What follows is not a spiritual reflection, but a historical observation. I do not presume to be a very spiritual person, but I can read the Bible with some historical knowledge and a little bit of theological training. Today is Palm Sunday, a strange feast day in which the faithful go to church to celebrate Jesus’ triumphant […]
We are living through a long period of cultural crisis. The nice thing is that cultures undergo crises all the time, so we can always look back and learn some lessons. Lately I’ve been thinking about a theme that I wrote an article about some time ago (God, has it been two years already?) about the […]
Since so many people have been writing about gun control since the horrific events of Newtown CT, I did not think I could offer anything new to the discussion. But in the last few weeks I’ve had a few thoughts on the subject that I have not seen anywhere else. 1) When I was a […]
I have not gone hunting since I was a teenager. I have been wanting to take it up again, but I’ve been procrastinating. Let me explain why: When I was seventeen, to go hunting meant driving to the hardware store, paying $20 for a small-game hunting license, borrowing my dad’s shotgun, and going to the […]
Today I hope to wrap up my review of Joseph Ratzinger’s Truth and Tolerance. The book is ultimately about faith and culture. He basically defines them like this: Culture, for Ratzinger, is the social expression of the perceptions and values that shape the community. Culture shapes how the individual looks at the world, man, and god. But individual experiences also feed back into […]
Monotheism and History. I said that today I would talk about Ratzinger’s view faith and culture, but looking at yesterday’s post I see an area of Ratzinger’s thought that needs more fleshing out. In the first essay it is clear that his main concern is to contrast mysticism, a religious attitude which sees all the world’s […]
I was planning on finishing my series on the ten books that most influenced my thought with Joseph Ratzinger’s Truth and Tolerance, not because it is the greatest, most influential book I’ve ever read, but for the more mundane reason that I stole the title as the name of my blog and figured it would be a fitting […]
