Thirty years ago, John Jungblut wrote a short pamphlet entitled, On Hallowing Our Diminishments. It’s a treatise suggesting ways we might frame the humiliations and diminishments that beset us through circumstance, age and accidents so that, despite the humiliation they bring, we can place them under a certain canopy so as to take away their…
Once during a baseball game in high school an umpire made a very unfair call against our team. Our whole team was indignant and all of us began to shout angrily at the umpire, swearing at him, calling him names, loudly venting our anger. But one of our teammates didn’t follow suit. Instead of shouting…
Recently on the popular US television program Saturday Night Live, a comedian made a rather colourful wisecrack in response to an answer that Nancy Pelosi had given to a journalist who had accused her of hating the President. Pelosi had stated that, as a Roman Catholic, she hates no one – and this prompted the…
Even with the best intentions, even with no malice inside us, even when we are faithful, we sometimes cannot not hurt each other. Our human situation is simply too complex at times for us not to wound each other. Here’s an example: Soren Kierkegaard, who spent his whole life trying to be scrupulously faithful to…
Most of us have heard of St Thérèse of Lisieux, a French mystic who died at age 24 in 1897 and who is perhaps the most popular saint of the last two centuries. She’s famous for many things, not least for a spirituality she called her ‘little way’. What is her ‘little way’? Popular thought…
Can anyone prove that God exists? Well, many have tried. Some of the greatest philosophers and intellectuals in history have tried to prove that God exists. One of the most famous of these was Thomas Aquinas who produced five different logical ‘proofs’. For example, this is the algebra of one of his arguments: imagine walking…
There’s a Latin axiom which argues that there’s no accounting for taste, de gustibus non est disputandum. I reference it as a preamble to my annual list of the 10 books I most enjoyed this past year because, admittedly, taste is somewhat subjective. I chose these particular books because they’re the ones that spoke most…
In virtually all of his novels, Milan Kundera, manifests a strong impatience with every kind of ideology, hype, or fad that makes for group-think or crowd-hysteria. He is suspicious of slogans, demonstrations, and marches of all kinds, no matter the cause. He calls all these the great march and, to his mind, they invariably lead…
Some years ago at a religious conference a man approached the microphone and after apologising for what he felt would be an inappropriate question, asked this: “I love my dog. When he dies will he go to Heaven? Do animals have eternal life?” The answer to that might come as a surprise to many of…
We’re all familiar, I suspect, with the difference between justice and charity. Charity is giving away some of your time, energy, resources, and person so as to help to others in need. And that’s an admirable virtue, the sign of a good heart. Justice, on the other hand, is less about directly giving something away…