An Open Letter to Father Corapi

I'm filled with sadness over the whole Father Corapi business.  I am sharing an open letter to him here.  For more information on the situation, I'd suggest you visit the collection of commentary at The Pulp.it.

Fr. John Corapi,

Years ago, your words and the clarion call to to live a life of holiness were a great encouragement and ministry to our family when we crossed the Tiber.  The Tiber waters were often rough as we exchanged friends and a comfortable, predictable spiritual life for a new future filled with questions and anxieties.  Your sermons helped to open our hearts to the beauty and majesty of the Catholic Church, reminding us of what it means to follow Christ's voice--even when the voice calls us to hardship.  

Part of what it means to be Catholic is to appreciate that we are part of something much bigger than ourselves.  In short, it's not about us; it's about Him.  As someone who received a letter once from an imprisoned priest, I think I have the tiniest inkling of what you (and other priests and bishops) face in trying times such as these.  

Still, it seems that something within your response and your declaration to leave the priesthood adds credence to your accusers and those vocal critics--the ones saying that they knew this was coming, for instance.   Worst still perhaps, your departure means that priests facing real persecution for preaching the Gospel have one less earthly model to look to for comfort and encouragement.

We are not your fans.  We are fellow followers of Christ in battle for our own spirtual well-being as well as the souls walking beside us each and every day of our lives.  We don't know these people most of the time, but, as C.S. Lewis wrote, each one of these strangers is an immortal soul--destined to spend eternity in one of two places.  Is what's being done to you unfair and unjust?  Perhaps so, but why would you leave the priesthood over mere accusations?  If it is untrue, aren't we called upon to fight untruth with every fiber of our being?  

You seem to be surrendering a battle long-fought.  I would encourage you, instead, to offer the pain up to Christ and His Holy Mother Mary and take up your personal cross to fight the good battle of faith.  If you do so in humility and grace, your brothers and sisters in Christ will welcome you with open arms. 

I pray that the love of God rest with you always.  God bless.

PS.  In a completely different vein, please see the announcement at Tristan's Travels.

A Classy Reprimand

I've never written a blog on the entertainment industry...but, as a guy who sometimes enjoys watching NBC's 30 Rock,  I had to say a few words about Tina Fey's recent reprimand of Tracy Morgan.  While I don't agree with the homosexual lifestyle, and I believe it's wrong, this isn't an excuse to say rude or threatening comments.  That being the case, I feel that Tina's reprimand of Tracy concerning his disturbing statements of late hit a perfect tone between reprimand and humor.  

“I’m glad to hear that Tracy apologized for his comments. Stand-up comics may have the right to “work out” their material in its ugliest and rawest form in front of an audience, but the violent imagery of Tracy’s rant was disturbing to me at a time when homophobic hate crimes continue to be a life-threatening issue for the GLBT Community.

“It also doesn’t line up with the Tracy Morgan I know, who is not a hateful man and is generally much too sleepy and self-centered to ever hurt another person.

“I hope for his sake that Tracy’s apology will be accepted as sincere by his gay and lesbian coworkers at “30 Rock”, without whom Tracy would not have lines to say, clothes to wear, sets to stand on, scene partners to act with, or a printed-out paycheck from accounting to put in his pocket.

“The other producers and I pride ourselves on “30 Rock” being a diverse, safe, and fair workplace.”


By the way, the fact that this post about Tina Fey was preceded by one concerning Sarah Palin is purely coincidental--I think.  :) 

Pet Peeves & Thankfulness

If your weeks are anything like mine, they're chock full o'nuts--and I am not referring to coffee here.  Now, don't get me wrong.  Whether we're talking about flakey people sleeping where they shouldn't (not talking homeless people here, but they might count, too), making noises best avoided in polite company, missing promised appointments, not responding to important messages, swerving directly in front of speeding fire trucks, or the occasional simple dimwit thrown in for good measure, no balanced list of pet peeves is restricted to people.  Take our cat, for instance.  


Being an inside cat, Buttercup's most sacred goal is ESCAPE.  She especially loves it when door to door salespeople come knocking early on Saturdays.  Once she bolts outside, she most often stops in the center of the front lawn and awaits her master's grumbling arrival to airlift her back to the comfortable confines of the indoors--and her kitty toys.  Believe it, or not, there are times when this behavior can present troublesome and inconvenient scenarios.  Sadly, it's difficult (but not altogether impossible) to place a cat on a proper timeout.  Anyway, this is how my cat often finds herself on the pet peeve list. 


