Letter from the Pastor

What exactly was, or is, demon possession? How did it happen?  Was it voluntary or      involuntary?  Did it occur through guilt or ignorance or accident?  Are there parallel instances  today? All of these are questions, the answer to which, I do not know.  Yet despite the mysteries, there is one area in which the New Testament communicates clearly and effectively.  It speaks to us about the  tragedy of divided living. We all have horns and halos, strengths and weaknesses.  We are both good and bad.  All men of insight have felt this same conflict within themselves.  St. Paul wrote, “It […]

It seems that every person shares or has shared dreams of a future of peace and tranquility.  We are all sick of the insanity of war and terrorism.  We are exhausted by man’s inhumanity to man.  We are tired of crime and violence.  We are fed up with greed and injustice.  We long for a world of peace and righteousness, where people and  nations settle their differences through cooperation instead of conflict.  But many, I fear, have recently stopped believing that such a world is possible.  Many more are deeply discouraged.  Though still believing in a better world, they feel […]

Recently, as you may recall, I wrote to you that it is certainly appropriate for we Catholics to vote as Catholics.  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 […]

Today 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 the public […]