Due to COVID-19, the regularly scheduled Faithful Questions session has been moved to a YouTube live-stream. Tune in next Tuesday 4/14 at 7 PM for the talk title “How can I keep my kids Catholic?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1Hj80l3ZRc
Here are the slides from Tuesday’s Faithful Question talk on Confession:
http://deaconken.org/presentations/Confession.pdf
Thank you to everyone who came. It is still my sincere desire to get the videos of my events posted, so you can share them with your friends and family. This is 4th in the list.
Thank you to everyone who came to my March Faithful Questions talk. I hope you enjoyed yourself. To that end, you can help me improve by answering the Satisfaction Survey:
Here are the slides from Tuesday’s Faithful Question talk on homosexuality:
http://deaconken.org/presentations/Homosexuality.pdf
Thank you to everyone who came. I hope to get caught up on my backlog of videos in the next month and this one is 3rd in line to be created/posted, so stay tuned.
Did you attend the February Faithful Questions talk on the topic of homosexuality? If so, please take the satisfaction survey so that I can continue to improve the talk:
A new feature of the website is the ability to take surveys so that I can better judge how I’m doing. If you went to the Faithful Questions session on January 14th, 2020, titled “How can I improve my marriage?” please do me a favor and take the survey:
Please don’t fear giving honest feedback even if you think it might be a bit harsh. I can’t improve things if I don’t know what people don’t like. 🙂
I’m getting better! It only took me 9 days this time to get the slides posted:
http://deaconken.org/presentations/Marriage.pdf
I was very happy with the attendance at the presentation and hope those of you who came found the talk both valuable and entertaining. Make sure to check back soon for a survey about your experience.
As far as posting video, here are my goals:
Next Tuesday, January 14th, is the next Faithful Questions session. This month’s question is “How can I improve my marriage?”
Like last month we will have snacks and childcare.
This promises to be an informative and helpful session, so come next Tuesday, January 14th, at 7 PM in the Morris Hall.
I promised at the presentation over 4 weeks ago that I’d have these slides published “tomorrow”. Oops! Sorry about that. Nevertheless, I think I’m safer saying “better late than never” for these slides. In any case, here are the slide from the December Faithful Questions session titled “Is there a conflict between faith and science?”
http://deaconken.org/presentations/Faith_Science2019.pdf
This was a repeat and slightly updated edition of a presentation from both Ministry Days 2019 and from a 2018 Faithful Questions session.
My hope is to have video of this posted in the next few days, before the January session on the 14th.
I know this is ridiculously late and really testing the principle of “better late than never”, but here are the slides from my November Faithful Question session titled “Why do we have the Liturgical Year?”
http://deaconken.org/presentations/Liturgical_Year.pdf
I do have video for this session and it’s currently 3rd in line to get turned into a YouTube video. Hopefully I can get it done by the end of January.
I know this is ridiculously late and really testing the principle of “better late than never”, but here are the slides from my October Faithful Question session titled “What does the Church teach about the death penalty?”
http://deaconken.org/presentations/Death_Penalty.pdf
Sadly the video from this session didn’t turn out very well, so there may never be a video of it. When I get to it, I’ll see what I can do.
Here are the slides from my presentations at the Diocese of Sacramento Ministry Days 2019 (September 27th and 28th):
Do’s and Don’ts of Teaching Faith and Science:
http://deaconken.org/presentations/MinistryDays2019-Faith_and_Science.pdf
Re-Imagining RCIA Inquiry:
http://deaconken.org/presentations/MinistryDays2019-Inquiry.pdf
Re-Imagining RCIA Purification and Enlightenment:
http://deaconken.org/presentations/MinistryDays2019-PandE.pdf
Tonight is the 1st of the 2019-2020 Faithful Question seminar. The topic is “How can I make the most of Mass?” It’s at 7 PM in the Morris Center at St. Clare in Roseville. Hopefully you can make it.
And for those who are interested, here are the slides I’ll be using:
Yesterday was the feast day of St. Monica, the mother of St. Augustine. She is revered for a number of things, but perhaps most notably for her constant prayer and efforts to bring her son back to the Church. It took many, many years, but eventually Augustine came back to the faith and ended up himself being one of the greatest saints of the Church.
With so many Catholic parents struggling to keep their kids Catholic, one can see why St. Monica is popular for veneration and intercessory requests these days. And so Deacon Larry and I held a prayer service and a short talk afterward for exactly that.
