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- Written by: John Rae
- Category: Blog
In session one of “The Rescue Project”, Fr. John Riccardo says that we all inhabit some story, or narrative, and that the structure of our lives imitates the structure of our structuring narrative. Now, there are other inhabitants in the land of narratives and one of those occupants is called the news. We call the gospel of Christ the “Good News” but the goodness of that news depends on your perspective, for news can be the nemesis of a narrative.
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- Written by: David Palmer
- Category: Blog
Why is the book “Tactics” by Greg Koukl so critical? Fulfilling our mission of “going and making disciples” is one of the key pillars we are commanded to do, and one in which most Christians, especially Catholics, have no clue where to begin! Most Catholics have never been taught the importance of sharing their faith let alone how to engage in a meaningful dialogue with a family member who might have walked away from their faith, someone from another religious tradition, or a skeptic
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- Written by: John Rae
- Category: Blog
In Matthew 7:24 Jesus admonishes us to: “be like the wise man who built his house upon the rock.” How do we determine when we have reached the prime reality or the bedrock of existence upon which we can start to build our lives? In the current marketplace of ideas there are a few takes on what constitutes the prime reality of existence. For some the base reality is the face of the angry or indifferent God. Some 20th century philosophers tried selling us on the idea that absurdity or meaninglessness fits the bill and for others reality is just ongoing suffering. The latest version of the suffering sales pitch is that we are all perpetual participants in the victim Olympics. It’s a pretty depressing set of alternatives.
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- Written by: Mark Pilon
- Category: Blog
Recently the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe was celebrated. The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe is "a venerated image on a cloak enshrined within the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City".1 The image is on a Tilma, which a is hand woven cloth made from the coarse fibres of the Maguey cactus and is close to 500 years old.2 On it is the picture of the Virgin Mary with child (signified by the dark waist tassel seen below her clasped hands) and she is wearing a blue mantle with stars on it. There are many claims about it such as the stars on Mary's mantle are in the same configuration as the stars in the sky on the morning of Dec. 12 1531 when the image was miraculously created.3 I recall also reading a claim that the temperature of parts of the icon are always the same - around the temperature of the human body.4 However, I want to focus on the results of the scientific study that Philip Serna Callahan carried out using Infrared (IR) photography.
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- Written by: John Rae
- Category: Blog
The other day, I was following an online chat about the rising tide of ‘cancel culture’. One participant quipped, “You know, trying to live your life under a rock somewhere is not as safe as it used to be!”. In the same vein, back in 1969, the rock and roll poet, Mick Jagger wrote:
