De mortuis nil nisi bonum, the ancients said. Or as we’d say, “Say nothing but good about the dead.” And I go along with that, but I must tell you that after listening to Bert Blyleven on Minnesota Public Radio this morning, I’m making an exception in his case. Jim Souhan headed his piece on Monday in the Minneapolis Star... READ MORE >
I was intrigued when I heard on the news last week that the shutdown of the State of Minnesota had a very unusual effect on a neighboring state. The report said that because of the shutdown, gamblers who wanted lottery tickets, gamble, etc. were taking their business to Iowa – and that the State of Iowa was making a bundle... READ MORE >
It’s well known that they have more fun. This tonguein cheek observation came to me because of the birthday of one of our parishioners at St. John’s. Last Wednesday, Lucille Pettijohn of our parish celebrated her 98th birthday. Our after-morning-Mass crowd gathered at the Senior Center to serenade and congratulate her. Lu is remarkably spry, and other than a few... READ MORE >
We’ve often been told that one vote or one person changed something important. And these stories lift our hearts. But one of these stories caught my attention recently – particularly because of the huge discussion going on in our country of the alleged use of torture against Islamic fundamentalists. The first great popular movement to abolish torture occurred during the... READ MORE >
I have been a priest in the Catholic Church for 45 years this summer, and all of those years, with the exception of a few years as Newman Chaplain at UMD, I have been in parish ministry. I hope in those years I have grown on the job, that my spiritual life has deepened, that I am wiser now than... READ MORE >
One of the powerful books of the 60s was Michael Harrington’s The Other America: Poverty in the United States. Among other things Harrington said in his book: The millions who are poor in the United States tend to become increasingly invisible… It takes an effort of the intellect and will even to see them… That the poor are invisible is... READ MORE >
How many times have you heard, and maybe even said, “All religions are different paths up the same mountain. We’re all serving the same God, but simply getting to Him by different roads”? It sounds so reasonable, and so it ought to be true. I read an essay by Stephen Prothero – a professor of religion at Boston University (The... READ MORE >
Why do you worship at your present church? Most of us, I think, would say, because I was born and raised Lutheran, Baptist or Catholic, etc., and so that’s where I’m most comfortable. But your response might not be correct. Jeffrey MacDonald in his Thieves in the Temple writes about a huge problem facing Christianity today: Faith has become a... READ MORE >
I hate to think that summer is over. Labor Day for just about all of us means back to the grindstone. School begins its new year, religious education classes start up once more. These musings got me thinking about Labor Day itself and the whole concept of work. For many, work means drudgery, something that has to be done, and... READ MORE >
“After they (the Wise Men) had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother and escape with them to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you; for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.” So Joseph got up, took mother and... READ MORE >
