Letter from the Pastor

Millions of Americans let the technology “babysit” their children for large portions of the day.  Even at 11 o’clock at night, long after cartoons and family shows have ended, an estimated 12 million children under age 10 are still on computers.  These hours have an enormous influence on our children.  Studies have shown that the media exercises the greatest formative influence on viewers who have not yet formed strong personal values.  As adults with Christian principles, we have some protection from media influence, but the minds of young children are wide open.  We need to be cautious. Consider just the […]

Last week I shared that is it appropriate for a Catholics to vote as a Catholic.  But this still leaves a number of difficult questions for us to consider.  It is one thing to say that we will let the principles of our Catholic faith be our guide.  It is quite another thing to apply those principles to real political choices today. Simply stated, the Gospel of Jesus is universal. Its principles apply equally to all people, in all places, at all times, in all cultures, and under all forms of government.  The Gospel which is God’s Word holds true […]

Once again I raise, once more, a very important question: Is it proper for a Christian to vote precisely as a Christian?  That is, to make political choices based primarily on Christian values and principles?  I would answer yes.  Emphatically Yes!   We Catholics, have let the secular society in which we live give us a kind of inferiority complex. We, too often, speak and act as if the biblical understanding of man and woman and human society were in some way inferior, or as if it were  somehow unfair for us to advance our Catholic views and values in […]

Can you remember a time when you were touchy and perhaps even difficult to live with a few years ago? Look at that area of your life today.  Has anything changed?  Is the condition at all improved? Did you perhaps resent an injury done to you in the past? Are you still harboring that same old grudge today?  A dozen years ago did you have a bad temper that inflicted unhappiness to family and/or friends? How about now? Is that temper under any better control today? The sad thing is that we can tolerated conditions like that year after year.  […]

During the severe cold of last winter, a reporter, who writes a syndicated column that appears in many of the major newspapers, told a story that deals with a problem that subtlety confronts, many people.  It was about a man whose car got stuck on the ice while he was on his way home from work.  The man was white, and the community in which he was stranded was predominantly black.  It was after dark, and the man was frightened.  To make matters worse, he ran down his battery.  There was no service station in sight.  He knocked timidly on […]