Flash Mob

The breaking out into the secular world of the sacred. Notice the worldlings and their reactions.

The John Corapi Situation ...

Fr. John Corapi has been accused of something or other and it's causing quite a furor. This video is one of the posts on his blog site asking Fr. Corapi to stand tall.