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Dear People Whom God Loves,   X REFLECTIONS ON VATICAN COUNCIL II     Again, these thoughts come from Keys to the Council.  What do we mean when we say that our church is Catholic?  We have often thought that our church is universal in the sense of spreading across the world.  That is a superficial meaning.  Rather, the […]

Dear People Whom God Loves,   VII REFLECTIONS ON VATICAN COUNCIL II   Continuing.   The same document says that the priest serves the baptismal priesthood through the pastoral leadership of empowering the people of God and ordering the many gifts of the baptized in a way that those gifts will help the church in its mission […]

 Dear People Whom God Loves,   IV REFLECTIONS ON VATICAN COUNCIL II   Again, these thoughts are based on the book Keys to the Council.   This concerns the relationship of the priesthood of the laity and the ordained priesthood.   Among Jesus’ first believers, class distinctions were not acceptable.  When these divisions arose, they were condemned.  Paul’s letter […]

Dear People Whom God Loves,   I REFLECTIONS ON VATICAN COUNCIL II This is taken from the book Keys to the Council  by Richard R. Gaillardetz  and Catherine E. Clifford, pp. XVI & XVII of the Introduction. The Jesuit church historian, John O’Malley, writes about an often overlooked feature of the documents from the council.  That is the […]

Dear People Whom God Loves, Here are some thoughts from Sebastian Moore in his book The Contagion of Jesus.  Some of my thoughts also. When we ask the question—Is there God?—we often start with the beginning of the universe.  The unbeliever will likely say: There was nothing.  Then by chance, there was something.  It just […]

Dear People Whom God Loves, AWESOME LOVE – III We are now in a position to see how we can preserve the “awesome” of some previous ideas of God and at the same time remove the fear.  This is the fear that prevents us from experiencing the closeness of God. The scripture tells us that […]

Dear People Whom God Loves, Before we get into how love can be awesome, I want to mention how love can be misunderstood.  Love is gentle, but it always has a toughness to it that seeks what is good for another when things are difficult in a relationship. Gentle and tough. Here is an example […]

Dear People Whom God Loves, All of our images of God limp.  There is no way that we can fully—I would say nearly fully—describe God.  The best of our doctrines and images point to what God is.  That is valuable and necessary, but God is always much more and beyond the best of our doctrines […]

Dear People Whom God Loves, God’s clearest message is communicated through the obscure life of a “criminal” (Jesus of Nazareth). Jesus was born into a family that was of no particular account in a town that was of no particular account. Except for our Scriptures, he is almost unknown in history. His public life was […]