Here is a link to the handout I gave with the talk about how we should go about bringing our families back to the Church:
There’s a twitter war going on right now about a priest tweeting about women covering their shoulders at Mass. (I feel no need to link to it because the specifics aren’t the point.)
I find the tweet poorly stated and ill-advised. There are things that are best stated in long form, not in a tweet. If I was forced to give a thumbs up or down to the tweet, it would be a thumbs down. It lacked any nuance or tact.
But just as maddening are the reply tweets and blog posts. They too lack any nuance. They write as if covering shoulders is only about the shoulders and not the level of coverage of the torso as a whole. They write as if there is no nuance in the issue of distraction and men should be able to avoid being distracted by a woman no matter how she is dressed. They write as if there are no standards for men’s dress to ensure some level of modesty from them. They write as if a request for modesty in dress from women is mutually exclusive to the request that men control their behavior and their eyes. They act as if the Church can’t work on solving more than one problem at a time (specifically distracting with the issue of the priest abuse scandal).
And I’m not saying the above as if there isn’t some appropriate balance. There’s a spectrum of dress from the very modest to the down-right hyper sexual. I’d hope those defending the priest would recognize that there are times when some scrupulous person takes offense at appropriately modest clothing. We should be wary of making overly black-and-white statements in defense of modesty.
I’d also hope those objecting to the priest’s tweet would recognize that there is a point where immodesty is distracting to even the most chaste eyed man. Along those lines, I’d hope they’d be willing to discuss the idea that clothing standards have value even when the specifics can create arbitrary lines. It can both be true that there can be clothing that meets an arbitrary standard and be more immodest than one that does not, but also true that a semi-arbitrary standard can still have the effect of keeping clothing appropriately modest.
I’d love to be able to discuss the matter intelligently with others. I’d love to have a productive and valuable discussion about how to avoid the worst of both extremes. But I feel like any attempt to discuss the matter in a nuanced and mature way will get shouted down by both sides and nothing of value will be discussed in any depth.
And it’s not just this topic. It feels like just about any topic these days has become polarized and lacking in any middle ground. It seems that in just about any topic, any middle ground statement will be met with condemnation from both polarized extremes. Or (and this can sometimes be worse) it can be embraced by one side and viewed as part of the polarized discussion, despite the evenhanded words.
And thus I am desperate for some nuance in our world.
I’ve posted the slides for yesterday’s Faithful Questions session, which was a general Question and Answer session:
Readings: http://usccb.org/bible/readings/051919.cfm
(FYI, what I said at Mass varied from the planned text a bit more than usual this week. I both deviated from the text and added some things on the fly (I put those in red). I’ll be writing a bit more about that in a separate post.)
In today’s Gospel Jesus says, “I give you a new commandment: love one another.“ This command to us today is both unremarkable and very challenging at the same time. We hear it over and over in the Gospels. Jesus gave us two commandments: Love God and love our neighbors. In the sermon on the mount he tells us to love our enemies. In our Gospel passage from 2 weeks ago, Jesus 3 times asks Peter if he loves Him. In all Jesus uses the word love 56 times in the Gospels. So in some sense, Christ’s command to us today is down right ordinary and mundane.
At the same time, if we understand what is being asked of us, this is an immensely important and challenging commandment. The fact that Christ repeats it so many times and in so many different ways shows just how important it is. Through repetition Jesus demonstrates its importance: Love your enemies, love your neighbor, love one another.
But why is it challenging? Isn’t love something we all have in our hearts? Well, both yes and no. But unfortunately to explain why I’m at a real disadvantage because we speak English. We only have one word for Love. In Spanish, there are 4. And when we go to the ancient languages of Latin and Greek, we see even more. The ancient Greeks had 6 words for love of others plus one for love of self. That’s SEVEN words for love, as compared to our one. And since Greek is the language today’s Gospel was written in, I’d like to spend time talking about their various words for love. The lowest form of love of others is Ludus. It’s a playful level of love, without much commitment. It is what you would see on your average middle-school playground.
The 2nd lowest form is Eros. This is where we get our word erotic. This is romantic love. Many of us think of this as the highest form of love, but it is most definitely not. The longing passion of Eros is unpredictable and unstable. Passionate Eros love is just a couple of mistakes away from passionate hate. I think we’ve all met a couple or two that one day were passionately in love and the next passionately hated each other. This is the instability of Eros. Additionally, Eros can too easily be confused with its evil twin, lust. And lust is not love. All forms of love are an act of giving to another person. Lust is an act of objectifying another person for the purpose of using them. Lust is an act of taking, not giving.
