An adult faith knows it must serenely accept the inevitable mingling of good and evil, wheat and weeds, wisdom and folly in our ecclesial realities, because it knows clearly that the roots of both reach into each of us. The boundary between wisdom and folly is porous in our own hearts, and light and darkness … Continue reading Of Wheat and Weeds

A cross breaking through a circle, carved on a pillar of stone, is the typical Celtic symbol. Pillars of stone were a universal symbol of the link between heaven and earth. The circle round the cross was introduced by the Emperor Constantine as a symbol of the wreath of victory. But only in Celtic lands … Continue reading The Cross in Creation

"Francis’s pontificate coincides with the increasing visibility of the crisis of economic and political globalization, a crisis that has been called the age of anger, with the resurgence of reactionary, nationalist, isolationist, and chauvinist movements. It is an anger from which global Catholicism cannot claim to be exempt and, on the contrary, is fully part … Continue reading The Crisis of Globalization

"For many Christians, belief in the saving work of Christ begins and ends with the passion, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, sometimes called the paschal mystery. The term paschal recalls the Hebrew Passover (Pasch), in which God delivered the Israelites from slavery into freedom. Christians hold that in death Christ too “passed over” into … Continue reading Life-Death-Life Is the Paradoxical Logic of Human Fulfillment

..."God's distance" does not require one to abandon belief. In fact, [Rahner] regarded "the declared atheism of many people, theoretical as well as practical," a hasty response to the experience of God's distance.3 We need, he proposes, to allow ourselves to "mature expiatingly in the purgatory of this distance from God" by facing the "God-distance … Continue reading “In Despair, Despair Not”

Still, some Christians insist on taking another path, that of justification by their own efforts, the worship of the human will and their own abilities. The result is a self-centred and elitist complacency, bereft of true love. This finds expression in a variety of apparently unconnected ways of thinking and acting: an obsession with the … Continue reading The New Pelagians

When somebody has an answer for every question, it is a sign that they are not on the right road. They may well be false prophets, who use religion for their own purposes, to promote their own psychological or intellectual theories. God infinitely transcends us; he is full of surprises. We are not the ones … Continue reading Surrendering Control