The past week has been unusually full of an exciting number of pet peeves, and, sadly, I really can't elaborate here on most of them.  Don't worry, though, because the worst offenders will most likely find themselves in my writing at some future point.  In one form or another, the people who annoy me the most will live on to annoy my protagonists, too.  After all, I want to be fair and balanced about this whole thing called fiction.  Usually, though, I prefer my characters' more colorful solutions to my own non-solutions--i.e. keeping my mouth shut (for the most part anyway).


After a week of challenging people and situations all trying my patience in unique and unpleasant ways, it was nice to spend some quiet time in a park-like setting this weekend as I reflected on the past week's activities.  While things can be difficult, what I'm really struck by is the power of thankfulness.  I'm thankful, for instance, for God's blessings which include a wonderful family and a stable job or two. A strange little dream I had the other night also serves to illustrate another item for which I am thankful.


The dream went along these lines.  I was visiting a new church with someone.  Before taking my seat, I was handed a bowl of extremely fancy and assorted candies.  Coming into the church, I was struck with the movie theater feel of it.  The music was blaring and some kind of a video number was playing on the front screen.  I looked over at my "friend" (actually, no idea who it was) and asked him whether he really could worship there.  He pulled out his bulletin and pointed to the bottom where it read "Fried Chicken Social." Nodding, he observed, "Yes, that's what it's all about, my friend.  That's what it's all about."


So this dream reminds me in a lighthearted way of how good it is to be done with the church-shopping we did as Protestants for about one and a half decades of our marriage.  In short, it's good to be home.  Besides the spiritual meaning of home, there's also the physical place to consider.  In case you might have missed it, I am a very picky guy.  We've lived in humid Kansas and roasting Texas, as well as northern California and northwest Washington State before arriving in Salem, Oregon.  We're happy to have stayed put now in Oregon since 1996.  It's great to finally live in such a wonderful place--an hour, or so, from the mountains or high desert to the east and an hour from the beautiful Pacific Ocean to the west.  The lush green Willamette Valley of western Oregon is hard to beat, and I am very thankful for the opportunity to raise our family in a place we all enjoy so much.    


So, that's my prescription for battling pet peeves: thankfulness.  After all, it's hard to be simultaneously cynical or critical and thankful!

Happy 200th Anniversary, Astoria!

One of my favorite places in Oregon, Astoria on the north coast, celebrates its bicentennial this year.  I've been visiting Astoria (as an adult) as regularly as possible since the late 1990s.  In my May 10th radio interview, I talked about the inspiration the area gave me for elements of Tristan's Travels.  


While many people seem to think of Astoria as a dark and dreary place, my visits often take place on the most beautiful days: brilliant blue skies, cool ocean breezes, and wonderful ocean views.  (If you want to see some good Astoria photos, check out the video trailer for our little "tale of tails."  Several photos are courtesy Oregon photographer Austin Granger.)  So, I hope you can stop by Astoria, Oregon and wish it happy 200th!  It's a great place to visit, and, I imagine, even a better place to stay.

The Old Woman in the Trees

One could say it's been one of those weeks in our neck of the (soggy) woods.  It began with my wife Kimberly being hospitalized last weekend for emergency surgery.  Thankfully, she's doing fine now--and we're all catching-up on sleep after a challenging week.  (It's not as much fun as one might think getting along on two hours of sleep; fortunately I stayed out of new car lots last Saturday.)  


This is going to be a short entry today, but I did want to quickly share a a short story that illustrates...well nothing really, but I wanted to share it anyway.  So, some of my readers know that I work for the State of Oregon as a number cruncher.  Sometimes my work makes it necessary to make personal visits to homes.  These visits can be weird--to say the least.  When I worked for a previous state agency, they were often a little more stressful than today.  Still, anything can happen, and it often does.


Some (undisclosed) time ago, for example, I visited a rural residence.  I parked my state car and, after my standard "safety" pause, I headed for the front door.  I immediately had a strange feeling at this particular home.  This may have had something to do with all the bugs gathered in the area of the front door.  It was the kind of place you felt dirty even standing outside.  I brushed cobwebs from my face and tried to wave away the bugs, slapping a mosquito or two in the process.  I knocked loudly on the front door and noticed that the curtains were not drawn, but the inside of the house was comparatively pitch black.  I could see the top edge of a rocking chair inside, silhouetted by a crack of light from a window to the rear.  


With some uncomfortable curiosity, I noticed the chair begin to rock as if someone was rising out of it, but I couldn't see anyone, and no one came to the door.  Brushing the flying bugs out of my hair, I began to leave one of my standard notices on the front door. It was a couple minutes before I left the notice and turned around to return to my car.  As soon as I had walked a couple steps, however, I noticed an old woman just staring at me from the corner of the house.  I'm not sure how long she'd been standing there quietly watching me, but, all in all, the conversation that followed was not altogether a "comfy" one.  It was also oddly disquieting that she didn't really look at me when I spoke to her, but her eyes seemed to look just beyond or behind me.  Fortunately, at least, no spooky music began to play and no old farmer appeared carrying a shotgun.