The next up the list is Pragma. Pragma is where we get the word pragmatic. It has a reciprocal nature to it. We give to each other, but it’s with the understanding that both parties are giving and thus potentially lacks a permanence of the higher forms of love. It’s a bit too contractual to be further up the list. Much divorce comes from the failure of Pragma. As long as the marriage is reciprocal, they’re fine, but it only takes one spouse not ‘doing their part’ for a short period for it to fall apart.
Above that is Philia. This is where we get the words Fraternity and Friendship. This is often called brotherly love. Here, the expectation of permanence is higher. Whether biological or not, once you have declared someone your brother or sister, your dedication to them is less shakable, even if your brother is not treating you so well right now.
Now we’re getting close to the top. The 2nd highest form of love is (Store-jay) Storge. This is best understood as the love a parent has for their children. The expectation of reciprocation that exists with the lower form of love is now significantly reduced. We give to our children with very little expectation of getting anything in return. And this is the key to the highest forms of love.
Because if you think about it, just how giving is an act when you have expectations of a reciprocal act of love? What is loving about an investment? I give now, with the hope that my investment will bear fruit in the future. Is that really love? Perhaps. It all really depends on how high and how specific the expectation is that it will be returned.
Which brings us to Agape, the highest form of love. Agape requires no family affiliation. Agape has no expectation of a reciprocal love. Agape is the love that God has for us. It is the love that Christ had when he died on the Cross for our sins. And if we were to have read today’s Gospel in Greek, Agape is the love Christ commanded of us today.
This is why today’s command is so challenging. We are called to this highest form love. It is just as passionate as romantic love, but it has the unwaveringness of a parents love for their children. It is completely without self-interest. We all know love is patient, kind and not jealous… that’s the easy part. What about not seeking its own interests? What about radical forgiveness? What about enduring ALL things? What about never failing no matter what is done to you?
This is Agape. And this is what we are called to. We are called to a radical level of self-giving that transcends any human interests or any sense of reciprocity. And this is my prayer for this morning. That we can all have our hearts elevated to embrace this highest form of love, the form of love that God has for us. Let us never again confuse the somewhat compromised forms of love like Eros or Pragma for the highest and most noble form of love, Agape. The love that comes from God. The love that we are called to give back to God and to everyone around us. It is the love that we are called to give to our spouse, our family, our friends, our neighbors and even our enemies. We are called to Agape love for everyone.
OK, I know this is ridiculously late. I stumbled across the “finish line” of my Holy Week activities and April Faithful Questions session and then more or less collapsed for a week. It didn’t help that I caught some respiratory bug right about that time. By the time I started being productive again, I had a big backlog of things I needed to get done and thus posting the slides is now 2 1/2 weeks late.
In any case, here are the slides:
For my May Faithful Questions session we’re going to change things up a little and do a Question and Answer session. Hopefully I can get 6 to 10 questions that each take 5 to 10 minutes to answer. Use the commend section to propose a question for the talk.
(Sorry for the lack of posts. I should have anticipated the busyness of the final weeks of Lent. I’ll get back to my series on the Extraordinary Form shortly.)
I hope everyone had a joyful and blessed Easter Sunday. I know I did.
Every year, the Holy Week and Easter Sunday services bring some new thought to my mind, some new little nuance of theology or grace or liturgical brilliance that hadn’t affected me previously. This year was a fascinating one, and one that might be due to it being my first year as a deacon and thus my first year where I was serving at all the liturgies.
There’s so much that goes on during Holy Week and just about all of it has a rehearsal. I had an all-day retreat for the RCIA Elect on Saturday before Palm Sunday, Palm Sunday Mass, performed 2 wedding for RCIA Elect on Monday, Parish Reconciliation service on Tuesday, Rehearsal for Holy Thursday on Wednesday, all 3 Triduum services including same-day rehearsal for both Good Friday and Easter Vigil. It was a pretty darned taxing week.
And for the last couple days, the Tabernacle was empty. That’s how I felt by the end: running on empty.
Thus there was something very powerful watching a fellow deacon put Christ back in the Tabernacle at the end of the Easter Vigil service. It was the completion of a long journey. It was a moment that brought everything to completion. Christ is back home where he belongs after the long journey of Holy Week.
To say it moved me deeply is an understatement. The journey was both complete and in some way made more sense than it did than when I was struggling through it. And now all of that angst and taxing work was finished, it all made sense, and I was at peace.