Green Junction The recent news that August 2026 was the warmest ever recorded was not surprising, given reports of record temperatures across the globe throughout the summer. Concurrently and inexplicably, the United States leadership announced plans to allow the release of more greenhouse gases that exacerbate the climate crisis. The United States Environmental Protection Agency... Continue Reading →
The Heart of the People
Catholic social teaching, Christian socialism, and the question underneath both In the winter of 1887, a machinist from Carbondale, Pennsylvania, waited anxiously to learn if his Church would cast countless fellow workers beyond the reach of the sacraments. He started as a railroad worker, became a machinist, then rose to mayor of Scranton. A Catholic,... Continue Reading →
The Oath at Bad Kissingen
Leo XIII, philosophical liberalism, and a question that never went away. Thinking about Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Karl Rahner, Thomas Merton, and Gustavo Gutiérrez The order was unmistakable, and everyone expected him to obey. He was summoned to the barracks at Bad Kissingen, where he was to raise his right hand and recite the oath.... Continue Reading →
The Submarine Earthquake
What Thomas Merton understood about the false self, and what a chiropractor discovered in the body sixty years later In June 1950, a monk living at a Trappist abbey in Kentucky wrote four sentences on a piece of paper and gave it to his abbot. The abbot allowed him to speak to him. At Gethsemani,... Continue Reading →
The Novice Master and the Minister of Culture
Liberation theology, libertarian theology, and the question neither side is allowed to stop asking. By thirty-two, he was known as a poet, an artist, and a writer in two countries, and he traveled to Kentucky planning to stop writing altogether. In 1957 he joined the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani as a novice. The... Continue Reading →
Fifty-Two Million Characters
Why the autonomous revolution needs comparative religion more than another ethical framework In 1236, Korea’s government had relocated to an island. Five years earlier, Mongol cavalry crossed Korea’s northern border. King Gojong’s court fled the mainland capital for Ganghwa, a tidal island safe from the horsemen. On the mainland, the invaders burned everything they encountered,... Continue Reading →
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