Unearned Luck

     On Sunday, April 12, 2026, the day on which Catholics celebrated Divine Mercy Sunday and the end of the Octave of Easter, President Donald Trump published the above image to his Truth Social account without comment. President Trump published this AI-generated image after Pope Leo XIV offered his strongest denunciation of the U. S./Israeli war against Iran the prior evening in which Pope Leo XIV called for breaking the "demonic cycle of evil" that leads to war.      There is no information on who entered the prompts into the AI image generator that produced this image, yet mainstream news sources reported that Nick Adams, a raconteur and political grifter from Australia, posted a very similar image to his X account on February 4th of this year with the comment that Donald Trump is the physician healing the United States. The same sources identified Nick Adams as the person, who provided President Trump with the slightly altered image that President Tru...

Matthew 26:11:   “For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me.” Mark 14:7:   “For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you will, you can do good to them; but you will not always have me.” John 12:8:   “The poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me.”           At different times,  Jesus’s statement concerning the poor’s ubiquity has been amplified by the assertion that the poor in the United States today live better than the royalty of antiquity. These statements seem to be justifying a certain lethargy concerning addressing the needs of the poor. A closer look at the context of Our Lord’s statement may help contextualize our perceptions of poverty and our responsibilities thereto. What is the context within which Jesus Christ asserted this? It was six days before the Passover and Christ’s Passion and Death. Christ was in Bethany and attended a dinner in his honor at the home of S...

     Neither Sparta nor Athens were destroyed by external enemies. Through seemingly divergent means, both poleis protected and advanced the same end: the liberty of the individual citizen. Eventually, however, private individuals, greedy for their own license and with contempt for the rights of the citizenry, since citizens were simultaneously means to their accumulation of wealth and power and obstructions to their drive, turned the governments of Athens and Sparta away from working for the good of their respective citizenry towards the oppressing of the majority for their individual gain. Once firmly under the sway of these greedy few neither state could muster enough resources to arrest, then reverse, the festering corruption within their politics, schools, militaries, cultures, and religions. The greedy few were always present to block reforms. In Sparta, for example, "by the mid-5th century, land had become concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite, and the notion t...

Working towards a more effective catechesis for native-born Catholics in the United States living in the first half of the 21st Century involves arriving at an understanding about the culture in which Catholics are living and participating and, therefore, the culture within which that catechesis takes place. At the same time many Catholics talk about establishing Catholic culture or re-establishing Catholic culture. Both discussions require a definition of culture and some idea of the purpose of culture. From understanding these then can come a broader discussion as to whether or not the current culture in which Catholics are participating is beneficial for them, whether a Catholic culture existed in the United States, and whether one could exist now and how does that develop. This conversation must begin, though, with an understanding of culture and the reasons for culture. Dr. Amos Wilson defines culture as the "...set of rules and procedures together with a supporting set of i...

     In his conversation with Jonathon Pageau, Jordan Peterson identified the apparent lack of faith of Catholics, as represented in their behavior, as a significant obstacle to his accepting Catholicism and giving over his life to the faith. You aren't sufficiently transformed for me to believe, that you believe in God or that you believe the story you're telling me. The way you live isn't sufficient testament to the truth. Christians don't manifest the transformation of attitude, that would enable the outside observer to easily conclude that they believe.      Dr. Peterson's response is an indictment of the Church's ability to evangelize today. Yes, one could argue the illegitimacy of judging the veracity of a proposition by the behavior of its adherents or one could fall back on the divine/human aspects of the Church and explain how the sinful actions of the sinners within the Church do not corrupt the truths of the faith or one could refer to Christ's i...

