Because Lebron is Not King

I had a choice tonight: to watch “Black Robe” on Netflix or the Lebron James Sweepstakes on ESPN. Where are my priorities—The story of Jesuit saints among the Hurons and Iroquois, or the King of the World, Lebron James, making the Choice that Changed the World? I went with Lebron.

Because Living in Hope Beats Living in Fear

After thirty months, I have come to the end of the biggest writing project of my life: a 200-year-history of Massachusetts General Hospital (left, in its original form, the Bulfinch Building). Tuesday, I brought the manuscript to the copy editor, all 213,000 words of it. While I have a thousand loose ends to tie up (epilogue writing, photo editing, caption writing, etc.), I have begun to scan the horizon and ask: What's next?

YIMC Bookclub, “The Great Heresies,” Chapter 4

"Why should we suffer? Why should we die?"

Ah, the eternal question. And in this chapter "The Albigensian Attack", Belloc gets to the heart of the matter of why the Incarnation came about, Christianity was founded, and why the Catholic Church exists. Because as we know, we are mere human beings. We die. And since the beginning, mankind has wanted to know "why?"

Because I Cannot

On a wall in my house, hanging in a place where I pretty much have to see it two or three times a day for about twenty seconds, and sometimes even in the middle of the night, is a framed copy of a poem that every well-bred English-speaking schoolboy memorized a century ago, and maybe some do even today. It struck me last evening, as I was standing and waiting for nature to take its course, that this poem captures everything sad and beautiful about our modern world.

“Master of Beauty” (A Few Words for Wednesday)

I love reading poetry and at one point in my life, wrote it constantly. I still have my well-thumbed Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry from my undergraduate years at the University of Michigan. I often read it and recently wondered how many of the poets within are Catholic. John Berryman is one. Born in Oklahoma in 1914, he was raised Catholic.

I always liked his name. I tried to read his poetry the other day, but found most of it so despairing I could not. His work reflects his troubled soul. The Pulitzer Prize winning poet survived his own father's suicide when he was 12 and spent his life struggling with  depression and alcoholism. He returned to the faith of his childhood as a middle-aged man.

Sadly, Berryman ended his life in 1972 by jumping off a bridge. I thank God that Berryman found times of comfort in this world in the presence of Christ and that he left us luminous words, which speak of the struggle between faith and doubt. I particularly like this one, which he wrote toward the end of his life. He's honest about his doubts while he stands in awe of creation. The entire poem is published in his collected works. I pray for his immortal soul. 

Cistercian Chants (Music for Mondays)

It was the summer of 2008. My wife and kids headed to California to visit family. I would follow them two weeks later for a vacation too (and to ensure they came back to Tennessee with me).

So I was alone in the house for two weeks. It was quiet. When I would come home from work, I didn't turn on the television, or the radio. I ate, read, and prayed. And I did other things, like cut the yard and feed the dog, and wash the dishes. But as a freshly minted Catholic, I was enjoying the silence and using it to read Scripture, read other books, and learned to pray the LOTH.

Because Nothing Is Random

I'm nearly a half century old and launching a new career. After a working life spent in daily newspapers and then teaching at community colleges and raising sons, I am earning a master's degree in Special Education and alternate-route teaching certificates in English and in Teaching Students with Disabilities.

What's this got to do with being Catholic? Well, my faith lets me know that from the moment I entered this planet to the moment I leave it, my life is in the hands of the Almighty. He willed me and everyone else into being. So really, I have nothing to worry about as I embark on this leg of my journey.

Because of Catholics Like Raymond Lull

For the longest time, I just knew that I was too smart to be a Catholic. I mean, I wasn't a cradle Catholic, born into the Church or anything. I just figured that being born into the Church was really the only way that anyone would become a Catholic. Surely not via God-given free will, because no one with a brain would willingly submit to the Church and all those wacky "man-made" doctrines and such.

YIMC Book Club "The Great Heresies" Chapter 3

Vienna, as we saw, was almost taken and only saved by the Christian army under the command of the King of Poland on a date that ought to be among the most famous in history: September 11, 1683.

This is one of the sentences that hit home for me in this weeks chapter "The Great and Enduring Heresy of Mohammed." There is a lot going on in this chapter, for sure. I compare it to a Cliffs Notes version of the History of Western Civilization 630AD - 1683AD. Sure, Belloc's book may not be an unbiased, footnote toting, peer-reviewed, Ivy League approved, history text book, but that really wasn't his point here.

Because of Community

Guest  post by Meredith Cummings

Community defines who we are, how we live and with whom we share our lives. But there was a time in my life, when I couldn’t wait to escape my community … the community of my childhood. I grew up in what I, at the time, viewed as a dusty, forgotten cowboy town hidden in the remote San Luis Valley of Southern Colorado. (Pictured here)  Over the years, I’d grown a lot and come to appreciate my hometown of Monte Vista … to a point. However, it took an elderly shut-in couple living in my current hometown of Noblesville, Indiana, to help me fully realize the blessings of my youth.