I was watching a presentation by Joan Chittister recently as part of the Spiritual Directors International annual conference. In it, Sister Joan put forth the Benedictine steps to humility as a solution to what she - correctly, I believe - sees as the loss of values in our overly individualistic society. One of the qualities…
It's really just that simple. If you are wondering how or why that can be, it is because ignoring truth or teaching things contrary to truth is lying, and lying is a sin. To compound the sin, persecuting people or groups of people is always sinful. Also sinful are prejudice and spreading rumors about others.…
What do we do when our values and our beliefs are in conflict with the decisions our government makes? If we are honest with ourselves and aware of what is going on around us, we will start to notice how often this happens with greater frequency. When we see those situations, we will begin to…
Every religion and every subdivision of those religions purports to reveal God to us, and all of them fail. What they reveal instead are gods, middle managers at best, what the Hebrew scriptures called demiurges. I say this because, quite frankly, we imagine God should be our personal errand boy, taking care of this and…
I get a number of emails each day that are sale notices for ebooks. Yesterday I happened to glace at one of the descriptions of a book that read, "...the Church contributes to society by forming the conscience of people." I almost fell out of my chair! If that's not a line straight out of…
There are only a few hard and fast rules in the life of faith. One of them is that you cannot be a person of faith and a racist. The two are mutually exclusive. You can be a person of faith who is working earnestly to eliminate the vestiges of racism in your life. The…
Craig Bergland 