     One of the most fascinating aspects of art is found in its ability to teach or reveal truth. Art, though, speaks its own language and ignorance of the language leaves the depth of the art, its true beauty, ignored and overlooked. The faith of the Catholic Church can be viewed similarly. Without knowing the language in which the Church expresses God's revelation of Himself, then what should be a vibrant, life-altering faith is reduced to a shopping list of doctrines and dogmas viewed once and quickly forgotten.      As with art, education is the key to understanding the language in which the Church speaks and the Church's worldview. In the Church, this education is known as catechesis. In the United States, catechesis started as the memorization of specific answers to specific questions, which served Catholics well within their Catholic neighborhoods and their Catholic parishes, but failed them once they got out into the larger world and they began to f...

      Two different people recommended watching the conversation between Dr. Jordan Peterson and Jonathon Pageau on the  eighth episode of the fourth season of the Jordan B. Peterson Podcast. The two men engaged in a beautiful discussion of finding faith in the midst of crushing suffering and unsettling changes, neither of which seem to have an end in sight. As beneficial as it was to watch, Dr. Peterson's obvious suffering in so many ways and on so many levels was difficult to silently witness. That said, I would recommend this episode, as well.      During the first few minutes, when the two friends were catching up and becoming reacquainted after having spent a long time without speaking, Dr. Peterson mentioned, that right after he had returned home from his harrowing and horrifying series of hospitalizations, Bishop Robert Barron had sent him a book of a series of critiques of Dr. Peterson's series, The Psychological Significance of the Biblical S...

Photo by  Andres Siimon  on  Unsplash “‘Has no one condemned you?’ She said, ‘No one, Lord.’ And Jesus said, ‘Neither do I condemn you; go and do not sin again’” -John 8:10-11 “Maybe you missed some of the conversation. In talking about the true presence of Christ in the Eucharist. If one is a so called Catholic but rejects that teaching, that one is a protestant or heretic, you choose. Read John Ch 6. Look up heresy.” -@DeaconWaugh on Twitter “Heresy is the obstinate denial or obstinate doubt after the reception of baptism of some truth which is to be believed by divine and Catholic faith; apostasy is the total repudiation of the Christian faith; schism is the refusal of submission to the Supreme Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him” (Can 751). Heresy is “the obstinate denial or obstinate doubt.” If a Catholic does, in fact, deny or doubt the Church’s teaching on the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, then th...

Photo by Gavin Spear on Unsplash And the L ORD 's anger was kindled against Israel, and he made them wander  in the wilderness forty years, until all the generation  that had done evil in the sight of the L ORD was consumed. -Numbers 32:13 Take care, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. Who were they that heard and yet were rebellious? Was it not all those who left Egypt under the leadership of Moses? And with whom was he provoked forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they should never enter his rest, but those who were disobedient? So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief. -Hebrews 3:12, 16-19 The generation, "that had done evil in the sight of the L ORD ," had been the oldest generation and the one who had spent the most time in Egypt. Throughout Exodus and Numbers, the ...

Photo by Raphael Koh  on  Unsplash Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me; but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. -Matthew 18:5-6 Certain persons by swerving from these have wandered away into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make assertions. -1 Timothy 1:6-7 Then there's this bit of tripe from last Sunday's bulletin: "As Christians our ultimate goal is to be Christ-like, to reflect the dazzling glory of Christ in all of our interactions, and so bring honor to God. In pursuit of this goal, the more clearly we see the way to our own transformation in Christ." Obviously, this is supposed to tie in with Sunday's Gospel reading about Christ's transfiguration in Luke 9:28-3...

Photo by Veri Ivanova on Unsplash So when they had come together, they asked him, "Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" He said to them, "It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority." -Acts 1:6-7 He has made everything beautiful in its time; also he has put eternity into man’s mind, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. -Ecclesiastes 3:11 This afternoon at Mass, Father began his homily on the need for patience with God by relating his recent frustrations trying to return from his three-day vacation in Colorado. In the end, he and his traveling companions drove seventeen hours to get home in time for him to say his Masses today. Traveling seventeen hours in a vehicle with three other people does require patience of a kind. The boon patience receives in this scenario is knowing that there will be no need for patience in seventeen ...