Category: Modernity
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The Morality of Christmas
Morality is tricky business in what is an extremely moral society. I pray my readers to be patient with me as I explain what I think is the problem. First, I will note that morality is all that is left when the most fundamental grounds of a culture have been destroyed. We indeed live in…
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I’ll Be Small for Christmas
Children today are raised with dreams of greatness. Cultural affirmations of our limitless potential, well-intentioned, have not produced a generation of over-achievers, but have indeed brought forth hordes of great dreams. This is nothing new in American culture. We are the world’s longest sustained pep-talk. Ronald Reagan loved to quote the 1945 Johnny Mercer hit:…
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World Story – the News and the Good News
Human beings make up stories. I don’t mean that the stories aren’t true, only that we make them up. We connect things. We make sense of things. We ask what is happening and the answer is a story. When we read a history book, we encounter a story. We do not examine the facts of…
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The Material God
In my previous article I used the example of kinesthetic knowledge (as in riding a bicycle) as a means of describing noetic experience, the means of knowing God through communion with Him. It is worth noting that the example is quite material and mundane. It is not an esoteric, exotic meditation or technique. It is…
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A Virtuous Man
Virtue is not a common word in our culture. It sounds somewhat “antique.” For some, it has very little meaning, or a meaning far removed from its original. Within the Christian tradition, however, there is a very long history of the study of virtue. Until the Protestant Reformation, thoughts about what was good and what…
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A Defining Moment
What defines you? The answer to that question, to a large extent, is a commentary on who owns you. Frequently, discussions about major aspects of our humanity are little more than a rehearsal of scripts prepared by our owners. This makes it extremely difficult to have a fruitful conversation on many topics, and almost impossible…
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Slow Learning
Stay in your cell…and your cell will teach you everything. – Sayings of the Desert Fathers We are an extremely active society with something that approaches a cult of activism. Stated positively, it can be said that America is a “can do” nation. It is a drive that “settled the West,” dug the Panama Canal,…
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History Was Not Changed
“What happened here 2,000 years ago completely changed history.” These words were spoken in earnest innocence by one of the onlookers at the recent work being done on the tomb of Christ in the Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem. It is a sentiment that sounds obviously true, but is profoundly untrue. The resurrection of Christ…
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An Audience of None
In the 1980’s sci-fi comedy, Short Circuit, a charming military robot character, “Number 5,” is awakened into consciousness by a lightning strike. He fears going back to his military keepers where he will be re-programmed. And so, with help from human friends, he begins his touching effort to stay free. His famous line, repeated often,…
Thank you Fr Stephen! Christ is Risen! (As I post these words of Gratitude on April 20, 2025