The Prophetic Protocol

Today's homily is called "The Prophetic Protocol," a strange title! Protocol is about the conventions needed to get things done. It's the how-to of life, whether it relates to our personal lives, our health, finances, worship, even our computers. Protocol requires a problem, a procedure, and a fix. It's a way of getting our feet out of the fire, a proven strategy. Our way of getting things done will differ, depending on the assumptions we make about the resources we have, and how we use them.

Read This Archive

Review of Faceless Killers

What does this to do with Swedish author Henning Mankell or his crime mystery Faceless Killers? This is a book response, not a parental rant against the strange world of technology. Kurt Wallander, Mankell's frumpy, grumpy Swedish crime investigator and I have something in common. We are both in danger of becoming culturally irrelevant, maybe extinct; both of us fear this looming prospect.

Read This Archive

Journey into Modern Culture: The Spiritual Theology of Richard Niebuhr

I selected Richard Niebuhr as an exemplar and trailblazer into modern culture because he combined the cataphatic (with image) and apophatic (without image) modes of spiritual life and thought. These technical terms from spiritual theology were not used by Niebuhr nor are they normally used by moral theologians, especially those practicing fifty years ago. Nonetheless, applying these terms from spiritual theology may revitalize Niebuhr's thought and position it in the context of spiritual theology.

Read This Archive