Why share this little work-related adventure?  Because, I suppose, it's worth bearing in mind that we're not really in control of what happens to us.  We can plan and use common sense, but the good, the bad, and the pain weird and ugly are still going to come our way.  The best thing to do is to take each day as it comes, offering it up, and hoping that the one that follows will be a little better than the last.  I don't know about you, but I hope I don't see that old woman again any time too soon!

Harold Camping & His Lie (Updated May 23)

With May 21st come and gone, it's easy to make light of the people predicting the end of the world yesterday.  As I was doing a little research for this entry, though, I came across the Facebook "Wall" of a young person (not the one pictured in the photo above) who had been publicly proclaiming this terribly misguided prediction.  She had been very much caught up in the lie and had obviously invested a great deal of her time and energy (not to mention credibility).  From scanning the most recent Facebook entries, I was struck with what a wedge its obviously created within her family.  A family member had posted a comment that included the following excerpt: "your Dad and I love u and will always..."  (See part of her response at the bottom of the page.)

This sentiment reminded me that, while there is an element of the ridiculous here in the larger picture, the close-up picture shows many brokenhearted (albeit, very gullible) people and broken families.  It makes me all the more angry at Harold Camping.  In fact, here's a copy of a letter I sent him late last week.  (It's been edited at a couple points.)


Harold Camping,


Given Christ's stern message of Matthew 24:36, you're placing your supposed special knowledge above the very words of Christ.  Besides joining a long list of thoroughly discredited spiritual prognosticators, you're either denying the deity of Christ or you are declaring Him a liar; not a good position for a man claiming to be a minister.


When May 21 comes and goes, I hope you will pause before making yet another foolish prediction to your misguided followers.  Should you pause to take spiritual stock of your life's mission, I think you may begin to recognize yourself for what you are: a common false prophet, preaching an old lie (dressed in the cheapest of "new clothing") to the most gullible.

I urge you to seek forgiveness--as well as real reconciliation with the Christian faithful--before the opportunity to do so becomes impossible;Christ does not look kindly upon those who lead His sheep astray.

Like many other people, I've been following this tragedy of sorts for the past few weeks.  It's hard to watch some people running off a precipitous credibility cliff.  In the particular case of Harold Camping, though, it wasn't particularly hard to watch.  Two things that made this issue of particular interest were the Premillennial Dispensationilist view as well as the danger of religious organizations centered on an individual--as opposed to Christ.

As a former Evangelical Protestant before becoming Catholic, I was reminded in one sense of issues we had struggled with in the past--only much more extreme, of course, in the case of the Harold Camping situation.  The whole Premillennial Dispensationilist view points to how easy it is for some to get carried away with these end of days predictions--which each new generation thinks has arrived.  Of course, a literary example of this is the whole Left Behind series.  While I enjoyed listening to Jerry Jenkins in-person a few years ago, his books paint a picture unsupported by either Scripture or Christian tradition.  


In fact, the Protestant view of rapture most often would have Christ coming not twice, but three times!  (For more details on the history of this dangerous line of thinking, read Carl Olsen's Will Catholics be Left Behind?)  Lastly, the Catholic understanding of end-times also doesn't usually hold to a view of the Church being taken away before the period of tribulation.  After all, this view diminishes the suffering of the Christian faithful in centuries past; why are we too good to suffer for Him today?

To a lesser extent, the controversy also reminded me a bit of what happened when a loved pastor of our church at the time decided to leave.  In the wake of his departure, the small church of the Lutheran Brethren tradition almost fell apart.  An older retired minister within the congregation tried to insert himself into the pulpit, and things seemed to get worse from there.  It was almost as if the church was more about the personality of the ministers than focus upon Christ.  It was a sad time, and we left the church. While I'm sure there are many Catholic examples of churches experiencing hardships and struggles at the departure of a loved priest, it doesn't seem to go as far as the rifts and divisions created in Protestant circles--e.g. new churches aren't usually the result!

At any rate, that's all for today.  I hope you have a great week.  A special thank you to those who prayed for our family's health struggle this week.  We are happy to have her back home safe and sound.  God's protection was evident throughout the entire struggle. We thank Him for that most sincerely.




Updated (May 23)


Below is a letter from someone who still believes that May 21 was indeed the start of the end.  It sheds some light on the reasoning of their thinking...and it couldn't sound like much more of a cult.  Please pray for the young person who wrote this.  She's obviously bright and kind, and enthused with her faith; what a waste.




