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Showing posts from April, 2009

Securing Life: A Costly Matter

These are hard times. People are suffering because of the decisions and actions of others. I’m certain there are people reading this right now whose lives have been altered in some way because of our economic situation. I’m also pretty sure that every one of us has a sense of our future that we didn’t have a couple years ago, a future that we did not anticipate let alone plan for. Economic stress and suffering can be measured. We learn something about the extent of such stress and suffering when we look at the numbers. We feel the impact of the weight of those numbers when our own circumstances are changed because we are now the ones who have lost a job or health care insurance or slipped into home foreclosure. Our stress is increased when we discover that our retirement savings has lost 30% or more of its value. Maybe you yourself have not experienced the shock of one or another of these circumstances, but I’m sure you know someone who has, and that undoubtedly has given you pause

Notre Dame and President Obama

I respect Roman Catholics. I am a Protestant Christian, but truth be told, I respect and honor the rich theological and liturgical traditions of the Roman Catholic Church. I value much of the social teaching of the Catholic church as it is expressed in papal encyclicals and letters that go back centuries. I am instructed by the Catholic church's teachings on human worth and human rights, the dignity of honest labor and the value of families. Each of us can learn something from their teachings on the dangers of capitalism as an economic system and the limits of democracy as a political system. Few are the church traditions that have expressed so outspokenly the moral, social, and theological bases of our interdependence on one another as creatures who share this space so lovingly given by our Creator. When I imagine communities with the longest histories and traditions of the Christian faith, the Roman Catholic Church is one of two that come immediately to mind--the other being t