I used to teach sacraments to adults in RCIA, and to kids in Catechism class. With my current curriculum I don’t have specific lesson plans for sacraments. Now sacramental content is woven into the wider lessons, and over the year a…
Prayer Is Not Magic
“I prayed, but nothing happened.” How often have we heard these words? Maybe they came from someone in an argument about faith. Maybe they came from a child trying to understand God’s plan. Or maybe these words came from ourselves…
Historical Sites of Our Faith
As a cradle Catholic the age of the Catholic Church is not something I thought about until I began working with people who were joining the Church. On an intellectual level I know that as a Church we have been…
The Secret of the Light Yoke
Readings for July 6, 2014: 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time I once knew a woman who called herself “a recovering Catholic.” It seems that, as a child, she was taught a religion that was all about guilt. Impossible demands were…
Let True Freedom Ring
The Fourth of July always seems to make people stop and reflect on the core values of our culture. One of these values is freedom. We talk about political freedom, religious freedom, and economic freedom. Listen or read any type…
Distance Learning for Catholics: Training Ourselves for the New Evangelization
During a recent radio segment on The SonRise Morning Show, host Matt Swaim and I took on the topic of “nanodegrees” as described in the New York Times: This week, AT&T and Udacity, the online education company founded by the Stanford…
The Fourth of July and a Revolutionary Approach to the Bible
In the days when states were still “the colonies” and men wore powdered wigs, a new way of thinking captured the intelligentsia of the western world. “The miracle stories in the Bible and the lives of the saints may be…
The Book of Tobit vs. ‘Tobit’s Dog,’ by Michael Nicholas Richard
Tobit’s Dog is a love story amid the battle between heaven and hell for the souls of the good guys as well as the racists, murderers, rapists, thieves and connivers not portrayed in the biblical version of the Book of…
Barnabas and Paul: Enabling Evangelization
Yesterday our Church celebrated the wonderful solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul. Without question Paul is one of the most well-known, pivotal, and remarkable men to serve Jesus Christ as an evangelizer. Yet without a certain brother in Christ–Saint Barnabas,…
You Mean Life’s NOT All About Me?
Readings for June 29, 2014: Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles “Self” Magazine is certainly a sign of the times. This is an age when it is socially acceptable to admit that life is all about me. But selfishness…