"Hi Karl,

Actually, no one was misled. May 21, 2011 was the beginning of Judgment, spiritually. I am saying this off my own studies. All of the timelines lead to that date and God did save a great multitude of people by the end of May 21, 2011. The door is now shut for salvation.

The problem with the "prediction" is that all of us believed that all of the key events related with Judgment Day (a 5 month period) would occur simultaneously in one moment ie. the earthquake, rapture etc. That's where human error came into play. But God is perfect and Judgment Day is here, spiritually. As the other events unfold over the next 2-3 days, the rest of the world will see the truth. Everyone needs to pay attention but they won't...then sudden destruction will come as spoken of in 1Thes5:4

They cannot see it now because it was only the spiritual part of the Judgment. That's why it looks like a "failed" prediction. But God is perfect and does everything in His perfect will and time. We are all watching in the Bible, praying as He reveals His perfect plan.

I hope that helps."

Reductive Materialism in the Crosshairs

I had a lot to choose from to write on this evening.  First, I was tempted to write on the benefits of humor, then there was the lesson on civility (or lack thereof) we might all learn from an Amtrak passenger named Lakeysha Beard, or my letter to the latest misguided spiritual prognosticator, Harold Camping, but I finally decided to pursue a more cerebral discussion this evening.


I'm nearly done with two books I'm reading, more or less, simultaneously: Dinesh D'Souza's Life After Death, The Evidence and Bernd Heinrich's Mind of the Raven.  In case you think this reading strategy is a strange habit, I'd probably have to agree.  I'd also have to disclose, though, that there are other books, too.  I think a good rule for me is to avoid picking-up a new book until I've finished two--but I digress.


I've already mentioned Bernd Heinrich's fine book in an earlier blog entry titled "The Cougar and The Raven...and Science," so I need to preface tonight's comments by sharing some thoughts on Dinish D'Souza's book.  First, I have to admit I had perhaps unrealistically high hopes with regards to this book when I began reading, but I still have greatly enjoyed it.  As someone who has helped save a life, it was my hope that this book would address some areas with a bit more depth--life after death accounts, for instance.  Its strength is really the distillation of complex concepts and beliefs into much more easily understood terms; he simplifies things to a point that most anyone can grasp where he's going fairly easily.  Strangely enough, an argument might be made that this is also perhaps one of the book's weaknesses.


That is, there's a tendency within the book towards over simplification at times.  This bothered me less, though, than the author's repeated paraphrasing of his opponents' positions, sometimes coming fairly close to the debater's error referred to as the "straw man argument."  That is, he seems to articulate his opponents' in such a way that they are more easily refuted.  While I agree with his arguments for the most part, I think it might have been better to include more text quoted from his opponents.  Still, in all fairness, perhaps it's not easy obtaining permissions in these circumstances?


At any rate, both books are very good.  It just so happened as I began reading this evening that an intriguing thing happened.  I realized that both books (on entirely different subjects) were discussing the source and nature of human consciousness.  D'Souza's book was discussing it in terms of suggesting that one's brain and one's mind cannot be the same, and that our consciousness rests in the more mysterious mind, separate from the biological neuron network of our brains.  This powerfully illustrates one dimension of the fallacy of reductive materialism.  That is, the reductive materialist says everything can be explained by breaking it down to component parts, taking it apart.  Of course, we can stare all day at someone's brain, and that's not going to give us any insight into his thoughts or mental state.


From the philosophical perspective, Mind of the Raven takes the reader on a more biologically-centered journey.  The author's position is that consciousness is simply an evolutionary outgrowth required for intelligent living beings to make decisions.  His emphasis is on consciousness as simply necessary to enable the animal to test different courses of action in its mind before choosing one action over the other.  For example, raven behavior is often very complicated, posing a challenge to those trying to decipher the birds' choices--e.g. to cache food, or not, or to bond with predators such as wolves in the creation of unlikely alliances.


While I wouldn't describe the latter author as a reductive materialist, he certainly seems uninclined to recognize the deeper meaning of what he has spent his life studying.  Ravens, after all, mate for life, demonstrate great care in the raising of their young, and display a level of intelligence in play and work hard to reconcile with simple evolution.  Hawks are wonderful hunters, for instance, but the raven's brain is far superior.  Has this made it a better hunter than the hawk?  Not necessarily.  


This also touches on the false idea many of us may have heard in our youth concerning the supposed inability of animals to really feel pain or emotion.  We're not engaging in anthropomorphic fancies to reject this simplistic view of God's creation.  


In short, our very consciousness and awareness of who and what we are testifies to the glory of God just as do the other marvelous works of His creation--spiders excluded, of course.